Call for Speakers is Open!
Selecting session proposals for a conference program is a tough job. There are competing interests–speakers who want to present their ideas, companies who want to raise their visibility by having an employee speak, and attendees who want to learn and/or be entertained.
The selection committee wants to satisfy the attendees, and also has an interest in crafting a program that presents information that is both useful and true. Having been a conference reviewer for many years and a number of conferences, I’ve seen my share of people new to a topic, extrapolating from insufficient experience, who propose sessions that sound like a terrible idea from my experience. There is enough misinformation and misleading guidance available on the Internet. If you need more, you can certainly ask ChatGPT.
When filtering out the chaff, it’s too easy to also filter out good information that just happens to be novel or unknown to the reviewers. When selecting known-good speakers offering known-good topics, it’s easy to fall into a rut. I assure you that most reviewers that I’ve known work hard to avoid these subjective biases, to the extent that a human can do so.
