Last year, I submitted abstracts to the PASS Summit for the first time. I sent in four abstracts and all four were rejected outright. I took the rejection pretty hard, especially considering all four were rejected for no other stated reason than “max sessions allocated for track” — in other words, simply not good enough. This year, I served on the abstract review committee for the AppDev track. I not only wanted to serve the SQL Server community in this way, but I also sought a better understanding of how abstracts are selected, and what makes an abstract a winner. To ease the sting to those who are going to be rejected for this year’s Summit (or were rejected in years past), I thought I’d share with you a conversation between last year’s me (the rejected applicant) and this year’s me (the committee member).
Rejected Me: I suppose you know why I’m here.
Committee Me: First, let me tell you, very sincerely, I’m sorry you didn’t have any abstracts selected this year.
Rejected Me: Thanks, but I’m still pissed about it.
Committee Me: I understand. I’ve been there. I wasn’t on your track’s committee, so can you tell me your reasons for rejection? Maybe I can help you understand.
Rejected Me: I don’t know, all they said were “Max sessions allocated”.
Committee Me: That just means you wrote adequate abstracts, didn’t leave anything incomplete, that sort of thing.
Rejected Me: Duh. I was thorough. I spellchecked and filled in all the required info.
Committee Me: It also means, for whatever reason, all the accepts and alternates were better than yours in the eyes of the committee.
Rejected Me: Can’t they tell me more than that?
Committee Me: I know it stinks not getting better feedback, but keep this in mind: three volunteers took time to evaluate as many as over 200 abstracts. Most of them are complete and halfway well-written. They don’t have time to give full critiques to each one.
Rejected Me: But that doesn’t help me. How will I know what I need to do better next time?
Committee Me: I don’t want to sound harsh, but it’s not their job to counsel you on why they didn’t like your abstracts more. Read the abstracts that were accepted and you’ll see commonalities. Learn from those.
Rejected Me: Fine. But why does [this person] always get to speak? Why not let some new people get a chance?
Committee Me: It just so happens that experienced speakers tend to be experienced abstract writers. Like I said, learn from the successful ones.
Rejected Me: I submitted three of my four abstracts in the same subject area. Surely they could have picked one of them.
Committee Me: Not necessarily. It could be they thought the target audience would be too small, or they already had it covered by another abstract — one that was better written.
Rejected Me: Is it me? Maybe my abstracts weren’t the problem.
Committee Me: Could be. Your experience does factor in, but we do want some newer speakers in there too. How many events have you presented at before you submitted to the Summit?
Rejected Me: Two.
Committee Me: Hmmm, that’s not many. Did you do well at those events?
Rejected Me: My feedback was good, so I don’t think I’ve got a bad reputation.
Committee Me: Certainly no reputation is better than a bad one, but neither case is very helpful. Keep speaking when you can find the opportunity. You’ll be much more established by this time next year, and that can only help.
Rejected Me: I suppose.
Committee Me: Try to remember this is the world’s largest SQL Server conference and the people that speak here have earned their way up on stage by building a history of successful presentations and writing good abstracts. Hang in there. Work to improve your content, delivery, and abstract writing, and you’ll get the call eventually.
Rejected Me: Thanks. But why didn’t they like my abstracts this time?
Committee Me: Well, if it’s any consolation, it could be someone on the committee really liked one, but it wasn’t enough to float it up high enough to make the cut. So it may not have been unanimously rejected. Apart from that, I don’t know what else to say except I’ve been in your shoes. I know exactly what you’re feeling.
Rejected Me: I don’t even know how close I came. Can’t they publish the final rankings or comments?
Committee Me: That’s an interesting idea, but one with a lot of complications. First, this is done by committee, so it could be one member writes glowing comments but the other two rate it low enough that it doesn’t make the cut. You end up with great comments and a lower ranking. To me, contradictory feedback is worse than no feedback. Another problem is that we simply don’t have time to comment specifically on each abstract. It’s hard enough to try to rate them all fairly. I even went so far as to make sure I wasn’t hungry, tired, or mad about something before reviewing a chunk of abstracts because I wanted to be in an equal frame of mind across them all. (Proof there’s a rational basis for doing so.) Also, if we posted complete rankings, we’d get a lot more questions from people wanting to know why they were ranked so low. It’s the committee’s job to rank abstracts, not to publicly defend the rankings. Sorry.
Rejected Me: This still sucks.
Committee Me: Yes. Yes, it does. I hope I’ve helped a little.
Rejected Me: A little.
I hope I’ve helped a little. Hang in there.
