In this month’s Road to PASS series, I’m challenging you to submit an abstract for the PASS Summit. Week 1 challenged you to write a few pain points you’ve solved this year, week 2’s homework was to write the session’s recap slide, and week 3 had you writing the abstract’s technical details.
Now, I need to get feedback on my abstracts – so I’ve posted them on GroupBy:
- Getting Better Query Plans by Improving SQL’s Estimates
- How Often Should You Run Backups and CHECKDB?
- What to Do When SQL Server is Unusually Slow
Eagle-eyed readers will notice that I tweaked the titles on a couple of ’em. I’ve noticed that if I walk away from an abstract for a week, do my (fake) day job and live my life, and then come back, I have an easier time with themes and titles. I wanna get the technical bones out first, make sure I’m totally happy with that, and I can always add in more catchy stuff later.
You’ll also notice that I don’t have much catchy or upbeat language in there yet. I’m still letting the technical parts of the material settle in. Did I hit the right points? Is there anything I’m missing that I should cover? Is there anything I can take out so that I can do better justice to less material?
I’ll tweet links to those posts a couple/few times through the week and stay on top of the comments that come in. It’s natural to feel like you need to defend the material – after all, it’s your newborn – but take comments seriously. It’s so much better to get constructive criticism BEFORE you submit to PASS rather than have someone explain to you later, “Here’s why it never could have made the cut.”
Now, how about yours?
Your homework for this Sunday, March 4th, is the technical detail of your abstract(s). The public posting & feedback-gathering isn’t due until Sunday, March 11th, but I’m blogging a little ahead of you in the process so you can see what’s coming.
If you commit to doing the process with me, I’ll commit to reviewing your work throughout. You can either turn it in via email to brento@brentozar.com, or in the #PresentingOrSpeaking channel of SQLslack.com.
