Submit an Abstract by October 30 and You Could Save $600 at SEPG North America 2012

These days, many organizations are faced with the pressure to cut costs, which often includes a decrease in travel and training budgets. We understand, and want to offer you the chance to take advantage of the deepest discount we are offering for SEPG North America 2012.

For the chance to receive $600 off full-conference registration, submit an abstract by October 30, 2011. If you are accepted as a technical program speaker, the discount is yours. Primary presenters for all types of presentations will pay a discounted conference registration fee of $1,125, which represents a $600 discount off the general attendee conference registration fee.

There are five types of presentations and ten topic areas for which the Program Committee is accepting abstracts. Your abstract for consideration only needs to be 250-750 words. Your commitment can be as short as a 40-minute presentation or you can dedicate a full day to sharing your insights via a tutorial. The choice is yours.

The deadline to submit your abstract is October 30, 2011. Share your knowledge and experience with the SEI community by responding to the call for participation today at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/sepg/na/2012/participate.

Top PowerPoint Annoyances Revealed in New Survey

As a communications and public relations professional, I spend some time each day keeping up with industry news and trends. Today, a study in Ragan’s PR Daily caught my eye. Ragan published the results of a study by Dave Paradi of Think Outside the Slide that lists peoples’ top annoyances with PowerPoint presentations. Check out the article see what they are–and to make sure these are actions you’re avoiding during your next presentation.

For tips on how to create a presentation engages–not annoys–your audience, be sure to read our tips for creating and delivering a powerful, polished PowerPoint presentation.

Brittney Osikowicz
Communications, Software Engineering Institute/SEPG Conference Series

Ensuring Continuous Improvement: Sharing How We Select the SEPG North America 2012 Technical Program

You spoke and we listened. During and after SEPG North America 2011, the conference team asked for your feedback on how we can improve the SEPG experience for the community we serve. One of the suggestions we received was to provide greater transparency regarding the abstract review process.

To support your request the SEPG North America 2012 Program Committee has developed a set of abstract review guidelines that are intended to communicate helpful details regarding abstract reviews for SEPG North America 2012. It is our hope that by giving you a peek behind the curtain at details like the voting criteria, the voting scale, and the process reviewers are encouraged to use when reviewing abstracts, you will better understand the process of building a high quality technical program.

This information is meant to enable everyone who submits an abstract to see the criteria used to evaluate and rate their abstract. (Hint: if you would like additional advice, go back and read our guidelines for organizing your abstract.) It will also allow those who participate in the abstract review process to better prepare for their tasks and improve the consistency of ratings among reviewers.

So, now that you are more aware of how we go about accepting presentations, I would like to share the 20,000 foot view of what we are looking for when building the program.

We are seeking high-quality presentations that reflect innovation and diversity in software process improvement research, practice, and education. The presentations that make up the technical program should reflect a balance between research, practice, issues and concerns, and education. The technical program should appropriately represent the varied needs and interests of the software process improvement community.

In the end, our goal as the SEPG North America 2012 Program Committee is to deliver an unbeatable experience to all attendees. After all, the heart of our conference is the technical program, and we want to build one that is relevant, timely, and exciting to attendees. We want to deliver on our promise to help all attendees Reach New Levels of Excellence.

We hope that you will respond to the call for participation. We are seeking presenters, reviewers, and students. Make sure you submit your information by the deadline of October 30, 2011.

Palma Buttles and Dave Zubrow
SEPG North America 2012 Technical Program Co-Chairs