We are so excited for the 2020 PowerShell and DevOps Global Summit! We’re about halfway through the CFP season and are still looking for your awesome submissions. If you are hesitating, please don’t… think seriously about submitting a topic or two. To help you, we’d like to give you some ideas about what makes a submission stand out (and what doesn’t).

• Something Unique… We’re looking for a new spin or twist on an old (or new) topic. If something similar has been done at a previous Summit, think about how you’re doing something different from what’s previously been presented. DevOps topics are always popular, but what new thing are you doing with your source control, your testing, or your build pipeline?
• Failures… Alternatively, is there something you started out to do and at some point, figured out that you it wasn’t going to work the way it was planned? If you’ve had some good lessons learned that you think would benefit others, we’d love to hear about it.
• Broad scope vs. deep scope… If you’ve done a snack “bake-off” and could talk about chips, cookies, and crackers, this session would be attended by folks who prefer chips or cookies or crackers. However, a session that is only about cookies might only be of interest to Rambling Cookie Monsters. If you’re a subject matter expert on chips, though, and can show how to use chips to build a house, that would have that uniqueness factor we’re also looking for.
• Multiple submissions… Multiple submissions on different topics help us select a wide variety of topics. It’s hard to say from year to year what topics will be popular. For example, we had a lot of Git and Pester submissions last year… not so many this year. We’re looking for variety so submit as many ideas as you have.
• Something that wasn’t selected last year… We may have really liked your submission last year and it may have simply been on the bubble. You’re only up against the submissions that we’ve seen for this year, so if you had a submission from last year that you feel passionate about and is still a hot topic, please submit it!
• “Post OnRamp” submissions are welcome… We have a graduated class of OnRamp students from last year who we want to continue learning. Therefore, we’ll be looking for a small number of sessions at this level.

Some additional things we’d like to add:

• We don’t care who you are… If you’re concerned about not being an MVP, haven’t spoken before, or are simply suffering from imposter syndrome, don’t. Every speaker has been a first-time speaker, and we’re specifically looking to introduce some new speakers to the community every year.
• Don’t procrastinate… The CFP closes October 1st, no exceptions. It’s open for two months, which is plenty of time.
• Repeats are iffy… If you have a talk that’s been done at multiple conferences already, or a talk that’s been recorded and is available on YouTube, it probably won’t be selected. We’re looking for new content. However, if you have a talk you’ve given at a user group meeting that was well-received? Please submit it.
• Talk to us… If you’re on the fence about submitting or have a topic you’re thinking about but want to know if there are a bunch of similar topics, please reach out to us at “content [at] powershell [dot] org” and ask. We won’t tell you that we have 17.5 submissions on write-host, but we will say “yeah that’s a really popular topic this year”. (As of today, there aren’t really any topics that are heavily populated, so keep that in mind. And there aren’t any submissions on write-host yet.)

In case you’ve forgotten, here’s a link to the CFP:  https://www.papercall.io/summit2020
Let’s keep the submissions coming and we are looking forward to an AWESOME Summit in 2020!