Welcome to ODTUG Kscope19!

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Welcome to a new ODTUG Kscope conference planning year! After a much needed hiatus, the team has kicked off the new conference season, and we are super excited about going back to Seattle! The Chihuly Gardens, the Space Needle, Mt. Ranier, Pike Place Market, and the breathtaking waterfront views. And Seattle in summertime—it’s the best time to visit!

Every conference year brings new team members, and I am very excited about this year’s team. I’d like to take a moment to welcome the new folks to the conference committee: Teal Sexton, Gary Adashek, and Chris Barbieri. They will be focusing on the EPM & BI content. In addition, I’d like to welcome back Kevin McGinley and Jorge Rimblas, who did an awesome job last year. You can find pictures and bios of each person on the ODTUG Kscope19 conference committee. For those of you who don’t know, the conference committee works tirelessly all year long (days, nights, and weekends!) to plan the week-long ODTUG Kscope conference. And we're volunteers, which means that at a minimum we’re juggling our day jobs, families, other volunteer work, and personal time. A BIG shout out goes to this fabulous team!

 

OVERVIEW OF ODTUG KSCOPE19

Here are the ODTUG Kscope19 facts that have been revealed to date (as of September 10, 2018):

  • Conference dates: June 23–27, 2019
  • Location: Downtown Seattle, WA
  • Conference venue: Washington State Convention Center
  • Hotel: Sheraton Seattle Hotel
  • Abstract status: We will open them soon!
  • Abstract due date: December 2018 (date to be revealed soon!)
  • Twitter: @odtug
  • Hashtag: #kscope19

 

ABSTRACTS UPDATE

Some of you have been wondering about abstracts and rightly so. In years past, abstracts have opened up right after the previous ODTUG Kscope. However, there is a lot that occurs behind the scenes when we do this. If we don’t get the tracks, subtopics, session tags, and other abstract options accurate up front, we have to go back and make edits to every submitted abstract, which eats into our already busy conference planning season. Therefore, we have decided to hold off opening abstracts until we get these details finalized. This timing should put us right at the end of conference abstract season.

In addition, I’m sure some of you have also been wondering when we’ll be closing abstracts and announcing speakers. Last year we tried something new—we closed abstracts the first week of the new year. Although we liked having the delay, it was hard on the team to condense all of our content activities in such a tight timeframe. Therefore, you will still see a delayed abstract close this year, but we will pull it back into the previous calendar year to see if that lessens the stress. This means that we expect to close abstracts in December and announce accepted speakers in February. #safeharbor

 

THE ODTUG KSCOPE18 SESSION EVALUATION AVERAGE

And one final update! Last year we decided to publish the conference average for all speaker evaluations. We kept it simple and that seemed to work out well. Below, I’m going to publish the overall conference session average rating for ODTUG Kscope18. For the mathematicians in the audience, this number is based on the mean, which is an average of all evaluation scores. This includes all ODTUG Kscope18 sessions Mon-Thurs, including: regular sessions, hands-on labs, vendor sessions, and Thursday deep dive sessions.

And the conference average is…

Drum roll please…

 

4.23!

 

This is higher than ODTUG Kscope17. Our content and speakers continue to raise the bar!

We are looking forward to an amazing conference year. We last visited Seattle five ODTUG Kscopes ago, and it was my personal favorite out of all that I’ve been fortunate enough to attend. My personal goal will be to find a way to make ODTUG Kscope19 even more awesome; the bar has been set high.

We look forward to seeing your abstracts in this coming season! Please save the best for last!

 

Sincerely,

Opal Alapat, ODTUG Kscope19 Conference Chair

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