OOW 2013 speakers: maximize your selection chances

Oracle OpenWorld 2013 is approaching fast and the call for papers is now open: http://bit.ly/YbEURG (note that it will close on April 12th). Each year the event is growing larger and the paper selection process is becoming more and more competitive: many great submissions but only so many slots to fill! In the end this is for the better as this just raises the overall quality of the conference. It also means that you should pay extra attention when submitting your papers to ensure they get the attention they deserve.

Here are some tips to maximize your chances of selection:

• We want to hear the voice of customers and end users above anything
  (i.e. if you are an Oracle partner or employee, try to co-present with a customer or at least secure their approval to use their name and specifics)
• Focus on a specific problem or project and don't try to cover it all
  (vague and high-level abstracts with an endless laundry list of integrated systems tend to be eliminated first)
• Provide specific details of the customer implementation
  (attendees want to learn something that will help them, not just listen to another fluffy marketing pitch. Integrated specific apps? Make sure to mention them.)
• Provide concrete ROI metrics or other concrete measurement of the impact of the project (productivity, business, etc.)
• Cover either a widespread problem or an innovative one with clear business impact
  (i.e. a clever rocket science project that dealt with an unusual project could make an interesting blog entry but probably not a great OOW session)
• Touch upon one of the following topics that attract a lot of attention these days: 
• Mobile enablement 
• Fusion Applications integration 
• Cloud integration
• Deployment of SOA in virtualized environments (OVM)
• B2B projects, especially replacement of legacy solutions (Sterling, Gentran, etc.)
• Fast Data for innovative marketing or customer experience solutions