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With jut two days to go until Ascend 2022 Call for Presentations closes, I want to share 22 tips for submitting your session proposal. Over the years, I have been lucky to present at OATUG and Oracle OpenWorld conferences. While there is no guarantee that following these tips will ensure a session acceptance, I hope it will make your proposal a compelling one.  These tips are my own perspective and are not endorsed by OATUG. The following tips should motivate you to submit a presentation proposal today:

1. Be original – A topic presented at a previous conference rarely gets selected unless it was a highly rate encore presentation
2. Avoid acronyms – Don’t keep the audience guessing with acronyms in the title or abstract. For example, “ATP” can mean “Available to Promise” or “Autonomous Transaction Processing”
3. First impression matters – Your session title and first sentence of the abstract should excite the attendee to read further.
4. Use all available real estate wisely – At first an 800-character abstract seems a lot. Don’t meander and lose your audience midway. Make the sentences short and impactful.
5. Share How To’s – Don’t copy from the implementation manual. Focus on practical steps that attendees can use at work.
6. Case studies are welcome – Everyone loves a feel good story of overcoming adversity (e.g. bugs and implementation challenges) and real-life stories from the implementation trenches.
7. Learning objectives are important – Attendees often read the session objectives and decide whether to attend a session or not. Same applies for reviewers who shortlist proposals for presentation.
8. Abstract and learning objectives should be easy to understand – Not all attendees understand the jargons and technical elements. Save those surprises for the actual presentation content. Abstracts and learning objectives need to be easy to understand at all levels of expertise from novice to experts.
9. Follow guidance on character limits – The online submission form will truncate content beyond the character limits. Don’t keep your audience hanging with incomplete title or sentences for the abstract and learning objectives.
10. Do spelling and grammar check – Copy your content on a MS Word document and check for spelling and grammar. Don’t leave it to OATUG volunteers to fix them.
11. Limit discussing custom solutions – Custom solutions are often specific to your organization or business process and difficult for the audience to relate to and replicate.
12. Leave third party solutions to vendors – OATUG has Vendor Awareness Sessions (VAS) and other opportunities at the conference for showcasing third party solutions.
13. Don’t use company name on the title or abstracts – Limit the PR to the actual presentation. For the presentation, you can have a slide talking about your company.
14. Add your co-presenters – Add co-presenters and share the limelight especially if you are doing a joint presentation with a client or user company
15. Select the correct education track – Don’t let your proposal get lost. I have seen a database upgrade topic submitted for professional growth track. Who am I to argue on that!
16. Select the correct smart track – It helps the audience to know a bit more about the topic you are planning to present.
17. Select correct session type and target audience – Whether you will be discussing more functional and technical topic shapes your target audience. Avoid panel discussions and meet the experts getting lost among the lecture proposals.
18. Select presenter type – Audiences look forward to presentations from users. After all we are a users group.
19. Don’t be a mystery person – There is a 1000-character bio to introduce yourself to the audience. Let the world know who you are.
20. Upload your photo – You never know when you will feature on the conference materials and become almost famous.
21. Every information you provide matters – Your speaking history or Oracle ACE status may influence the audience to attend one session over another.
22. Submit early and often – Submit more than one proposal to increase your chances for selection. OATUG will draw on these proposals for other educational programs throughout 2022, so don't hold back!

About the author:
Mohan Dutt works at Equinix, an OATUG user member, in the role of IT Director of Finance Shared Services. An Oracle ACE Alumni,  he has been presenting for the last 20 years. He has hosted 80 sessions at OATUG and Oracle OpenWorld conferences worldwide from 2001 to 2021. He is a long serving volunteer at OATUG and currently serves as the Chair of OATUG Education Committee and on OATUG Board of Directors.