- Posted At : March 10, 2010 | Posted By : By Tara Kossari
We wanted to thank to everyone who registered during November, December and January. A dollar from each of those registrations was added on our $300 donation, which came out to be a generous gift for a worthy cause.
The Heart of Virginia Foundation is a non-profit foundation formed in response to the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech. They offer charitable and educational opportunities to promote emotional well-being through the arts and to fight the stigma of mental illness.
They are currently looking for volunteers, so if you're in the Leesburg area and want to help out, check out their site!
- Posted At : March 8, 2010 | Posted By : By Tara Kossari
As we finalize topic selection for CFUnited 2010, we are lucky and proud to have had so many quality submissions from great speakers. Topic Selection at CFUnited is quite an exciting process, a real nail-biter! To pick and choose what topics make the cut we relied on guidance from our wise, and much appreciated Advisory Board, including our faithful Track Chairs who oversee each track. Using a sleek spreadsheet within the genius of Stellr Intranet containing all the topics submitted to the Call for Speakers, the board voted on the topics in each track.
The public was asked to assist the process. Given the same spreadsheet the board uses to vote, people put in their two cents. As results came in from the vote, Stellr was able to use them to run a double check on the advisory votes. Also, if there is a discrepancy amongst the advisory votes and the public votes, we would If a topic got few advisory votes but was getting a lot of public votes, we could start a discussion with the board possibly reexamining their choice and giving a topic a second chance. This worked the other way too, examining why topics that had a high number of advisory votes were not popular with the public vote. Thanks to all the public voting, we were provided important leverage among the community voice and the voice of community experts!
There are other things too that come in to play like feedback on surveys from last years' presentations, which is we why we encourage attendees to participate in those. We do read them and we even send them to every speaker. They love it - you should see them go all gaga! They are always so eager to hear attendee comments. Makes you think twice about skipping them, huh?
The submissions for each track are key. We strive for topic relevancy and diversity. We aim to create a balanced event with engaging presenters - true rock stars. The topic selection process at CFUnited is indeed supreme, intricate, thorough and glorious in action. For example, from last week's release of topic, Pete Freitag's "Writing Secure CFML," received highest number of public votes of all the topics and it received a high number of votes from the Advisory Board. (Yay for Pete Freitag!). Another example is our own Elliott Sprehn, known as a good, interesting and reliable speaker. We were able to look at the public votes to see which topics we would like him to speak on. He submitted 3 topics, and the two chosen had the highest amount of votes.
As topic selection slowly comes to its close in 2010, we are pleased with the results and grateful to all who contributed to this thrilling contest. We look forward to completing the selection process and making those announcements. Hip Hip Hooray for all of our bona fide presenters and tasty topics! Woot woot for CFUnited!
