The following criteria may be considered during the review of submissions:

• Information relevance

• Content expands knowledge

• Examples to support information

• Originality

• Timeliness

• Inclusion of good, solid ideas

• Logical conclusions

• Identification of resources

• Avoidance of product/vendor commercial

• Completeness

• Speaker Qualifications

• Overall submission

Relevance

What are the practical applications of your ideas? Have you included reasoning and documentation to support your conclusions, recommendations and outcomes? Conference attendees prefer presentations focused on outcomes or results. Make the definition and background portions of your presentation brief. Highlight problems encountered, options available, choices made, documented pre- and post-change effects and lessons learned.

Content expands attendees' knowledge

Will your presentation expand knowledge beyond entry-level basics? Most conference participants are elected officials, appointed officials, and seasoned professionals. In general, direct your presentation to an intermediate or advanced audience.

Originality

Does your presentation advance existing ideas or present new ideas? Has this material been presented elsewhere? You might apply proven techniques to new problems, or identify and apply new approaches, techniques or philosophies. Assess the degree to which an application is a new tool. Avoid highlighting a named product or service…focus instead on the general attributes, benefits and drawbacks of a given application, process or tool.

Examples

Do you have an appropriate number of examples? Documenting comparative results convinces participants that your ideas have been tested in the real world.

Timeliness

Will your presentation still be up-to-date and cutting-edge in six to nine months when the conference occurs? Will your topic have implications in the future? How relevant is your topic in the context of pending legislation, regulations and technology?

Inclusion of good, solid insights

What attendees want to learn is the reality versus the hype, the positive and negative attributes, problems encountered but not often discussed, realistic expectations for the operational use and adaptability to a changing environment. They are searching for guidelines and models to simplify or manage their own application or installation.

Logical conclusions

Are your conclusions supported by data? Attendees place a high value on supporting data in assessing the value and applicability of presentations. Include adequate and convincing details.

Identification of outside resources

Have you included sources of information, benchmark data or other examples?

Avoidance of product/vendor commercial

No commercials and/or proprietary information for particular products, services or vendors are permitted.

Completeness of proposal

The quality, completeness and accuracy of the proposal will be considered during the session selection process.

Preferred Speaker Qualifications

Panelists should reflect the diversity of Oklahoma with a north/south, large/small, urban/rural representation when possible.

• Five or more (5+) years of public presentation experience.

• Two or more (2+) years of experience related to working in or presenting on the topic or the idea.

• More than two (2) successful speaking engagements to large audiences at a regional or state level in the past two years.

• Must not pose a conflict of interest with subject/business area or must disclose such information in each speaker bio submitted.

• No commercialism.

To ensure a variety of perspectives, OML’s policy limits the number of times an individual, group, business or organization can speak at a single conference. In addition, each panel should have no more than one panelist per city/county, firm, company or organization (exceptions may apply).

Overall

In the end, you must make your case for the importance of this topic and its relevance to participants.