The 2008 DAMA-NCR/Wilshire Symposium (formerly the Metatopia Conference) will be delivered online in a webcast format.  The conference will be hosted by the National Capital Region Chapter of the Data Management Association (DAMA-NCR) and Wilshire Conferences.

This year's Symposium will be delivered as a concentrated series of webcasts, for both live and on-demand viewing. Numerous presentations will be scheduled each day during the week of November 3-7, 2008. Participants from around the world will be able to receive each webcast as it is being presented, or come back later to view an archived version.DAMA members from around the world will be granted access to the entire online conference at no charge, while non-members will pay a nominal fee.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Leveraging Information Asset Management.” We encourage thought-leaders and practitioners to submit an abstract for a 45-minute presentation on any topic related to this theme including the numerous fundamental data management challenges that must be mastered by stakeholders.

We will be covering topics of interest to both private industry and government organizations at a variety of audience levels including business executive, entry level practitioner, and advanced practitioner.

Please submit abstracts by July 23, 2008. Please review all guidelines below, and then follow the proposal link in the Key Dates section to submit a proposal.

As a guide, key educational themes and topics for 2008 are listed below.

Possible Topic Areas:

• EIM: Enterprise Information Management
• Data services
• MDM: Master Data Management
• Data stewardship & governance
• NIEM: National Information Exchange Model
• The Federal Data Reference Model
• Metadata management
• Data quality
• Master data management
• DOD and Intelligence Community Universal Core Standards
• Data Integration approaches including ETL, EAI, and EII
• Data management metrics
• Net-centric Data Strategy
• Information sharing
• Data Security
• Business Process Modeling
• Federal Data Quality Profile
• Federal Information Sharing Architectures
• Model driven development and model driven architecture
• Data profiling techniques and technologies
• Implementing the ISO 11179 metadata standard
• Business intelligence
• Real-time data warehousing, operational analytics, and data integration
• Emerging technologies in analytics
• Federated identity management
• Federated search
• Health information technology initiatives pertinent to data management
• Semantic technologies and semantic web
• Geospatial Data Management
• Major capabilities enabled by vendor product engineering and advances in any of the above areas

Key Dates and Speaker Deadlines

July 23, 2008 - Deadline for Presentation Proposals to be submitted via the Call for Presentations Form found here:

http://wilshire.skyworld.com/symposium

August 10, 2008 - Target date to notify Speakers as to whether their proposal has been accepted or not.

October 6, 2008 - Deadline for Final Speaker Presentations to be received by Wilshire Conferences (in PowerPoint file format).

October 13-17, 2008 – Speakers must be available for approximately 30 minutes for technical testing and rehearsal.

Presentation Guidelines

Please take note of all the requirements and follow the presentation guidelines carefully.

1. Presentations may be proposed as 45-minute Conference Sessions (followed by 15 minutes of Q&A)
2. If you are unsure of your proposal, you may email us with questions so we can guide you before you make an official submission.
   PLEASE NOTE: We cannot tell you if your proposal will be accepted or not. This would not be fair to the hundreds of other potential speakers who have also submitted proposals.
3. Speakers must be able to meet the minimum technical constraints of a webcast presentation, including being able to present from a location which has a high-speed internet connection, and being able to use the conference delivery platform, which is Microsoft LiveMeeting. We have a production mentor to assist speakers with both the technical and presentation aspects of doing a webcast.
4. Vendor organizations may submit proposals, but please understand that vendor presentations are viewed very cautiously, in light of past experience with sales pitches and commercialism.
5. A short-list of back-up speakers will be prepared from the original presentation submissions. Back-up speakers will be used to fill any last-minute speaker cancellations.

Speaker Presentation Conditions

1. All speakers must agree to provide their presentation to Wilshire Conferences in a standard electronic form PowerPoint is required), no later than October 6, 2008. This is necessary to review the presentation and prepare the broadcast.
2. All speakers must be available for approx 30 minutes for technical testing and rehearsal during the week of October 13-17, 2008. Scheduling of available testing times will have some flexibility during this week.
3. By submitting a proposal, the speaker agrees to the standard copyright and reproduction terms of this event. These terms provide that copyright in original presentation material remains with the speaker, however Wilshire Conferences and DAMA NCR are granted the right to record, reproduce and distribute each presentation in all forms of printed and electronic conference materials, including, but not limited to, the conference CD-ROM, printed attendee notes, the conference web site, and audio and/or video recordings (digital and/or analog), without royalties or fees payable to speaker. Sorry, there are no exceptions to these requirements.
4. By submitting a proposal, speaker agrees that he/she has permission from his/her organization to make the presentation under the terms outlined in this Call for Papers. If you do not have approval at the time you make the proposal, you must indicate this clearly.
5. Speakers do not receive compensation for their presentations.

Questions and Inquiries

All questions and inquiries regarding the Call for Presentations may be sent to us at speaker@wilshireconferences.com.

Wilshire Conferences, Inc. | 300 Corporate Pointe | Suite 515 | Culver City | CA | USA | 90230