I’m here at MWSUG 2013 soaking up the regional experience. After spending a couple of days in Columbus, I’m seeing first-hand how much users care about working with SAS software and about being part of the SAS community. It’s been a great conference so far—-presentations are packed! Walking through the Innovations and Networking Center, I spotted this poster that pretty much says it all.
Speaking of the regional user group experience, I’ve been keeping up with your comments on social media channels after I shared information about SAS strategy for regional users groups. I’m seeing a range of reactions—support, healthy debate and some disappointment over the changes.
I’m also seeing that parts of my previous post were unclear. I apologize for that and would like to clarify a few points.
SAS is not eliminating its support for regional users groups. We’re fully committed to users groups of all shapes and sizes—local, regional, in-house, special interest and international. Each type has value for the SAS user community.
Our customers’ landscape is changing, and SAS is updating its strategy in response to those changes. Specifically, we’re responding to a growing interest in more local, in-house and special interest groups as well as virtual communities. In fact, in the past three years alone, user requests for these types of groups have more than quadrupled.
Our ultimate goal is to reach as many SAS users as possible and to do so in a way that’s cost-effective for users. Achieving that goal means balancing our support across all these areas.
So again you might ask, what’s happening with the regional conferences?
Discussions are still in progress. SAS support teams are meeting with conference leaders to talk about what works well for each region and what kind of continuing support from SAS would be most effective for each individual user community. Any decisions they make will be implemented over a three-year period, starting with the 2014 conferences.
Organizing a SAS user conference of any size takes dedicated volunteers who know the SAS user community. SAS values the unique leadership those volunteers bring to the table. Your passion is one of our greatest assets. We remain committed to volunteer-based leadership, and add our thanks to those in the poster.
We’re always here to answer questions and help you understand how this impacts your individual group. Please let’s keep the dialog going! You can add your comments to this blog or contact us at UGSupport@sas.com
2 Comments
Christina, It was a pleasure to finally get to meet you at the MWSUG conference. From your blog entry, I see that you got to absorb some of that 'tribal' feeling that so many users only get to experience at the multiple-day regional meetings. I've been fortunate to experience at SGF, as well, but for most I would think that can only happen at the regionals. As one of those who always volunteers for numerous tasks at both SGF, the regionals, as well as with my local user group, I'm encouraged by your comment that SAS is not eliminating support for the regionals.
The only point I disagree with is that "the customers' landscape is changing". Expanding, yes, and definitely local meetings are an essential element. And, if users don't have them available, I think that it would benefit SAS to facilitate their creation. But one-day local meetings can never provide the full collection of benefits that the regionals provide. I just raised the same topic with our customer relations' folks at SAS Canada. We have great one-day local meetings across the country but haven't, as yet, had a single regional meeting.
Art . . .
Thanks so much for your comment. Same here! It was a pleasure to finally meet you, along with other users group leaders that I’ve only known by name.
You’re right -- “expanding” might have been a better choice of words. I got to attend the LUG Summit at MWSUG and observed that like you, many of those local users group leaders were just as active in the regional organization. A few may have been involved in in-house groups as well.
I’ll be attending WUSS in November. Hope to see you there! And at MWSUG in Chicago next year.
Christina