The North East SAS Users Group Conference (NESUG) will be held November 11-14, in Baltimore, Maryland. I’m psyched to be attending this year, and hope I’ll see you there.
If you’ve never been to a User Group Conference, they are a great way to learn new skills, and connect with other SAS users. There are talks by users, talks by people from SAS, posters, hands-on workshops, a SAS demonstration room, SAS Book By User authors, and much more. The full schedule, with abstracts, is already posted. If you are new to SAS, you we learn an amazing amount. And even if you are a more experienced user, you will pick up a few tips, and leave energized to try out some of the cool stuff you saw.
The full list of presentations I’m excited to see is too long to share, but I’ll mention just one. I missed SAS Global Forum this year. After the meeting, I saw Mike Rhoads won a best-contributed paper award for “Use the Full Power of SAS in Your Function-Style Macros“. If you write macro functions, the methods Mike illustrates in this paper will blow you away. Having missed his talk at SGF, I’m grateful to be able to see him present it at NESUG.
25 is the Silver Anniversary!
NESUG is celebrating its 25th year, and this year the conference is being held in Baltimore’s beautiful Inner Harbor, which I think of as the premier NESUG location. The Inner Harbor is full of restaurants, museums, and shopping. The hotel is an easy cab ride from Baltimore-Washington International airport, and when I lived in DC, I was always a fan of cheap SouthWest Airlines flights to BWI.
If you do attend, I would strongly encourage you to consider registering for a volunteer activity. NESUG is completely run by volunteers. Helping out is a great way to meet people. Volunteering can mean as little as sitting at a registration desk for a couple hours, or helping to time talks.
Talk BI to me
If you want to chat about BI stuff, or about any suggestions you have for good blog posts, please grab me any time you see me. I’ll be presenting a Coders’ Corner talk about a data validation macro Tuesday morning. I’ll also be volunteering for a couple shifts as a “code doctor” in the Code Clinic (we get white lab coats and laptops running SAS, anyone can bring questions from home). I’m one of the less illustrious code doctors, but you should know that seeing a code doctor is a great opportunity to ask for one-on-one advice from some famous SAS minds. I’m partnered with Ron Cody for one session, so you can bet if nobody comes with questions, I’ll be talking his ear off!
Hope to see you in Baltimore!
Quentin McMullen is a regular contributor to the BI-Notes blog.
