The application deadline for the SAS Global Forum 2015 Junior Professional Award has been extended to February 1! If you have fewer than three years’ experience using SAS in a professional setting, you’ll want to take a closer look at the requirements and apply online.
Junior Professional Program Coordinators Sally Carson and Rich La Valley recently shared survey results from SAS Global Forum 2014 award winners. Many of their comments reflect why this program is so important to recipients, to their organizations and to the SAS community.
Has the knowledge you gained at the conference helped you improve what you can do in your job?
Absolutely, the break-out sessions were directly applicable to my work and within an hour of returning to work I was putting my new knowledge to use by recoding old programs.
Yes! After attending a hands-on Enterprise Guide talk by Marje Fecht, I’ve migrated many of our projects over. My manager loves the new format since it’s so much easier to see the flows and document processes.
In particular, I learned several things about ensemble methods, as well as some of the quick functions that were discussed in Ron Cody’s presentation, which have reduced the length of code needed to write pretty substantially.
Certainly. More confident in my SAS skills, particularly after the hands-on workshops.
What part of the conference did you like best?
I really like all of the sessions on coding efficiency. They were very appropriate to my level, accessible but exposing me to new things.
I think being part of a group really helped make this experience memorable. The award itself gave our cohort a common ground to be friends and together navigate the conference for the first time.
Hands on training and introductions to SAS functionality I had not seen before.
Practical advice on how to improve my programming.
It was great to meet people with different backgrounds who use SAS. I liked bonding with the other Junior Professionals and going to the sessions that were helpful.
What was your biggest take-away from SAS Global Forum 2014?
The proceedings and materials that I brought back with me is a wealth of knowledge that will improve my SAS skills in the future.
The most striking thing I learned was how welcoming and diverse the SAS Users Community is … I haven’t had the chance to be more involved with my local SAS Users group but I am definitely more motivated now.
I learned a lot about SAS as a coding language but also about SAS as a business. I think that from a career-long perspective, the second was as valuable as the first.
Do you have comments or suggestions regarding the award package?
Volunteering was a great experience, and a great way to meet people.
This award is extremely valuable. I am sure I am not speaking only for myself when I say, without the award, I would not have been able to attend the conference.
My biggest recommendation would be promoting this to as many junior people as possible. My company’s SAS User Group sent this along but, to my knowledge, I’m the only person that even applied. I walked away from the conference having a much better understanding of how SAS operates…I left the conference feeling like SAS was a much younger, hipper company than I originally did.
If you have questions, please contact the Junior Professional Program Coordinator.
