Getting Involved in the SAS Community: How and Why

Why?

Are you kidding me?

If you are a programmer, analyst, statistician, professor or student who uses SAS this is an opportunity to get to know your people and to get known.

I’m in Dallas for the SAS Global Forum, which I try to attend whenever I can. Yes, I could watch videos on the Internet, read books, read web pages, but I often don’t because I have a to-do list a mile long.

By presenting at the conference, I have to review what I am doing in teaching with SAS Studio and why.

SHAMELESS PLUG: My session on Preparing Students for the Real World with SAS Studio is a good one for both anyone who teaches with SAS and for anyone who is new to the SAS world and wants a good introductory session.

Since I am at the conference, I have a little bit of downtime to look into SAS resources. My new favorite is SAS communities. It’s a combination forum and free library. I must have looked into it at some point, because I had an account, but it seems to be more active now. I even submitted an article and poked around in the forum.

Then, of course, there are all of the sessions that I will attend, conversations  I will have with people, books I will hear about and buy, to read on the plane ride home.

It’s a week of learning.

But , but, you stutter like a motor boat, it’s expensive and far away. I can’t afford it. Besides, I would feel uncomfortable presenting at the same conference with all of those people who wrote the books on SAS (literally).

The expensive part I get. The not feeling like you could present at the same conference part is just silly, so I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.

If travel and cost is an issue, present at your local conference. The call for papers for the Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) is open. Do it now!

It is painless. You submit a 300-word abstract. You can submit a working draft of the paper at the same time. That’s not mandatory but it improves your chances.

There is even a mentoring program where old people (like me), will help you revise your program and get ready to present.

Writing and presenting the paper will force you to think about what you are doing and why. You will likely make some contacts of people who will be potential employers, collaborators or drinking buddies.

What are you waiting for? A personal invitation?

Fine! Here you go.

 

Need a topic? Here are 10 I would like to see

1. The 25 functions I use most.
2. Uses of PROC FORMAT .
3. Multinomial logistic regression.
4. The many facets of PROC FREQ.
5. Factor analysis
6. SAS for basic biostatistics
7. Macro for data cleaning
8. Model selection procedures
9. Mixed models vs PROC GLM
10. SAS Graphs without SAS/Graph (because SAS/Graph appears to be written in Klingon)

My point is that if I sat here and thought of 10 off the top of my head after two glasses of Chardonnay and half a glass of the champagne someone who will remain nameless bought at Costco and brought here from a state in the WUSS region, then I’ll bet you could come up with something really awesome stone-cold sober and given more than 60 seconds.

Let’s recap what we have learned here, shall we?

• Join SAS communities,
• Attend conferences, whether national or global,
• Don’t be a wallflower – present!
• Texas steak and wine is a good combination (not particularly related to SAS but true nonetheless)