SOUTHEAST SAS USER GROUP CONFERENCE

Academic Sections

The Call for Papers (CFP) for SESUG 2021 is now closed.

1. Most presentations are scheduled for 20-minutes. Presenters can request a longer duration of 50-minutes or shorter for 10-minutes when submitting a proposal. For the 2021 conference, 10-minute presentations across all sections are an alternative to the Coder's Corner section from past conferences.

Academic Section Details

Business Intelligence/Visualization

Co-Chairs: Merry Rabb and Lesa Caves

Organizations would like to move beyond standard business intelligence (BI) to embrace visual, self-directed BI and advanced analytics. This section invites presentations that explore how we can utilize BI approaches in machine learning, automated decision processes, knowledge representation, evolving computation algorithms, and other subfields related to BI to drive quality improvements and increased performance. Presentations may explore techniques for creating graphs and tools for effective data visualization and demonstrate how to apply new technology to understand and communicate data and results effectively to people of every technical level.

Open Analytics

Co-Chairs: Merry Rabb and Lesa Caves

Open Analytics section will offer a variety of papers on topics leveraging open-source applications in conjunction with or separately from SAS applications. Open-Source software has become popular for data visualization, analytics, and data manipulation and management. As SAS states, "As we think about the entire analytics life cycle, it's important to consider data preparation, deployment, performance, scalability and governance, in addition to algorithms. Within that cycle, there's a role for open source and commercial analytics.". Presentation topics that demonstrate clear benefit to the SAS user community may include, but are not limited to: integrating open source software with SAS, scaling open source models to the enterprise, accomplishing specific tasks using open source software, developing and solving smaller scale projects with open source software, balancing user needs in an open analytics ecosystem, providing opportunities for open source users to learn SAS, managing diverse analytics assets and development tools. This section welcomes topics which include but are not limited to the following technologies: SAS Viya, Saps, R, Python, OpenStreetMap, Lua, Groovy, Google Analytics, Google Maps, RESTful web services, Apache/Hadoop, HDFS, Spark, Jupiter as an IDE.

Statistics and Data Analysis

Co-Chairs: Mel Alexander and Abbas Tavakoli

Statistics and Data Analysis papers address ways of transforming raw data into useful information that uncover important relationships and patterns in data to help gain insights for effective, data-driven decision making. Papers do not need to present new statistical methods, although such topics are always welcome. Presentations are sought that involve the application of methods that many users of SAS statistics may not commonly see, such as methods for categorical, longitudinal, or censored data; ways to avoid the misuse and abuse of p-values for significance testing; implementation of advanced analytics for data science. Methods to facilitate analysis of very large data arrays, such as those that result from genetic studies or national surveys are also sought for this section. Topics in this section should be of interest to a broad spectrum of SAS practitioners including analysts, developers, statisticians, data scientists, and DATA step programmers.

E-Posters

Co-Chairs: Kelly Smith and Jason Brinkley

E-Posters are focused on topics that demonstrate innovative techniques and practical experiences. Topics cover a variety of areas such as SAS® fundamentals, statistics, business intelligence, medical research, data mining, survey and panel results, social networking, and industry applications for the pharmaceutical, finance, banking, education, environmental and entertainment industries. E-Posters will be displayed electronically on a wide screen monitor and will be available throughout the conference to allow attendees to view the E-Poster at their own pace. They are an ideal way of presenting ideas and information in a less formal atmosphere. While there is not a formal presentation format, there will be allotted time to meet authors to discuss their E-posters with conference attendees. In addition, a corresponding paper based upon the poster will be published in the conference proceedings.

Education/Institutional Research

Co-Chairs: DeDe Schreiber-Gregory and Rachel Straney

Education/Institutional Research papers focus on using the SAS® System to find solutions for reporting and analysis within the education community. Presentations will demonstrate techniques, best practices, and solutions for data needs in primary, secondary, and postsecondary education. Topics may include but are not limited to school systems evaluation; integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) reporting; admissions data management; forecasting enrollment, retention, and graduation; standardized testing metrics.

Finance/Insurance/Real Estate

Co-Chairs: Andrea Lewton and Darryl Putnam

We are looking for SAS users in the financial services and insurance sector to discuss the important issues facing our industry. Share your experiences with others in your peer group highlighting how SAS was able to deliver timely and accurate results within your organization. We strongly encourage first time presenters to step forward to share their insights. Chances are, if you have encountered a challenge you could solve with SAS, many others have or will find that same challenge and could benefit from your experiences. We are interested in a broad range of subjects specific to financial services and insurance: regulatory reporting; anti-money laundering and fraud detection; risk analysis; predicative modeling; forecasting; analyzing complex assets and their values; and customer relationship management are just a sampling of the available subject areas - feel free to propose your own!

Government

Co-Chairs: Andrea Lewton and Darryl Putnam

Government papers will focus on using the SAS System to help government agencies apply analytics to the delivery of quality services while mitigating common budgetary and human resource constraints on resources. Presentations will demonstrate techniques, best practices, and solutions for data needs in the local, municipal, state, and federal government space. Topics may include but are not limited to taxpayer funding, budgeting, and finance management; defense contracting; tax revenue and waste reduction oversight; public protection and safety; internal and external regulatory and policy compliance.

Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals

Co-Chairs: DeDe Schreiber-Gregory and Rachel Straney

Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals papers will focus on using the SAS^® System to provide quality outcomes in health and human services. Presentations will demonstrate techniques, best practices, and solutions for data needs in the pharmaceutical, human services, and healthcare fields. Topics may include but are not limited to patient safety and personal healthcare satisfaction; hospital readmission rates; medical and pharmaceutical intervention effectiveness; clinical trial evaluation and theory; injury and disease prevention; epidemiological, environmental, socioeconomic, and genomic studies; healthcare costs/delivery and insurance premiums.

Data Management and Big Data

Co-Chairs: Louise Hadden and Richann Watson

Data Management and Big Data encompasses data manipulation, orchestration and integration which have been mainstays of SAS^® software since its inception. This section intends to highlight both the capabilities of traditional Base SAS in supporting data stewardship, data access, and best practices as well as new SAS technologies and capabilities including SAS Data Quality, SAS Data Flux, SAS Data Governance, SAS Master Data Management, and SAS Data Federation that help leverage big data, providing helpful insights and lessons learned along the way.

Planning and Administration

Co-Chairs: Louise Hadden and Richann Watson

Planning and Data Architecture includes SAS® administration which has become a vital and increasingly important aspect of SAS use, SAS installations and access methods. This section intends to support SAS administrators as an integral part of the SAS community with sessions on hardware and software infrastructure, deployment and configuration, migration, supporting multiple SAS solutions, management of SAS environments, access and security concerns, and operating SAS environments in the public cloud. Sessions in this section will be an opportunity for those supporting SAS users to share experiences, best practices, techniques, and resources for working efficiently and effectively in the SAS administration and support community.

Know Your SAS^®: Advanced Techniques

Co-Chairs: Nat Wooding and Barbara Okerson

Know Your SAS^®: Advanced Techniques provides instructional content for intermediate and advanced SAS users. These presentations will help advanced programmers implement enhanced techniques to build on the power and flexibility afforded by SAS software. Programming topics across all fields and industries are encouraged and welcome. Subject matter will include advanced SAS programming topics such as ODS, the SAS macro facility, sophisticated and efficient PROC and DATA step programming solutions including PROC DS2, SAS Enterprise Guide functionality, Integration with third-party software and databases, innovative application development and data integration, reporting and analytics solutions. Although these are advanced techniques, care should be taken to clearly explain the problem you are solving so it is easy to understand.

Know Your SAS^®: Foundations

Co-Chairs: Nat Wooding and Barbara Okerson

Know Your SAS^®: Foundations is primarily intended for programmers new to SAS and includes topics essential for building the knowledge and capacity of beginner SAS users. Appropriate topics include SAS programming fundamentals, SAS program design, basic SAS procedures, and SAS debugging techniques. The presentations will provide beginning programmers with a greater understanding of SAS coding procedures, rules, and troubleshooting. Programming topics across all fields and industries are encouraged and welcome.

Reporting and Graphics

Co-Chairs: Ethan Ritchie and Brian Varney

Reporting and Graphics section invites presentations that demonstrate unique and innovative ways to visualize data and output. SAS^® provides many tools for visualizing and reporting data and results including Visual Analytics, SAS/Graph, SAS SG procedures, DSGI, and JMP^®. Presentation topics include but are not limited to (a) SAS graphics procedures, styles, templates, Output Delivery System (ODS) and Graphics Template Language (GTL); (b) Customized reports, dashboards, scorecards, graphs, and maps; (c) SAS Visual Analytics; (d) JMP applications; and (e) SAS and/or JMP integration with Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, R, Python, MATLAB, Tableau and TIBCO Spotfire.

Soft Skills aren't Soft

Co-Chairs: Brian Varney and Jason Brinkley

It is easy to fall prey to the notion that if someone has the technical skills to work on a project team, the team, project, or even they will succeed. There are so many other skills that determine whether success will happen. This section will focus on the skills that fall outside of the technical skills it takes to succeed at a job and as part of a project team. Skills covered in this section include but will not be limited to:

• Communication & Listening
• Resourcefulness
• Attitude
• Risk Assessment
• Analytics Leadership
• Followership
• Staff Leadership
• Time Management
• Organization
• Thinking Outside the Box

We welcome submissions that are focused at both the individual level (personal career growth) as well as submissions that look at group management (team focus or culture change).

Tutorials

Co-Chairs: Richann Watson and Lesa Caves

Conference Tutorials offer the bonus of additional educational experiences for SESUG Conference attendees. We have talented, recognized, and experienced instructors prepared to share their knowledge in these 4-hour sessions. The tutorials cover a wide variety of topics and skill levels, which appeal to everyone interested in exceptional in-depth training. Please note that tutorials are an extra fee event at SESUG. If you are an experienced instructor and would like to be considered for providing a tutorial, please be sure visit our tutorials page for more details.