| Troy Martin Hughes |
This analysis examines presentations at SAS® user group conferences between 1976 and 2023. It includes presentations referenced on www.LexJansen.com (aka "the LEX") during this timeframe, which are drawn from multiple conferences, including: SAS User Group International (SUGI, may she rest in peace), SAS Global Forum (SGF, may she be revived), SAS Explore, Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS), Midwest SAS Users Group (MWSUG), South Central SAS Users Group (SCSUG), Southeast SAS Users Group (SESUG), Northeast SAS Users Group (NESUG), Pacific Northwest SAS Users Group (PNWSUG), and Pharmaceutical Software Users Group (PharmaSUG). This analysis identifies top contributors, including authors who have presented most abundantly at specific conferences, as well as across all conferences. For example, the SAS superstars and most prolific presenters of all time are ranked and recognized for bringing that big data energy (BDE)—Kirk Paul Lafler, Arthur L. Carpenter, Louise Hadden, Charlie Shipp, and Ronald J. Fehd! Rising stars, who may be new to the conference scene, yet are contributing significantly, are also identified. In addition to quantifying and extolling the contributions of these authors, this analysis aims to assist the leaders of future conferences in identifying key speakers to invite. Threats to data quality are also discussed—the reality of third-party data, as conferences often feed the LEX with raw presentation metadata that either are unstandardized or have patently wrong information (like incorrect author names or missing coauthors). Finally, and perhaps with some irony, Python 3.11.5 (and Pandas 2.1.0) was used exclusively to extract, clean, transform, and analyze all data. |