Section Descriptions

This year's conference sections will span the range of tasks that SAS performs and offer presenters and attendees a variety of presentation formats.

For more information, please refer to the Leadership Team for each section's contact information.

Administration & Support The Administration and Support section includes papers about how you or your organization helps SAS be all that it can be. Topics such as hiring, training, and retaining SAS programmers interest many attendees. For 2008, in addition to the traditional topics, the Administration and Support section of NESUG is recruiting papers for a special session on project management. Many systems today incorporate a variety of software, including but not limited to SAS. It takes careful coordination to build pieces of the eventual system that can be developed in parallel, and will work together when completed. We are seeking papers on successful (or unsuccessful) use of the System Development Life Cycle or other IT project management techniques, papers on testing strategies, and papers that describe lessons learned about project management from real-life experience. And if you are a consultant with experiences to share, ask about our plans for a panel discussion covering what it takes to succeed in the consulting world
Christopher Bost MDRC	Judy Loren Health Dialog Analytic Solutions
Back to top And Now Presenting ... There are many elegant and creative ways in which we can use SAS to gather and display our data. These methods should be driven by the needs of the end user. As such, we may wish to see data summarized as dashboards for decision-making, colorful graphs for data analysis, or web-based applications for global internet or intranet sharing. In this section we plan to present numerous ways to make data more attractive and useful without losing its underlying scientific value. We are looking for presentations for beginners as well as the latest developments in SAS/GRAPH, report optimization using various standard procedures (e.g., REPORT, TABULATE, PRINT), and the ins and outs of ODS. Finally, we look to delve into the latest methods to output data using SAS web publishing, exporting to Microsoft Office and PDF, and even geographical mapping.
John Cohen AstraZeneca LP	Karen LaPann ViroPharma

Problem solved, project goal achieved, real-life challenge met, productivity boosted, the tedium of repetitive tasks avoided -- all with the help of those handy SAS features or products. In this section, we share stories about the development and implementation of solutions, whether they are small stories (the DO loop that saved 3 days of typing) or large elaborate stories (the tool that generated the tables, built the slides, and conducted the presentation - all while you are eating lunch). These real-life tales should be -- and will be -- celebrated. Share strategies and techniques for the development of programs, systems, utilities, interfaces or other productivity tools that applied SAS as part of the solution.

While papers in other sections may focus on specific programming steps, or individual tools or aspects of the SAS language, Applications Big and Small will emphasize the use of SAS to accomplish practical tasks. For example, a problem addressed here may show the integration of techniques for importing data, analysis, and presenting results in a report.

Are you a savvy SAS user? Whether you are a novice, a seasoned programmer or somewhere in between, we're looking for your tips, tricks or novel ways of solving programming problems.

So - let's have some fun! Coders' Corner presentations are short, sweet and "to the point" talks that cover useful nuggets of programming. This is the perfect section to share that technique that makes your job easier ... or more fun! Coders' Corner papers should be relatively short and the presentations will typically be 10 minutes in length. Coders' Corner is a great place to share your knowledge and present your ideas in a shorter and less format than in other NESUG sections

A proficient user of the SAS system must first master the basics. The Foundations and Fundamentals section is devoted to tutorial-style presentations that cover the building blocks within individual SAS components. From Base SAS to Enterprise Guide, Macros to ODS, functions to formats, the Foundations and Fundamentals papers review the essentials. Presentations can cover such topics as SAS reporting procedures, data manipulation, programming efficiencies and best practices. The goals will be to introduce core features and provide essential review. We will target papers that focus specifically on new users of the SAS system, as well as tutorials designed for experienced users who are moving into new or unfamiliar areas within the SAS environment.

Hands-On Workshops allow attendees to reinforce their understanding of presentation content by accompanying the instructor on a workshop computer. Workshop topics may include, but are not limited to presentations on established or new SAS techniques, especially exploring new features in SAS9. Hands-On Workshops are designed to accommodate attendees at both the beginning and intermediate levels and should run for about 90 minutes, enough time to offer some depth of coverage on the presentation topic. Computers will be provided for the attendees to follow the instructor's examples and to run them on their own.

Jonas Bilenas
JP Morgan Chase Bank

Bob Schechter
Octagon Research Solutions, Inc.

Pharmaceuticals, Health Care, and Life Sciences

In the Pharmaceutical world, SAS Software has found a home in every phase of the Drug Development Life Cycle. SAS also services the diverse Health Care industries with an ever expanding menu of targeted solutions and data mining tools. But even as SAS has increased its offerings of vertical market products and services, Base SAS Software has remained a robust, invaluable component within analytical processes throughout the business of the Life Sciences. Today, both researchers and decision makers are likely to use SAS technologies wherever there is need to shape data into answers.

This section is devoted to presentations describing the role SAS plays among the best practices and techniques within the Pharmaceutical, Health Care and Life Sciences industries. Topics may include all facets of clinical trial data management such as data transformations, CDISC derivations, edit checks, and summary reporting. Also invited are papers that describe the data mining of claims, quality of care analysis, the computational processes of insurance companies and the design of performance metrics. Other examples might include overviews of existing health care SAS applications, guides to building a company wide macro library for data management, or reports from the frontiers of ODS and XML that Pharmaceutical or HMO technologists will find of interest. Our scope may be wide ranging, but presentations will find common ground as descriptions of problem solving while using SAS software within the Life Science Industries as well as related research.

Emmy Pahmer

MDS Pharma Services

Michael Tomb

Informatica ECS, Inc.

So you've got those key SAS building blocks under your belt? Ready to take your SAS toolkit to the next level? Presentations in this section will allow you to build on your existing SAS skills and learn new techniques and tools - to go beyond the basics! Topics can include working with Microsoft products such as Excel, using ODS with DATA steps, advanced DATA step manipulation or SQL techniques, taking advantage of parallel processors, hashing, macros, and working with external databases of various flavors and more. Presentations focusing on efficiency techniques for large datasets or the ins and outs of using SAS across different platforms could be presented along with information on SAS 9.2. So join us to expand your SAS knowledge beyond the basics.

In the Posters section, the vehicle of communication is a hard-copy display designed to catch viewers’ fancy and provide a visually pleasing and informative message. Presenters can offer fairly complex visual concepts for study, and viewers can discuss these concepts without disturbing the flow of a presentation. Viewers will have the opportunity to examine the material at their own pace and revisit it a number of times during the conference, as these displays will be on view throughout the conference from Sunday afternoon through Wednesday morning. In addition, presenters will be available at their displays for an hour during the conference to explain their work and answer questions.

The subject matter of poster presentations is varied and that is one thing that makes a tour of them so interesting. Some displays may be enhanced with computer demonstrations of applications and multimedia such as video, with the proviso that the equipment and security are the presenter's responsibility. Viewers will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite posters and results will be posted on Wednesday. Three “People’s Choice” awards will be presented.

The Statistics and Analysis section will cover a wide range of uses of SAS for data analysis, including modeling, pattern recognition, forecasting, quality improvement and optimization. Papers can either describe the use of SAS-provided procedures and products or present user-crafted implementations built with the DATA step, the IML procedure, SAS/GRAPH, or similar tools. Authors can either present fundamental statistical methods or report on statistical applications in particular disciplines, industries, or organizational functions. In addition, we are particularly interested in papers that focus on applications of some of the newer procedures in SAS/STAT, such as those for survey data analysis (e.g., SURVEYREG or SURVEYLOGISTIC), linear models (e.g., GLIMMIX, GLMSELECT, or QUANTREG), and Bayesian analysis (BGENMOD, BLIFEREG, or BPHREG), as well as ODS Statistical Graphics. Papers that present uses of SAS Business Intelligence (BI) software for analytic goals are also welcome here.

2008 Conference

Conference Content

Section Descriptions