My experiences volunteering at SAS Global Forum

[ptimusk]

In my off hours I volunteer a lot in my community. When I was looking for work in middle life, I decided to volunteer more, as a part of my job search and job readiness strategy. Eventually a few community groups became the places where I would volunteer for decades. Volunteering is an exchanges of values and not really a direct way to a job but often like networking volunteering exposes one to job openings or needs of any given organization.

Volunteering at SAS Global Forum in 2012 broke the ice for sitting at the first lunch with senior long time users. The more of the long time users I meet the more the story of SAS becomes known to me in a general way. I also learn more programming details this way.

By being assigned as a volunteer to one presentation room for an afternoon or an hour, one forces one self to settle one's agenda to hear the papers in that room. If you are like me with may be a breadth not depth of statistics knowledge you can end up learning something from any SAS Global Forum paper, even if you would not have chosen to attend that particular session.

I end up exchanging my service helping the other users organize the conference for a deeper understanding of the users behind SAS and of course the SAS software and the SAS software subject domains like statistics.

That is my experience so far.

[jwaller]

If anyone wants to volunteer to help in a morning or afternoon time block you can sign up to volunteer using the Volunteer Sign Up found on the SASGF Volunteer page.  Volunteering is a great way to meet presenters, learn something from their presentations, and help out the conference all in one.  I started out as a room coordinator (then called a session coordinator) way back when and have volunteered in many capacities over the years for SAS User conferences.  We would love for everyone to get involved!

[Quentin]

If I volunteer as a room coordinator, which seems to be the only role on the volunteer site, does that mean that I'm volunteering to step up to the microphone and introduce speakers and manage them (anxiety rises as I type), or is there an opportunity to volunteer as a lower-level room helper somehow (holding timer cards, or helping with microphones, or doing anything except standing in front of a large group of people and opening my mouth)?

[Quentin]

Sorry, I see the answer to my question.  Room Coordinator does not necessarily mean introducer:

http://www.sas.com/en_us/events/sas-global-forum/sas-global-forum-2016/program/volunteer.html

Room coordinators help the lead room coordinator with speaker introductions, timing the presentations, transitions between speakers, making sure presentations are showing on the projection screen, and enforcing room capacity control.

[jwaller]

You can definitely time a presentation rather than introduce. We don't want to raise anyone's anxiety level and only want our volunteers to do what they are go fortune doing. I hope this helps! And please do volunteer if you feel you can help in this way.