Shouldn't the forum have a meetings community?

[art297]

One thing I've never done on this forum is announce dates and agendas for my local user group meetings.  I'm president of the Toronto usergroup and we've always used sasCommunity.org, SAS-L, LinkedIn, Facebook and emails to announce our meetings, but I think that they should also be announced here.

What does everyone think about having a meetings community where one could announce their user group meetings and anyone interested could find out about such meetings?

[FriedEgg]

Would be nice to have a place for more generalized chat as well, could be a shared place for these types of not necessarily off-topic postings that don't really have a place currently.

[art297]

I agree with your idea and will add a third one that I mentioned in a feedback post quite a while ago: while the upfront page talks about posting one's success stories, there isn't a community for such posts.

Renee, is there a chance we can get three communities added?  Namely:

Meeting Announcements

General Discussion

Success Stories

Anyone have any related thoughts?

[reneeharper]

All,

About Success Stories as a discussion group....  Would you want to see all of the successes in one discussion group, or would you like to see them in the appropriate forum with a tag or category of success_story?  For example, if you just launched a great new application all written with Enterprise Guide and Web Report Studio, would you post your story to the EG forum with a tag of success_story or would you post it to a Success Story space with a tag of Enterprise_Guide?

-Renee

[KimLeBouton]

I agree with Art.

If anyone is reading this from the Los Angeles area and doesn't know about our yearly meeting called SAS LA Forum yyyy hosted by Los Angeles Basin SAS User Group. see labsug.org.  It is September 22, 2011 at USC.  Registration is now open.

Kim LeBouton

[JimLoughlin]

Kim,

I used to get emails about upcoming LA Basin User Group meetings but I didn't get one regarding this meeting.  Figuring I got dropped from the email list, I went to the  LA Basin User Group webstie to resign up, but couldn't find anywhere to sign up the email list.  How can I get back on the email list?

[art297]

James,

While I know that Kim will answer your question, your post is precisely why I'd like to be able to post such announcements here.  So many people who could/would come to meetings, welcome email invites, etc., have gotten out of the loop over the years .. or are new and simply don't even know that such a loop exists.

In the case of TASS it might force us to find a new venue, as we already get between 150 to 200 people at each of our 4 meetings each year.  However, I can definitely think of worse problems.

All SAS users, in my opinion, have the right to know what is available and I think that enough of those users are now using this forum to make it imperative that we provide such information here.

BTW, the next Toronto Area SAS Society (TASS) meeting will be held at the Toronto SAS Canada office on King Street East and the agenda and signup sheet (where one can not only sign up, but also request to get email notifications) is at: http://torsas.ca/attachments/File/09162011/TASSAgenda2.pdf

The meeting promises to be an exciting one as it includes two award winning SGF papers, as well as at least one that I am hoping will also be a future award winner (i.e., mine!).

Art

[KimLeBouton]

Mea culpa to Art for taking this discussion on to a different topic…

Hey Jim,

Concerning email blasts for those that have never attended our yearly meeting, make sure that you have your Profile on support.sas.com choosing SAS Users Group under the Interest tab.  This is the same Profile that allows you use to write on these forums.  SAS produces the email blast and uses their database.

For those that have attended our meeting since 2007, we do an email blast from our registration tool.  We’ve tried several times to reach out to our past attendees from 2003 to 2006 that aren’t reflected in the above database, but we get many email bounces.

As I’ve suggested to meeting attendees, place a watch on our sascommunity.org/ Los_Angeles_Basin_SAS_Users_Group article.  It is the first place that I start to edit as a meeting begins to take shape.  Like many local user groups, we are always in search of free space.  When we find it, the meeting takes shape in usually less than three months, which includes finding speakers, website updates, registration system updates and email blasts from SAS.  We also have a linkedin and facebook group.

Hope you can attend,

Kim

[JimLoughlin]

Kim-

My SAS profile is up-to-date and I do have SAS Users Group checked.  I do get email blasts SGF, WUSS, etc.  Just didn't get one for LA Basin this time. 

I'll do as you suggested and put a watch on sascommunity.org/ Los_Angeles_Basin_SAS_Users_Group.

Jim

[KimLeBouton]

Weird. 

The email blast to past attendees went out on 8-18-11 from events@regonline.com and the SAS email blast went out on the 31st from ugsupport@sas.com.  I've directed my SAS liaison to this public discussion.

Take care,

Kim

PS, WUSS also has email blast sent by SAS, but I also believe they send out an email blast with their own attendance data too.

[art297]

Kim,

Our (Toronto's) email blast is also done by SAS and, if one is sent a different blast too close to ours, they too never receive ours.  It would be nice if the profile let people choose for themselves whether they want to be skipped because of close blastings.

The alternative, of course, is also to use one's own mailing list, but that could easily make for overkill and defeat the purpose.

Art

[reneeharper]

I just created a poll to collect information about what you might want to see as a new discussion topic.  You can vote and comment at the right of this community space or you can view the poll now. Note that you can vote for only one item, so be sure to vote for the thing you think is the most needed.  If you would like to offer suggestions other than your one vote, use the comment section associated with the poll.  If you want to suggest a topic not included in the poll, use the Other voting option, then describe your other in the comments section.

[art297]

Of course this brings up another matter.  Some folks only look at certain forums, thus may never even see that they've been asked to vote.  You may have to blast it onto all of the forums.