I found volunteering as a room coordinator gave me an inside view of the presenters and I was able to meet many long time SAS users. I recommend volunteering to help you break the ice. ... View more

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. ... View more