The Planets and stars aligned; While visiting family near Wellington and our monthly team meeting was on the same week, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the SUNZ National conference held at the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington.
For this short post I am not going to write about the presentations (slides can be found on the SUNZ website), or the queues to the food – Other OptimalBI staff who attended will do that.
I am a SAS administrator, and when I attend these types of conferences, I don’t expect to see too much about the back end of SAS or presentations targeted to SAS Admins, however I still try to attend when I can for the following reasons:

What direction is SAS taking?

Knowing where SAS is taking its products, can help have those future planning discussions with customers (or colleagues), or where to direct training.  For example, for the last year or so Viya is being pushed by SAS and starting to be picked up by several sites in New Zealand, in my case it makes sense to focus and develop skills in this area.

What is the NZ SAS user base using SAS for?

Sometimes when you’re working in your own bubble, you don’t get to see all the new and cool things that are and can be done. Can I help others apply these new techniques?

Networking (drinks)

Of course, it is always good to catch up with old colleagues and talk about new opportunities.

Well I did say this was a short post, but I think the above are reason enough to attend SUNZ conferences, not only that you do get to see some pretty informative and engaging presentations, and the lunch isn’t too bad either (after having to queue ???? )
You learn something everyday,
Barry, Preventor of Chaos.

The Matariki star cluster image is from Te Papa.  You can find out more about Matariki here.