Subtitle: Never leave prize draw cards out for cleaners to see!
Congratulations to Igor Khorlo from Syneos Health, who won a copy of my latest book, “SAS Programming and Data Visualization Techniques”. Thank you also to all the SAS Forum UK 2018 attendees who entered the book prize draw, but didn’t win this time. I hope you will try again at another conference where I’ll be holding a book prize draw in the future.
Unfortunately, I have a confession to make. I presented “The Art of Defensive Programming: Coping with Unseen Data” on the 1st day at this conference, telling my unexpectedly large audience that I was running a free prize draw for my latest book. After my presentation I actually saw a queue of attendees filling in the prize draw entry cards and putting them in the bag. Regrettably, I left that bag at the SAS Analytics Hub stand overnight, and on the 2nd day it was gone, so everyone’s entry card from the 1st day had been thrown away by the cleaners!! I tried to tell as many attendees as I could on the 2nd day to re-enter the draw, but many of the original entries were lost, so I’m pleased that Igor did re-enter the draw, but sorry that many who entered on the 1st day were not able to win. I will try to learn from this in the future!
As far as the conference as a whole was concerned, it was a success for me:
- Paul Kent’s keynote presentation “Using SAS in the best possible way, driving intelligence, putting it in to practice and gaining competitive advantage” was a great start to the 1st day.
- England beating Tunisia in the World Cup, with the England and Tunisia themed food, was a great way to end that day.
- SAS UK are always very welcoming at their events, and this conference was no exception.
- My only concern would be that the Vox Conference Centre may be too small for the 2019 event, but only if the attendees continue to grow.
