2026 Conference Series

In order of attendance, these are the conferences that I attended in 2026.
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  1. SAS Innovate 2026 - Grapevine, TX (April)
  2. Southeast and Atlantic SAS User's Group 2026 - Malvern, PA (October)
Eric and Bart
Met Bartosz "Bart" Jabłoński (i.e. "Yabwon") - founding member of the Polish SAS User Group
Eric and Paul MacDonald
Met Paul MacDonald -- A former SPP SAS contractor!
Eric and Dr. Lida Gharibvand
Met Dr. Gharibvand (again)! She is a professor at Loma Linda University out in San Diego. We Met at the Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) conference back in 2025, but hadn't gotten a picture together.

It was pretty inspiring to meet all of these people from both across the US and across the world -- all meeting up just to geek out about the neat things that they are doing with SAS.

Longhorn standoff
I saw this (I assume) taxidermied longhorn in the lobby of the Gaylord Texan. I've never seen one before!
Eric and Patrick
Got to catch up with Patrick Xhonneux!
Sitting in a SAS session
Waiting for a talk to begin :)

Some other miscellaneous pictures; the most important of which is the pic of me with Patrick Xhonneux. He's an all around great guy from SAS. We met at the last Innovate conference and bumped into each other on the Monday morning before Innovate 2026 began. He and I had breakfast together and I enjoyed getting to catch up with him. He's a model of a European gentleman!

Subset of us with our SAS representatives on the SPP campus
Last night of "Viya Days", our SAS representatives came to the SPP campus to educate the Market Monitoring Unit on how to start utilizing SAS Viya.

In order from left to right, Eric Grasby (myself), Andrea Doucette, Mark Rouse, Brock Frisbie (account manager), Danielle Benson (customer success rep), Muneeb Mohammad (our SAS assigned Data Scientist), Patrick "Pat" Chida, Michael Slade (a technical architect from SAS), and Ian Wren.

Couple of unicorns
Richann posing with my unicorn tattoo :)
The quintessential Philadelphia experience
The quintessential Philadelphia experience (the Liberty Bell)
Ramen with Jimmy Wong
Mark and I met a SAS admin from Maryland (Jimmy Wong) and he drove all the way out to near Allentown, PA to eat dinner with us on our first night in

We got to connect with quite a few people here. I ran into Richann Watson again. She and I had met at SAS Innovate 2026. I learned then that she is also a unicorn fan. She gave me a "Data Unicorn" in that I promptly attached to my lanyard from SEASUG 2026.