Reminisces of the first WCSUG

Well, the first West Coast Stata User Group meeting is now history, and by all reports, it was a success. There were lots of interesting talks, some about Stata, and some just about statistical issues. In addition to the ATS Stat Consulting group, the meeting was attended by many graduate students, researchers, several Stata employees, and some authors of Stata Press books. Compared to the user group meetings for other stat packages, this meeting may seem small with only about 60 attendees per day. However, many people found the small size to be a big benefit, because there were many opportunities to chat with everyone there. At the end of the first day (it was a two day event), many people went to dinner and enjoyed good food and conversations. The second day ended with the popular "Wishes and Grumbles" session, during which users could tell members of the Stata team about their ideas for improvements or additions to Stata.

If you would like to see the slides of this year's presentations, please see http://www.stata.com/meeting/wcsug07/abstracts.html . If you didn't make it to this year's meeting, you may want to think about attending the next one. The meeting was a lot of fun, and there were plenty of interesting things to learn!

-crw