June, 2009
by Frank Bereznay
Our first meeting of 2009 was held Friday, May 8, at SAS's Irvine office. Our region really appreciates the ongoing support from SAS. They allowed us to use their venue for the meeting and also provided a continental breakfast for the attendees.
We were very fortunate to have the 2007 J. William Mullen Award winner, Peg McMahon, as our first presentation. She showed us why her presentation, "Death to Dashboards & Other Thoughts on Data Visualization", received the award it did. The original presentation material was supplemented with 'live' demonstrations on some of the latest visualization techniques being developed. This material 'hit home' with many of the attendees and resulted in a very interactive and lively presentation.
Dr. Tom Bell provided another update on his ongoing quest on how to plan for retirement. The particular installment focused on low risk investment alternatives. The prospect of inflation is almost a certainty as billions of dollars have been recently injected into the economy and baby boomers will begin to spend their retirement savings in the next five to ten years. As stated in the presentation, this could become the 'perfect storm' of too many dollars chasing too few goods resulting in moderate inflation or worse. The prudent investor takes these early warning signs into consideration when choosing how to invest, and Tom provided a series of financial instruments to address this likely situation. The attendees left the meeting with a concern for the future but with ways to address it.
Unfortunately, our third speaker had to cancel at the last minute. This left the attendees to start their weekend a little early.
Our next meeting will be August 7.