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Chris Hemedinger
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Director, SAS User Engagement

+Chris Hemedinger is the Director of SAS User Engagement, which includes our SAS Communities and SAS User Groups. Since 1993, Chris has worked for SAS as an author, a software developer, an R&D manager and a consultant. Inexplicably, Chris is still coasting on the limited fame he earned as an author of SAS For Dummies

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Announcement: SAS on the Wii

Last week at SAS Global Forum, SAS demonstrated its commitment to bring powerful business analytics to customers wherever they choose to work, including on the desktop, on the Web, and on mobile devices such as the iPhone. In that spirit, SAS today announced plans to port its powerful analytics software

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The Sea Monkey Effect

I really enjoyed this blog post by AnnMaria: "The Sea Monkey Effect prevents robot uprising". I think my reading experience was enhanced because I met* the author at SAS Global Forum yesterday. AnnMaria should apply for a grant and enter into the annals of improbable research. *(She told me that

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Enchantress of Numbers

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration of a woman who is widely appreciated as "the first programmer". At SAS I work with a lot of programmers and other technical folks, many of whom are women (including my boss and my boss' boss). I tend to take this for granted,

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A few minutes with Dave Barry

During SAS Global Forum, I had the privilege of sneaking backstage at the Technical Session to meet with keynote speaker Dave Barry. I made it abundantly clear to everyone involved, this meeting was all about me and my opportunity to meet a literary legend. The fact that I was on

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Dave Barry's keynote to SAS Global Forum

Humor writer and Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist Dave Barry inspired SAS Global Forum attendees during his keynote presentation at the Technical Session. Dave Barry introduced his topic: “High-speed access to DBMS data using SAS 9.1.3 Data Engines” No, that wasn’t it. He just plucked that from the schedule. Then he started with

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C U @ #SGF09

Right now I'm packing up my materials for SAS Global Forum. It's actually a lot easier than it used to be. My first SAS conference was SUGI 21 (1996), and we didn't have personal laptop computers or USB drives or fast network connections. Machines were staged weeks ahead of time

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The original tweeter

Before it was considered cool to tweet information to the world, SAS users who were hungry for inside information came to rely on a Little Birdie -- as in "a Little Birdie told me..." sasCommunity.org has a nice history of the Little Birdie. The article mentions the "Jurassic period"; does

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Rank and file

When I applied for a job at SAS over 15 years ago, I didn't even know what the company did. [Insert dummy joke here.] Most of what I knew about the company came from colleagues at my former workplace who, perhaps in an effort to make themselves feel better, described

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"Open in JMP" from SAS Enterprise Guide

The SAS Visual Data Discovery package includes, among other things, SAS Enterprise Guide and JMP. If you are among the growing numbers who use these two software applications together, you might be looking for more ways to integrate the two. Here's one way: a SAS Enterprise Guide task that opens

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1000-thread count

No, this is not about a super-expensive set of bed linens. It's about the 1000th thread (discussion topic) in the SAS Enterprise Guide discussion forum. This discussion forum began as a pilot program over two years ago, with SAS Enterprise Guide and ODS and Base Reporting among the first two

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Coat check conspiracy

As a dedicated SAS employee, I take advantage of as many offered perks as I can, and that includes attending the annual SAS Winter Party. My wife and I have not missed one since I started working here, which means that last weekend we attended for the 16th time. Every

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This is your life...with SAS

If you use SAS for just one purpose, you might be interested to see some of its other uses around your world. This video is also a great link to share with your less-tech-savvy friends/relatives who ask the question: what is SAS and why should I care?

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SAS and social media: an awesome mashup

SAS recently appointed a Social Media Manager for the company. Check out Dave Thomas' recent interview here. The interview question that must have been edited out: "So, why did you decide to leave Wendy's?" Just like SAS ("what's a shoe company got to do with business analytics?"), I imagine that

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Talking Turkey about SAS

From the "how far can we take this metaphor?" department... Want to whet your Thankgiving appetite? Read this blog post from R. L. Burns. The "meat and gravy" section is near the bottom of the post. (Personally, I consider myself the giblets.)

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Poetry in commotion

In addition to writing code, SAS R&D developers are very accustomed to writing poems. I don't mean rhyming poetry like sonnets (though we do hear the occasional randy limerick). When a developer wants to make a code change in a SAS product, he or she is required to complete a

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The 4-1-1 on Windows 3.11

Have you ever glanced through the obituaries and felt stunned to recognize an old friend? That's how it felt when I saw this announcement about Windows 3.11. One of my first assignments when I joined SAS in 1993 was to write Changes and Enhancements to the SAS System Release 6.10:

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Polar bear, polar bear, what do you see?

I see some donors looking at me. At least, that's how I read the last paragraph of this piece about SAS in the local Raleigh newspaper today: WWF, a global conservation group, uses SAS software to determine which potential donors to contact, and how frequently. One recent campaign boosted WWF's

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