At SAS Global Forum this year, Clark Abrahams, Chief Financial Architect at SAS and author of Fair Lending Compliance and Credit Risk Assessment, offered me a piece of advice that I’m fairly certain is going to change my life. We were getting ready to begin the amazing book drawing for
Christine and I took the opportunity to slack off from our certification studying and blogging during SAS Global Forum. Not that we were actually in Seattle for the conference. But we used the relatively quiet time that resulted from nearly everyone being out of the office to catch up on
Contributed by Michael Harvey, Technical Writer, Publications In my previous post, I wrote that being successful as a technical writer meant being “technical” and a “writer.” I elaborated on what it meant to be “technical.” In this post, I say more about what it means to be a “writer.” As
It’s been a week and I’m finally recuperating from working SAS Global Forum in Seattle. Not that I’m complaining. The conference, as well as Seattle, was invigorating—and my very favorite SAS Global Forum thus far (I’ve attended 4). Seattle was anything but drippy. So grab your cup of java or
I've just read that Sony plans to discontinue the manufacture of 3.5-inch floppy disks. [Update: a more complete tribute to the floppy disk is over on Geek News Central.] The announcement made me nostalgic for the days when we shipped The SAS System on floppies. I don't think we've done
My book named Mastering Organizational Knowledge Flow is out. It has been quite a journey from reading an internal article on John Kohl's book The Global English Style Guide that gave me the last little kick to finally get going, to the point when I had my first copy in
I just returned from the SAS Global Forum 2010 conference in Seattle, WA. From Cary, NC, the travel time is about 7 hours, so I packed all of my necessities for the flight in my carry-on backup. Not counting snacks, the weight of the laptop, four magazines, and two books
Little SAS Book author Susan Slaughter attended SAS Global Forum this year, as she always does. She had to travel to Seattle this time to get her hands on an early copy of her own new book, The Little SAS Book for SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2, which she updated with
Contributed by Gary Meek, Director, Documentation Development My team at SAS has tried many different things to get customers to tell us how we can serve them better. We’ve contacted customers directly (with their permission), worked with other customer touch points at SAS like Technical Support, Professional Services, and Education.
The Spring 2010 issue of Foresight is now available. Here is Editor Len Tashman’s preview: What’s the connection between hindsight and foresight? That is the question Paul Goodwin asks in his Hot New Research column leading off this issue. The problem is that hindsight bias – the tendency to believe
What do you get when you have a ballroom full of people discussing ways to make their companies better? Well, for one thing you get a room full of happy people, but for another you get a jam-packed day at the SAS Global Forum Executive Conference. Analytics was a key
Yesterday (Monday) was an incredibly busy day for me at SAS Global Forum. It began with a successful Technical Session where SAS R&D staffers showed off: the new features coming in SAS/STAT (with the 9.22 /nine-twenty-two/ release) SAS Enterprise Miner with the Rapid Predictive Modeler (hosted in SAS Enterprise Guide
I'll leave North Carolina early on Sunday morning to head to the SAS Global Forum venue in Seattle. Through the magic of time zones, I'll be in Seattle, WA before lunchtime. I don't expect my internal clock to adjust to Pacific time right away, so I'll be awake early on
When we published the first edition of SAS For Dummies a couple of years ago, we received feedback from readers around the topic of SAS programming. In the book's introduction, we stated that the book doesn't cover the SAS programming language, but that there are many other fine books that
Contributed by Michael Harvey, Technical Writer, Publications Having worked in the field of technical communication for over 20 years, I have given a lot of thought about what it takes to be a successful technical writer. It is as simple as the job title itself. You have to be “technical”
...if man is still alive, will he be importing Excel spreadsheets and wondering why his leap years are off? I received this report from SAS Technical Support, on behalf of a customer who uses SAS Enterprise Guide to import spreadsheet data: The date "12/31/9999" will import as "02Jan****" when reading
It was 1981 and times were hard, jobs scarce, the economy dragging (sound familiar?). Time to take a chance, shift career paths, we decide, over our little Friday night $5 party (an 8-pack of Rolling Rock ponies and a half-pint of Jacquin’s Ginger Brandy; tasty…). Off to grad school, fingers
Although you probably didn’t notice, I stepped away from this blog for the last two months to think about something more important: The current state of business forecasting. I’d come to realize there is a lot of animosity in the world of forecasting. We have advocates of statistics, and advocates
SAS For Dummies 2nd Edition is now available. It's not just more of the same -- it's got lots of cool new stuff in it too. It's completely updated for SAS 9.2. It's got a new chapter on data mining. And it's got a new chapter on SAS programming. I
Contributed by Chris Hemedinger, Senior Manager, Software Development The new edition of SAS® For Dummies® has returned from the printer, and boy, am I glad. I’m glad that it's now available, because I think it will be a good resource for people who are just getting started with using SAS
Contributed by Chuck London, SAS Publishing Sales Representative I just returned from attending the 2010 ENAR Spring Meeting hosted at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel, home of the 2010 Super Bowl Champion Saints. From the moment I got on my connecting flight in Atlanta, you could tell that the
As Stacey mentioned in her last blog post, she’s a fan of the television show Lost, as I am too. Often our final few minutes of study group will discuss the numerous theories regarding the Lost castaways and their island stories and sideways stories. For 5 minutes or so, it’s
Robert Springborn has a special relationship with his SAS software. Like many long-time SAS users, Robert’s livelihood depends upon his advanced skills with SAS technology, as well as his analytical expertise. He’s been using SAS for over 28 years, which means when it comes to writing SAS programs, he’s comfortable
This past weekend, I decided it was time--time to take on the white grout in the white bathroom. After almost 15 years, the grout wasn’t quite as bright as it had once been. As I scrubbed, I thought, “There has got to be a blog post in here somewhere…” The
Today, I had the privilege of speaking to a group of high school students at a community outreach event sponsored by the Human Resources division at SAS. Approximately 80 students from schools as far away as Charlotte came to visit SAS and hear about the impact that SAS and analytics
My friend Meg Crawford wrote a great post yesterday previewing all the great social media activities planned for SAS Global Forum next month. Like Meg, it will be my first time attending SAS' biggest conference of the year and I couldn't be more excited to meet many of the customers
Contributed by Meg Crawford, Marketing Specialist, User & Customer Marketing Hi everyone! I'm Meg Crawford and I have a small and somewhat unhealthy obsession with social media. You may have seen me this year on Twitter as @Postgrad, on Facebook posting on the SAS Global Forum Fan Page, on LinkedIn,
It's March, and in North Carolina all of the talk is about college basketball. At SAS, we like to brag about how these guys use SAS analytics to predict the NCAA "dance card" with astounding results. This year, the fun question revolves around conference bias and how it affects a
Contributed by Warren Kuhfeld, Analytical Solutions Manager, Research & Development SAS/GRAPH software was first released when I was a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the early 1980s. I remember submitting a SAS program to make a graph and then walking to the computing
