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
Pamela Meek, Anne Milley, Mark Chaves and Katie Paine My SAS world and my social media world collided today at SAS Global Forum in Seattle. We launched SAS Social Media Analytics, a product designed for, well, people like me who are trying to monitor and measure the value of social
From posterous photos of Opening Session to the New York Times Bits Blog, the first blog posts about SAS Global Forum are starting to show up online. Writing on the Bits Blog, Steve Lohr says: Analysts who have looked at the new offering – and tried it out – are
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
I’m leaving tomorrow morning for SAS Global Forum, our annual user conference, held this year in Seattle. Last year was my first Global Forum. More than three thousand people came to learn more about SAS and to hang out with other like-minded souls. It’s quite an experience. I’ve heard it
For those of you headed to Seattle next week for SAS Global Forum or SGF Executive Conference (#SGF10 and #SGFXC on Twitter), there are a number of great opportunities for you to learn new things and meet your peers. Here’s what you can expect related just to Customer Intelligence or
A little less than two years ago on the sascom voices blog, I argued that even social media enthusiasts should be listening more to social media curmudgeons like Tom Davenport. Tom is best known in SAS circles for co-authoring the books Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning and
In a recent Datamation article, "Business Intelligence Software and Predictive Analytics," Jeff Vance asks, "What exactly is predictive analytics?" His answer, in part: "Take traditional business intelligence, combine it with data mining and add on statistical analysis and you have predictive analytics. Math geeks will squabble over the nuances, say,
Yesterday we posted 'Chris Brogan Offers Social Media Advice to Marketers', the second (of six) Chris Brogan videos taped when Chris was at our headquarters in Cary, NC. In this video, the third in this series, SAS' Deb Orton interviews Chris Brogan of New Marketing Labs. Chris discusses the big
Yesterday we posted 'Chris Brogan Provides Best Practices and Insights into Social Media', the third (of six) Chris Brogan videos taped when Chris was at our headquarters in Cary, NC. In this video, the fourth in this series, SAS' Deb Orton interviews Chris Brogan of New Marketing Labs. Chris discusses
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”
We recently posted 'Chris Brogan Talks About His Book "Trust Agents" and Social Media', the first (of six) Chris Brogan videos taped when Chris was at our headquarters in Cary, NC. In this video, the second in this series, SAS' Deb Orton interviews Chris Brogan of New Marketing Labs. Chris
...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
"May you live in interesting times". This Chinese curse seems to ring true today, as much as when I heard it 25 years ago from my then mentor and boss. All of us as Marketers find ourselves in a state of flux, straddling the traditional and digital methods and hoping
The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend. If there’s truth in that quote, Aristotle would have to agree we’re lucky here at SAS, in that we have many friends, including outstanding customers and industry thought leaders, that we regularly interact with. I’d like to share one of these interactions
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
Facebook has just announced a major change, which should come as no surprise to anyone, since they seem to enjoy messing around with things. This time they're changing the process for becoming a fan of a business or person (or concept, or beverage or highway exit - there are lots
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
At this point, I have started three potential posts for this blog and each feels like we’re at a party together and we just got introduced, and then I start out by blurting a random, weird factoid that is sure to repel you. So let’s not do that, and instead
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
Hello! And welcome to the grand opening of Get, Grow, Keep, our spanking new group blog focused on the remarkably old business problems every marketer faces: namely, how to get, grow, and keep your best customers. The Timeline of innovation on Wikipedia’s History of marketing entry makes it clear –
I started the social media manager job at SAS in January of 2009, and spent the first half of the year creating and communicating our social media policies (which we call our Guidelines and Recommendations, since they’re much more than just the dos and don’ts.) In the half year or
