To those who joined us in Seattle this week for SAS Global Forum or SGF Executive Conference, thank you! We had a wonderful time meeting you all during the few exciting and exhausting days we had together. And to those who missed being with us in person, we hope you were able to follow along with the live webcasts and Twitter streams (and we hope to see you next year).

Over the next week or so we’ll be publishing a number of posts related to the event (highlights, session recaps, lessons learned, and more). But before we do, here is a summary of the customer intelligence activities during the week.

Sunday, April 11: 9:00 p.m.
SAS Seattle Tweetup! at Tap House Grill, 1506 Sixth Avenue, Seattle, WA

What a great Tweetup. The venue, with 160 beers on tap and an unexpectedly large and inviting space, was a perfect setting for our group.

The list of journalists, bloggers, analysts and influencers in attendance reads as a who's-who of social media and social CRM. To mention a few: Queen of Measurement Katie Paine. New Marketing Labs general manager Justin Levy. Marshall Lager, President of The Third Idea (he forgot the first two ideas – but the third one works great). Noted author and CRM authority Paul Greenberg. David Myron, Editor in Chief of CRM Magazine. Alex Williams, a senior editor at ReadWriteWeb. Joshua Greenbaum. Research Analyst, Speaker and Consultant, Esteban Kolsky. CRM analyst, Denis Pombriant. Brent Leary, Co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials. Social Media Strategists Wayne Sutton and Shannon Paul. Dave Evans, author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day. And on. And on.

From SAS, we had our Social Media Analytics mavens John Bastone and Mark Chaves. SAS marketing management, including Adele Sweetwood and Deb Orton. SAS Social Media manager David B. Thomas. Our editor of blogs and social content, Alison Bolen. SAS Customer Intelligence PR managers Angela Lipscomb and Mike Nemecek. Peter Dorrington, SAS EMEA marketing. And many others.

Monday, April 12: 8:00 a.m.
SAS Social Media Analytics Solution Launch at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center

You never know exactly how a launch will be accepted, but so far, so good. A Google search for “SAS social media analytics” turns up hundreds of positive news results and mentions; here are a few worth highlighting:

• Katie Paine (@kdpaine), CEO of KDPaine & Partners, wrote “when I started KDPaine & Partners 8 years ago, I had in mind a system that would somehow, (I didn't know how at the time) connect the dots between outputs and outcomes. That's what [SAS Social Media Analytics] does.” (From KDPaine finally finds an automated analysis tool she can love.)
• Louis Columbus (@LouisColumbus), Market & industry analyst, blogger, market researcher & strategist, commented on the execution of the launch, saying “Televising the launch event live…was a brilliant decision.” Louis went on to conclude that “SAS has set a new standard on how to successfully launch a new service using social media.” (From Lessons Learned from the SAS Launch of Social Media Analytics.)
• Paul Greenberg (@pgreenbe), author of the best-selling CRM at the Speed of Light: Essential Customer Strategies for the 21st Century, commented “not only has SAS released a truly excellent social media analytics product - a unique one in fact, but they have attacked the market and their own culture in a way that has transformed the company to something new and perhaps equally as good as their “place to work” accolades indicate.” (From SAS's Coming Out Party - Analyze This!)
• Shannon Paul (@ShannonPaul), marketing and social media strategist, wrote “…the just-launched SAS Social Media Analytics platform looks to be the most comprehensive, in-depth social media monitoring and analytics platform I’ve seen yet…” (From SAS Social Media Analytics Product Launch: Initial Thoughts.)

If you missed the live launch, you can:

• Read a recap of the SAS Social Media Analytics Launch from SAS' David B. Thomas.
• View the SAS Social Media Analytics Launch Event Archive.
• View the SGF opening session Social Media Analytics demo with Jim Davis (@Davis_Jim) and Mike Keppler from Mariott International, and the Tuesday Live Report video with comments about the Social Media Analytics solution from Jim Davis.
• View the SAS Social Media Analytics Youtube demo.
• View the buzz about the launch on Twitter by following #SASSMA or viewing the #SASSMA archive.
• View the SAS Social Media Analytics: questions from #SASsma video.

Monday, April 12: 11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Executive Conference Session: Marketing Success in a World of Empowered Customers

Deb Orton, AKA the Oprah of marketing panels, moderated this session. Executives from Staples, Cisco Systems, GE Capital and Lacek/OgilvyOne held our attention and generated many audience questions. An interesting side note: Paul Greenberg tweeted during the discussion about wishing we left the title slide up, to make identifying the panelists easier. We were listening, and had the title slide back up within minutes.

We’ll publish a blog post here in the coming days that further details this session.

Monday, April 12: 1:45 – 2:45 p.m.
Executive Conference Session: The Social Media Roundtable

Dave Evans (@evansdave) Social Media enthusiast and author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day expertly led this panel of executives from Starbucks Coffee Co. and The Wet Seal.

You can view the Social Media Roundtable UStream Recording from this session (thank you Wayne Sutton (@waynesutton) for capturing this). Watch this space for a more detailed post about this discussion.

Monday, April 12 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
The Executive Conference reception was b-u-s-y. We highlighted four demos: SAS Customer Intelligence, SAS Marketing Automation, SAS Marketing Optimization and SAS Social Media Analytics.

Monday, April 12 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
The SAS Social Media Analytics Networking Reception

This was a fun, relaxed reception with attendees from the Seattle online analytics community and other SAS Global Forum attendees and locals interested in Social Media Analytics. Refreshments were served (validating that Punch and Pie is a great attendance incentive). Mark Chaves (@MarkAChaves) presented a summary of the SAS Social Media Analytics features and the details behind why we designed the product to do what it does.

Over 30 people were with us, including: Varsha Chawla, Peter Dorrington, Ikong Fu, Wayne Sutton, Angela Lipscomb, David B. Thomas, Wendy Guo, Rumaiya Islam, Rohan Kapoor, Brian Hagins, and many others.

Tuesday, April 13, 7:30 – 9:00 a.m.
Social Media Breakfast Seattle: No More Excuses: Yes we CAN Measure Social Media

While this event was not a SAS Customer Intelligence event, we have to comment on it, because one, many of us attended this breakfast, and two, it was awesome. Tribal DDB Worldwide hosted this event at their modern downtown office. The presentation featured measurement guru Katie Paine, of KDPaine & Partners.

A big 'thank you' to Warren Sukernek, President of Social Media Breakfast Seattle and event organizer, for organizing this event and for introducing us to AT&T wireless. During our introduction, AT&T invited us to participate in a social media analytics RFI, and as luck would have it, the SAS Account Executive for AT&T was in Seattle. Connections were made, and within 3 hours we had the RFI in hand. Goodness all around.

Stay tuned for more in the coming week.