Another clip from my conversation with Chris Brogan from December. I asked him to imagine it's ten years in the future. How did social media change business?
Last month I pointed you towards the conference t-shirt contest on sasCommunity.org. The designs and coding techniques on display were quite creative, and the contest triggered some fun conversation among community members. Now the votes have been cast. And the winner is …self-proclaimed “new kid” Lynne Krajevski. I loved what
Which versions of MySQL are supported by SAS 9.1.3 for Windows? Is the 64-bit version of Oracle 11g supported on the 64-bit version of SAS 9.2 on Linux? You can find the answers to these questions and others like it by consulting the SAS/ACCESS Validation Matrix: pick your SAS version,
Freaky-smart marketing ninja Christopher S. Penn (co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee podcast) had a great blog post recently entitled "Three Nearly Guaranteed Moneymaking Twitter Words." More and more companies are listening in social media, but are they doing it in a way that provides real bottom-line value? Many listen
The last time I mentioned Accenture on this blog, I linked to their recent survey results, which show that companies are recognizing the value of predictive analytics – and are planning for it. What does that mean for business analytics vendors? In a lot of ways, it means business leaders
Within SAS, we have a strong blogging community made up of SAS employees. Those of us who read or contribute to the blog content on the internal SAS web got a special "shout out" from Fortune magazine, within its coverage of SAS as the top workplace in the USA. The
The National Association of State CIOs has just released an issue brief that has me very excited. “DO YOU THINK? OR DO YOU KNOW? Improving State Government Operations Through Business Analytics” gives an overview of business analytics and includes examples of effective implementations. The brief’s title paraphrases the quote “Do
A few days ago I said Google Buzz and Wave had some very cool features, but the average company wasn't ready for them. I've played around a bit more with Buzz since then, but mostly I've been seeing other people's opinions about it, in Buzz itself, on Twitter, on Facebook
I've been to a bunch of SAS Global Forum (née SUGI) events over the years. I always look forward to going, because I always think that by being there in person, I'll be able to provide some customers with exactly the information they need to use SAS better. And I
Just when I had finally begun to use Google Wave and was getting a small degree of comfort with it, Google launched Buzz, which is clearly their attempt at out-twittering Twitter. If you have a Gmail account, it's probably showed up by now, integrated into your account. As you would
As you use the Query Builder task in SAS Enterprise Guide, you might notice that it refers to tables and computed columns using names that are different than you expect. For example, instead of a table named CANDY_SALES_HISTORY, the Query Builder might show t1. This is called an alias, and
Even with more than 45,000 global customer sites, I often hear SAS users say that “SAS” is a small world. Perhaps conferences enhance the feeling: From the moment you get in line to get your conference materials, you start to recognize people from your SAS “family.” An attendee also described
I went to my first unconference this past weekend, AnalyticsCamp, held at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill. I really enjoyed the format. For those of you unfamiliar with the unconference/barcamp model, there's no schedule in advance. Speakers propose their sessions on a wiki, then on the day, they
I’ve spent quite a while now going through chapter 8, “Creating Enhanced List and Summary Reports,” in the Base Certification Prep Guide. This topic should be straightforward, I keep telling myself. So why did I score 40% on the quiz? Thinking that I probably needed to delve a little deeper,
Last night I was on a panel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (as I was required to write it when I was a reporter) called "Careers in Social Media," sponsored by University Career Services and organized by Gary Alan Miller. My fellow panelists were Ruby Sinreich,
Recently Mitch Joel and Joseph Jaffe promised to auction off keynote addresses for Haiti relief, with their services going to the highest bidder. This idea inspired me to do something similar here in the Triangle. As with all human endeavors involving more than one person, it took some time to
Day one of the 2010 CFO Corporate Performance Management Conference in New York is in the books, and while the day’s presentations and discussions should rightly merit being the prime subjects of this post, those events have been overshadowed by one of even greater magnitude: dinner with Thornton May. Where
When Chris visited SAS last month, there was a heated debate going on in social media circles about the idea of "social media certification," and the idea of paying money to become "certified." Here's Chris' take on the subject.
Andy wrote in the NOTE: blog that he's stumbled upon a few custom tasks to extend features in SAS Enterprise Guide. He wondered aloud whether there might be more "free" tasks out there, available for use by anyone who can find them and download them. The answer is: You betcha!*
~ Contributed by I-kong Fu ~ AnalyticsCamp is an unconference started by Nathan Gilliatt after a group of us met at a networking meeting in Raleigh last year called Web Analytics Wednesday. The first AnalyticsCamp will take place at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill on Saturday, February 6th,
In case you missed the business news last week, SAS (the company that pays me to write this blog, and the leader in business analytics) was named #1 on the FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For 2010 list. Having been a user (and huge fan) of SAS software since
Last night I went to Social Media Club Triangle, ably organized by my friends Wayne Sutton and Jeff Cohen. The event took place at DSI Comedy Theater in beautiful downtown Carrboro, NC (the Paris of the Piedmont). Zach Ward from DSI took us through some improv exercises, then told us
Subtitle: An accounting of accounts which, by all accounts, you should hold accountable. With the introduction of the SAS metadata server for use with SAS Business Intelligence, the role of the SAS administrator became more important. In SAS 9.1.3 a number of new standard "accounts" -- user IDs that serve
Back in December I wrote about the t-shirt contest on sasCommunity.org. Meanwhile, awards season kicked into high gear with the Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, and Screen Actors Guild Awards - just to name a few. Now it’s time for the first annual Best SAS t-shirt Award Show, and it’s
Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it. -Rene Descartes A great quote to apply to many things in life, including this path towards certification. Realizing that I needed a review, I enrolled in a three day, onsite Programming I class here in
Chris and I talked about how some people are moving away from blogs toward tools like Posterous. What's the long term impact? Are blogs still important?
This sign greeted me as I was driving into work this morning for a routine appointment at our onsite health care center. Appropriate, don't you think? Last year at this time, I downplayed the importance of being the actual #1 company to work for, stating that the "staying power" that
As you may have seen on the homepage of sas.com, or in the tweets and status updates of many of my colleagues, SAS has been ranked number 1 on the Fortune list of 100 Best Companies to Work for in America. We’ve been on the list every year since it
“The ability to predict future business trends with reasonable accuracy will be one of the crucial competitive advantages of this new decade," SAS CEO Jim Goodnight told students, faculty and business partners at a Jan. 15 Villanova University School of Business event. “And you won’t be able to do that
I'll be part of a panel discussion this Thursday, presented by Shift Worldwide. The title is "From Fad to Function: Operationalizing Social Media within Corporations." My fellow panelists and I will be talking about how to take social media beyond the 101-level stuff you probably heard a lot of in
