Trips to far-away conferences fill me with dread: 1) I don't like to fly; 2) Striking up conversations with people I don't know is difficult and wears me out.

The Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference (IRE) which I recently attended in Phoenix, proves it's worth venturing outside my comfort zone. The time away provided a rare opportunity for uninterrupted thought – and a way to become better acquainted with a little-known, but enthusiastic and growing group of SAS users: journalists. It was an honor to meet attendees who had won journalism's coveted Pulitzer Prize as a result of investigations conducted using SAS. Hearing some of them mention SAS in their seminars was a great feeling. Examples:

• A metro editor from a major U.S. daily newspaper spoke of a prize-winning investigation into cops falsifing criminal records. "Impeach them with their records," he advised a roomful of reporters. "Show your findings and methodology. The program we wrote it in was SAS."
• A reporter from the same paper said using analytical software like SAS "allows you to speak with authority."
• Another editor buttonholed me between presentations. "I used SAS on a project years ago," she said. "Good stuff."

On the last day of the conference, a Sunday morning when most attendees had already gone home, a guy saw my nametag and stopped dead in his tracks. "You're with SAS?" He looked dumbfounded. I introduced myself and said I wanted to learn how reporters are using SAS and what I can do to boost its use in newsrooms. Turns out he’s an avid SAS fan whose job is teaching computer-assisted reporting to journalists. He LOVES SAS, thinks Chevell Parker in SAS Technical Support walks on water, and rattled off a list of projects (including mapping the debris field of space shuttle Columbia) where our wares played a key role.

Following is a summary of the conference:

-Conference theme was "Remembering the Arizona Project," a nod to the battleship sunk at Pearl Harbor, but direct reference to the 1976 assassination in Phoenix of Arizona Republic scribe Don Bolles, who was about to expose mob-related corruption. The then-fledgling IRE recruited a national team of reporters to go to Phoenix and finish Bolles' work. They did. The mobster who had him killed remains in prison today.

- Attendees were nearly 800 mostly American reporters, a who's who of the mainstream media scene. They ranged from big names, like Brian Ross of ABC News, to scribes from newspapers as varied as the Wall Street Journal and the Post Standard in Syracuse, NY. Veteran N&O staffer Pat Stith was there; we sat together at a "Web scraping" seminar.

- Seminars were numerous and ran the gamut. "Unlocking international and US secrets in farm subsidy data." "The latest ideas for covering immigration laws and policies." "Investigating sports." "Bulletproofing the investigation." "Investigations on the fly." There was, however, a common thread - the need to extract meaning from a bewildering amount of data. (Sound familiar?)

I’ll follow up with my new contacts to see how we might work together and will post updates, including more anecdotes on how these customers use SAS.

Meanwhile, I’ll sip souvenir coffee that I bought at the conference. The flavor? What else: Muckraker Dark.