With a packed agenda of sessions, navigating a conference like SAS Innovate can feel overwhelming – especially for first-time attendees.
Where to start? What do you mean I'll hear from inspiring and knowledgeable speakers and business leaders? There's hands-on experiences, too?
No worries. After combing through the schedule, I’ve identified five introductory sessions that provide a solid foundation. Whether transitioning to SAS® Viya®, tackling data governance or exploring AI decision-making, these sessions offer practical takeaways and hands-on learning to help you make the most of your time at SAS Innovate.
1. The intersection of data quality, data stewardship and data governance
Why it matters: If your organization is drowning in data but struggling to trust it, you’re not alone. Poor data quality can derail AI initiatives, slow down decision-making and create compliance nightmares.
What you'll learn: This session will help you understand the common pitfalls of data quality, clear up misconceptions and outline how data governance and stewardship work together to create a reliable, reusable data strategy. You’ll walk away with a concrete plan to improve your organization’s data governance efforts.
Who should attend: Business leaders, analytics heads and anyone responsible for data management. If your job depends on making sense of data, this one’s for you.
2. SAS®9 to SAS Viya: How to streamline your migration
Why it matters: Moving from SAS 9 to SAS Viya can feel like trying to relocate an entire city. It’s a huge shift; if done wrong, it can cause more headaches than benefits. But this session will help you avoid the common pitfalls and make the transition smooth and stress-free.
What you'll learn: Curated by leaders from Ernst Young, you’ll learn the migration process, from scoping and risk reduction to handling shadow IT and managing data blind spots. You'll also get practical tips on assessing your environment and optimizing your SAS assets before making the switch.
Who should attend: IT admins, developers, business analysts, and anyone leading a migration project. If the phrase "data blind spots" makes you nervous, this session is a must.
3. Text analytics with Model Studio
Why it matters: Unstructured data – emails, customer reviews, support tickets, social media posts – is a goldmine of insights. But if you don’t know how to analyze it, you leave valuable information on the table.
What you'll learn: This hands-on workshop will guide you through SAS Visual Text Analytics, helping you extract meaningful insights from text data. You’ll learn to build projects, access text documents, extract key concepts and interpret your findings with real software access and step-by-step guidance.
Who should attend: Data analysts and scientists looking to level up their text analytics skills. If you’ve ever wondered what customers really mean in their feedback, we’ll see you there.
4. Getting started with SAS® Intelligent Decisioning
Why it matters: AI is the future of business decision-making. But knowing where to start can be tricky. This session will help you understand how to use SAS Intelligent Decisioning to automate decisions and drive real-time customer interactions.
What you'll learn: You’ll get hands-on experience building decision models step by step. Learn to create rule sets, develop workflows and test decision accuracy within the SAS Intelligent Decisioning interface.
Who should attend: Data analysts and data scientists interested in AI-driven decision-making. Don't miss this if you want to make smarter, faster decisions without drowning in data.
5. Getting started with SAS Viya Workbench
Why it matters: The cloud is no longer the future – it’s the present. And if you’re not using a cloud-based environment to manage your data and analytics, you’re already behind. SAS Viya Workbench makes conducting data analysis and model development easy in a fully managed, open-integration environment.
What you'll learn: This session will walk you through setting up SAS Viya Workbench, integrating it with tools like Visual Studio Code and Jupyter Notebook and using Python alongside SAS. You’ll see how the split-plane topology keeps your data secure while allowing complete flexibility.
Who should attend: Data scientists, IT heads and anyone who wants a robust yet flexible cloud-based analytics environment. If you're juggling multiple tools and need a streamlined workflow, this session is a must.
Come on down to SAS Innovate
SAS Innovate is a goldmine of insights and these five sessions will give you a strong foundation. Even if these aren’t the ones for you, there will be something there for everybody.
