If I think back to the training, education and networking opportunities in my business intelligence and analytics career that have made the most difference, SAS user groups (SUG) stand out. As a new user to SAS many moons ago local, regional and international groups helped me develop skills that I
What if you could predict – within a day or two of launching it – what the long-term results of your social media campaign would be? What if you could use that prediction to direct and improve the campaign on the fly? From sentiment analysis to predictive ROI, digital advertising
Happy New Year to everyone! As we gear up to start 2011, I thought I would share a holiday story about Apple’s tablet device - the iPad! When it first appeared on the market last April, critics derided the device as being an Apple gimmick – it was, after all,
If I say, social media analytics, and you say, What's that? I have some good links for you. First, you'll want to read this interview with Katie Paine, where she explains, among other things, the difference between social monitoring ,social measurement and social analytics. "Social analytics is where measurement and
I have a confession: I am not very good at math. I know that will come as a terrible surprise and disappointment to some of you. You may even be astonished that SAS would hire someone who doesn't have a PhD in statistics. But math is not the only skill
The term "analytics" has become so overused that I'm not sure anyone really knows what it means anymore - or at the very least, it means a lot of different things to different people. Sometimes analytics gets blended in with "business analytics" which gets blended in with "business intelligence." What
A few days ago, I wrote a post on the "soul" of analytics - basically the careful balance we need to keep between qualitative and quantitative decision-making. I asked others to post their experiences and perspective, and I was fortunate enough to begin a "dia-blog" with Colonel Jim Markley, Director
In our SAS Hartford regional office, there is an annual tradition – the holiday breakfast. This will be my first breakfast with my office mates and I’m looking forward to the famous conference room waffles cooked up by a certain insurance account executive. Thinking about those waffles reminded me of
In a number of posts over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been discussing ideas for becoming an analytically driven insurance company. We’ve talked about information strategies, user enablement, collaboration, and now we’re going to talk about growing pains. We recently met with an insurer for a discussion around their
Recently I was listening to an NPR (National Public Radio) documentary about the history of cancer and medicine’s evolution in understanding and treating cancer. This was an amazing story. I would venture a guess that nearly everyone who is reading this post has been affected by cancer in one way
