Hooo-ray for Hollywood

I've just returned from the Los Angeles Basin SAS Users Group (LABSUG), where I both presented a talk and learned from others. (The meeting was in Pasadena, but I did get a chance to tour the area, as you can see from my picture.)

The title of my talk was "Upping your SAS Game with SAS 9.2 and SAS Enterprise Guide". Here's the description:

Join me on a journey of how I use new and recent features in SAS to solve problems that are of high interest in today's Web 2.0 world. Specifically, I'll show how I've used SAS to analyze my history with a certain online movie rental service, and also how I can use SAS to keep tabs on my Facebook friends. We'll see how all of this can be put together within SAS Enterprise Guide, mixing out-of-the-box tasks with SAS programming techniques to create repeatable processes. We'll also save some time at the end for sneak peak at what's coming in the next release of SAS Enterprise Guide – SAS programmers will not want to miss this!

The main message of my presentation is this: there is a boatload of new features/functions/procs in SAS 9.2, and even in SAS 9.1.3, that are worth looking at and trying out. You can use these features to get real work done and modernize your SAS programs to take advantage of the latest stuff. SAS Enterprise Guide helps you along because it "puts you on the path" to the new stuff (such as ODS Graphics) with some of the point-and-click interfaces, but even if you work exclusively in SAS programs, you should take the time to learn about some of the new syntax available to you.

I also provided a preview of our next release of SAS Enterprise Guide; there was considerable jaw-dropping and drooling going on. You'll see much more of this at SAS Global Forum 2010.

If you want to peek at the slides from my LA presentation, here they are.