Last week I had the pleasure of representing SAS Press at the Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) conference in San Jose, CA. As the heart of Silicon Valley, San Jose is the perfect location for all things SAS to converge for an action-packed, three-day conference, including lots of pre- and post-conference SAS training classes.
The conference got off to a great start on Tuesday with a thoroughly entertaining keynote by Michael Raithel titled, “It’s Not Easy Being a SAS Programmer!” For Wednesday’s SAS Customer Appreciation Luncheon, John Sall, SAS Institute co-founder, gave an enlightening presentation titled, “History of SAS—The Early Years.” Who knew that SAS employees consume twenty tons of M&Ms a year!
SAS was invited to present a record number of paper presentations and demos this year. Many of the papers and demos were about the hot topic of ODS, which ranged from titles like “Customize Your Graphs with ODS Graphics Editor” by Sanjay Matange and “Getting Started with the Output Delivery System” by Dan O’Connor to “What’s New in ODS 9.2” by Eric Gebhart and “New SG Procedures in SAS/GRAPH Software” by Sanjay Matange.
I’m always excited to reconnect in person with many of our SAS Press authors at conferences, many of whom attended this year’s WUSS conference: Art Carpenter, Ron Cody, Cynthia Zender, Kirk Lafler, Eric Gebhart, William Benjamin, Ginger Carey, Helen Carey, Lora Delwiche, Susan Slaughter, and Michael Raithel.
In the SAS Press booth, we had an enthusiastic response to the many preview copies of books on display that are due to be published over the next six months or so. Here are just a few of them:
• Output Delivery System: The Basics and Beyond by Lauren Haworth, Cynthia Zender, and Michele Burlew
• Combining and Modifying SAS Data Sets: Examples, Second Edition by Michele Burlew
• Elementary Statistics Using SAS, Third Edition by Sandra Schlotzhauer
• Survival Analysis Using SAS: A Practical Guide, Second Edition by Paul Allison
• Analysis of Observational Health Care Data Using SAS by Douglas Faries, Andrew Leon, Josep Maria Haro, and Robert Obenchain (editors)
• SAS Functions by Example, Second Edition by Ron Cody
• JMP Essentials by Curt Hinrichs and Chuck Boiler
• The New Know: Analytics, Innovation and Enterprise Transformation by Thornton May
Kathy Council, vice president of SAS Publications, gave a very informative presentation on Wednesday afternoon titled, “Roadmap to Documentation, Training, Technical Support, and support.sas.com.” Kathy’s presentation highlighted all of the documentation, support, and training resources that are available to SAS users.
Look for SAS Press at next year’s conference, November 3-5, 2010, in San Diego, CA!
