VP of Platform R&D; at SAS (also known as @hornpolish to SAS Twitterers) presented the Keynote at the SAS SouthEast SAS Users Conference #sesug09 on Sunday Evening, topic = How to Get and Keep SAS Users Happy.
The main tint of the presentation was how to keep the computer happy. Because if the computer is happy, the SAS System is happy, and therefore the SAS Users are happy. Paul referenced a SAS Submitted 2009 SGF Paper: Paper 310-2009. He mentioned three areas to keep an eye on for the SAS system:
- I/O (There are reasons why SAS utilizes a high I/O. These are not 'bad' SAS programs, but how SAS completes analytics on all the data available.)
- Memory (Never, EVER, set MEMSIZE=0)
- CPU (Montior CPU vs Real Time in your SAS logs to ensure that the CPU is processing your jobs efficiently.)
Paul then referenced a 'Featuritis' Curve from a different conference that gave positive and then negative comments on the amount of features provided within a product. SAS has to walk a fine line between having just the right amount of features to driving customers crazy with too many options/requirements to get the feature to work. In order to help SAS Institute walk the fine line, Paul suggests that all of us participate in the SAS online customer ballots.
Don't forget, stay informed with the SAS by subscribing to the various newsletters listed at: http://www.sas.com/resources/
Finally, Paul recommended that at a local level, SAS users should get and stay involved with other SAS users. Recommendations included setting a SAS mailing lists internal to your organization to share/request help, schedule lunch and learns to share how SAS is being used, and don't forget to be an information resource.
When looking for resources to an issue, Lex Jansen has provided an awesome resource (being an 'SAS Information Resource') within is website: http://www.lexjansen.com/ which catalogs all the SAS user papers into a Google Custom search system. A GREAT resource to search for SAS information.
