Just flew back from Vegas, and boy, are my arms tired! (ba-dump)

If you attended SAS Global Forum, you probably learned a lot of things you didn't know. But if you were a SAS employee, you also learned a lot of things you didn't know. One of the perks of being able to attend SAS Global Forum as an employee is the opportunity to find out (and try out) new features in the software as well as to find out the latest information about our services. So, without further ado, here are 4 Things I Learned at SAS Global Forum:

1. You folks are crazy about SAS! My paper on "SG Procedures for the Non-Statistician" was scheduled for 8:00 AM on the final day of the conference, in a city where there are more than a few excuses to stay out late. I was expecting that my presentation would wind up being a dialogue between me and the session chair, while reasonable people slept in late. However, we had a full room of graphics fans, even at that early hour!
2. ODS Graphics is getting the ultimate power tool. I attended Dan Heath and Sanjay Matange's presentation on Annotate for SG Procedures and the ability to annotate graphs (coming in SAS 9.3) makes the SG procedures the tool of choice for both statistical and non-statistical graphics applications. The Annotate facility for ODS graphics will be similar to Annotate for "classic" SAS/GRAPH procedures--you create a data set containing observations that control what is added to a graph. Most importantly, data-dependent annotation will be supported.
3. A lot of people are interested in e-Learning. I spent most of my time in the Demo Area near the Self-Paced e-Learning Demo, where SAS users had a chance to try out some of our e-Learning courses. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is a good way to learn SAS when your schedule won't permit you to take a course on a fixed schedule.
4. You'll get instant graphs with the SG procedures in SAS 9.3. If you are currently using ODS graphics (including SG procedures), you have to click on the graph in the Results window to display it with your host graphics viewer. In SAS 9.3 ODS graphics will generate HTML output by default and the output will immediately display in the SAS Results Viewer, thus saving you the step of explicitly having to open the graph.
   And if you've stayed with me so far, here are 5 things I learned about Las Vegas in general:

   1. There are few things in life worth $125 a ticket, but Cirque de Soleil's LOVE is one of them. Words can't describe it, so I won't try. Just save up and go.
   2. If you are coming to Las Vegas and you don't gamble, bring your own chair. I knew that there were no clocks or windows in the casinos, but I didn't know that there is no place to sit in a casino or hotel lobby except at a slot machine.
   3. Las Vegas appears to have a local ordinance requiring you to smoke. If you are a male between 45 and 60, you must smoke a cigar.
   4. Even if you don't like New York, New York, New York New York is neat. (This sentence is actually grammatically correct).
   5. Bring money. Lots of it. And bring even more.

   Thankyou. Thankyouverymuch. You've been a wonderful audience.