Remember my blog post last month “Help us innovate”? I asked for your ideas on ways we could improve our products and services. Thanks to those of you who sent in ideas. We combined your thoughts with those of our own Publications division staff, vetted the ideas, and then held our first Innovation Day in Publications last week. We started with a general meeting to talk about our plans for carrying Innovation Day forward. Then four members of our staff presented their specific ideas about things we could do to improve our products or services. What great ideas they were!

We had a suggestion to create an automated way to generate SAS documentation based on the operating system or database you were using with SAS. We talked about using HTML5 in our webdoc product. One writer who loves mind maps showed us an example of how we could use them instead of tables of contents! Finally, we were shown some things being worked on in R&D that would simplify our delivery process for documentation. Great ideas that we will continue to explore. It was exciting!

Later that morning, we had brainstorming sessions as separate breakouts to explore some of the more general ideas we received. I attended one of the four about new ways we can engage our customers and the ideas were flowing. Stayed tuned as we implement some of these ideas.

What would you think about mind maps instead of (or in addition to) tables of contents? Are you a mind map advocate? And will you help us engage with you more? What is the best way to engage with you? Do you participate in sasCommunity.org? How about a discussion forum focused on documentation? What is the best way to communicate with you? We love to hear from you and we are very interested in learning how individuals and companies use the documentation. How does usage vary based on the skill of the user? Or on the product being used?

Talk to us; we will listen!