Contributed by Meg Crawford, Marketing Specialist, User & Customer Marketing; Kirsten Hamstra, Web Marketing Specialist, SAS Publishing; and Michele Reister, Field Marketing Specialist, SAS Education.

If you read last month’s Open Mic blog posts from Meg Crawford and Kirsten Hamstra about all the great social media activities happening at SAS Global Forum, then you’re pretty well-informed, but here’s the latest master list of everything social media-related happening at SAS Global Forum.

Twitter and the SAS Global Forum TweetSpot
If you aren't already, start following us on Twitter @SASGLOBALFORUM or join the conversation that will be continuing throughout SAS Global Forum with our hashtag, #SGF10. We also have a few other recommendations for you: @SASPublishing, @SASTraining, @WaynetteTubbs, @alisonbolen, @DavidBThomas, @deb_orton, @kellylevoyer, @abrown7, @hrenee and @sasCommunity will all be dishing up some good SAS Global Forum tweets.

Want to meet your fellow SAS Global Forum tweeters? Attend the SAS Seattle TweetUp on April 11 at 9:00 p.m. at the Tap House Grill. Register early, space is limited.

Are you not yet sold on Twitter? Let us show you how cool it is. Stop by the TweetSpot outside the Demo Area on the Sky Bridge where we’ll be offering tutorials, signing up new accounts, and tweeting with conference attendees. We know you’ll be hooked by the end of SAS Global Forum.
Even if you’re not ready to sign up just yet, you won’t be left out because our GIANT Twitter Wall above the entrance to the Demo Area will keep you in the loop. Check out all the live, scrolling tweets to see what everyone is saying about the conference.

SAS Global Forum Connect
Connect with your peers on SAS Global Forum Connect at http://www.sasCommunity.org/Connect. New for sasCommunity.org, SAS Global Forum Connect enables SAS Global Forum 2010 attendees to connect online before and during the conference. Even if you're not attending in-person, you can still participate.
Find colleagues on the searchable / sortable list, add messages to the public Message Board, send messages, add colleagues, view Web site contributions, add photo avatars & more! Stay connected during the conference and keep your connections all year long.

Facebook
Facebook is a great way to get real-time updates about the conference, new happenings and key information, and interact with SAS professionals and users who will be in attendance. The SAS Global Forum Facebook Fan Page has more than 700 active members and is growing daily. We also recommend you become a fan of the SAS Publishing and SAS Training & Certification pages. We will all be posting photos and status updates live from the Demo Floor. Watch our feeds and you just might win some free SAS goodies!

Blogging
There will be LOTS of blogging going on during SAS Global Forum. The official SAS Global Forum blog features many talented voices from all over SAS. Read along to follow a series of posts during the conference to hear from SAS employees serving a wide variety of roles at SAS Global Forum. Gain insight into popular paper presentations, Demo Hall activities, breaking SAS news and the latest conference updates.

You’ll also want to visit the Open Mic blog to hear from SAS Press authors, SAS Publishing editors and others as they blog live from the conference. SAS Training & Certification will be launching a new blog next month but first we need your help! Vote for your favorite blog name or suggest your own and you’ll automatically be entered in a drawing to win a free training class!

Linked in
The SAS Global Forum LinkedIn Group has more than 400 members and is a great way to connect with other professionals in your field who will be sharing their insights at the conference. Joining the Fans of SAS Books and SAS Training & Certification LinkedIn groups will keep you in touch with your peers long after SAS Global Forum 2010 ends.

YouTube
Get a closer look at SAS Global Forum through the informal video interview series, Inside SAS Global Forum 2010 hosted by Dave Thomas, SAS Social Media Manager and Waynette Tubbs, Editor of the SAS Tech Report. We would love to hear your ideas for what you’d like to see on Inside SAS Global Forum. Who would you like us to interview? Please send your ideas to Waynette.Tubbs@sas.com.

Last year, SAS Publishing kicked off a new video series featuring interviews with SAS Press authors during the M2009 Data Mining Conference and The Premier Business Leadership Series Conference in October and will be continuing it at this year's major conferences including SAS Global Forum. Armed with a handheld Kodak Zi8, Kirsten Hamstra will be tracking down authors and asking them 3-4 questions which she’ll then edit together into a fun video montage for SAS Publishing’s YouTube channel.

Also, if you’ve ever taken a SAS Training class, we encourage you to visit the video interview station in the Demo Hall at the SAS Education Center to record a short video about how SAS training has helped you. We will also be putting together a video montage for SAS Training’s YouTube channel.

SAS Social Media Analytics Launch
SAS will announce a new social media analytics solution April 12 via a live webcast. See it in person at SAS Global Forum during the opening ceremony or watch it live at www.sas.com/smalaunch and tweet about it with the #SASSMA hashtag. During the webcast you’ll hear from social media and analytics experts, see the new software in action and have the opportunity to ask questions. Don’t miss this highly anticipated product launch!

Meeting you Face-to-Face!
Obviously you can tell we love communicating with our customers and colleagues via social media, but there’s still nothing better than good, old-fashioned face-to-face communication. We can’t wait to meet you in person and talk about whatever it is you want to talk about it – social media, SAS Global Forum, new SAS technologies, restaurants, books, sports, travel, children…you get the idea – we’re excited to get to know as many people as we can. After all, isn’t networking one of the greatest benefits of attending a conference?