SAS presenters series: Ed Hughes

In hopes of adding to your SAS Global Forum experience, we've kicked off a SAS presenters series. Here, we’ve asked some of the SAS presenters five questions to learn more about what makes them tick, why they chose to present and what they hoped you would take away from the presentation. Take a look at Ed Hughes’s answers.

Ed Hughes, SAS/OR Product Manager

Ed, tell me a fun fact about you that would make your personality come alive for the readers.T
here are 104.5 regulation ice hockey pucks stacked neatly in the windows of my office, ten pictures of goalies (not counting mine) on my walls, and I'm pretty sure that I have the only Buddy Holly bobble head in all of SAS. I've been getting hit in the mask with hockey pucks for more than 23 years, and let's just say that shows in my personality as well as in my office décor!

104.5 hockey pucks?
That's just an estimate; one of the 105 total pucks is a small promotional puck that I found in a sports shop outside Zurich (along with, incredibly, a regulation puck for the local team—precisely was what I was looking for). The half-size puck advertises a hockey equipment manufacturer.

I also have two HP foam pucks that I think HP gave away at SUGI 29 in Montreal. It’s always interesting
when I toss one of them at an unfortunate office visitor and they think it's a real puck.

I guess from your last answer, you’ve been to previous SAS Global Forums?
Yes – ten times. I went in 1998 and then from 2000-2008. My most memorable experiences were at SUGI 23, when Lockheed-Martin Astronautics, a SAS/OR customer, won an Enterprise Computing Award and every time I hear opening session speakers, including Dr. Goodnight, single out operations research and optimization as one of SAS’ greatest strengths.

Why did you write New Features in Optimization with SAS/OR?
Thanks to the global economy, virtually every organization is focusing on optimization. Everyone needs to make the most of their limited (and possibly dwindling resources) and to do more with less. Current conditions present challenges but also present opportunities to re-make the decision-making process to be clearer, more consistent and more adaptable to change. Optimization fuels this transformation, helps organizations not only survive a crisis but excel going forward.

During your presentation, what were the most important highlights or questions that you hoped to cover?
I hope that my paper on optimization shows how SAS, by coordinating powerful, accessible optimization methods with all of the data, analytic and reporting capabilities that are always needed to do real-world optimization work, is uniquely qualified to help our customers tackle the optimization challenges that they are confronting.

SAS presenters series: Ed Hughes was published on SAS Users.