Tuesday was a great day at M2009. I was able to talk to SAS Press author Randy Collica, who is working on a new edition of CRM Segmentation and Clustering Using SAS Enterprise Miner. I interviewed him and Curt Hinrichs, another SAS Press author, who is a coauthor of the upcoming JMP Essentials: An Illustrated Step-by-Step Guide for New Users. Although my interviewing skills leave quite a bit to be desired, Randy and Curt were great. I look forward to seeing their interviews on our SAS YouTube channel.
One of the oddest things about yesterday were the birds. When we arrived in the exhibit hall in the morning, two sparrows had somehow gotten into the room and were dive-bombing the ice buckets. Kind of cool, but not really good for business, so Caesar's staff removed the ice buckets. Eventually, at about 11, they turned all the lights out in the hall and opened the doors in the hope that the birds would leave (apparently sparrows fly toward the sun [at least that is what someone told me]). I believe it worked, because I didn't hear a peep the rest of the afternoon. I hope they made it out of the hotel.
I tell the bird story because it is a great segue to the success of our Twitter giveaway. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people on Twitter at the conference. We had six very happy winners yesterday. Check out our M2009 photo album on Facebook to see them with their prized SAS Publishing data mining books.
Tuesday night's PBLS opening reception was great fun. Cirque de Soleil performers wandered the room (see left), and others performed what I can only call feats of strength. So now it is day one at PBLS, and the exhibit hall has undergone a shocking transformation in the span of one night. The room has a completely different look, with new signage and a more open feel. I look forward to our Twitter giveaway this morning and to interviewing some more authors. A nice surprise this morning was meeting SAS Press author Bobby Hull. I had no idea he was going to be here. But we have an interview scheduled for this afternoon, where I'm sure he'll be talking about his new title, Manufacturing Best Practices: Optimizing Productivity and Product Quality. Watch out Oprah, here I come!
