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A
message from SAS Canada President Carl Farrell
SAS Canada is proud to be stepping out in 2006 with the unveiling of the SAS Building--the new Canadian headquarters in downtown Toronto. After 17 years of solid growth, SAS needed a larger and more flexible location to support its Canadian operations today and for years to come. The new headquarters will feature the latest advancements in environmental and architectural design allowing it to become the first building in Toronto to be LEED* (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified. The building can easily accommodate small gatherings to full conferences of 150 or more attendees. Within days of opening its doors, the new headquarters was able to host a conference on Best Practices for Ontario's Evolving Healthcare System. Please feel free to drop by if you're in the neighbourhood, or visit www.sas.com/280king for more information. We are also very pleased to announce the winner of the 2005 Customer Value Award--Mark Lucas from the University of Saskatchewan! Mark will receive a complimentary trip to SUGI31 (including airfare, hotel and registration fees) and will be honoured with the award at a dinner at SUGI. There were many worthy nominees for this award and we'd like to make several honourable mentions: Wendy Bergerud, Jason Liang and Dr. Mik Bickis. All of these individuals contribute significantly to the SAS community and we thank them for their on-going efforts! Watch for our special profile on Mark and our runner's up in the spring issue of INSIGHTS! Many thanks also to everyone who took the time to nominate these and other worthy candidates. Speaking of SUGI, SAS' annual user group conference will come a little earlier this year—March 26-29. Highlights this year include new Industry Focus Sessions, a hefty slate of presentations on migrating to SAS9, and the always eventful Canadian User Night Out on Monday, March 27. Due to popular demand, we've re-printed an article from last year's pre-SUGI INSIGHTS entitled "So You Want To Attend SUGI" just in case you need to explain to others the value of SUGI to your organization. Finally, as we move into our third year of publishing INSIGHTS, we'd like you to let us know what you like and value about INSIGHTS, as well as what else you'd like to get out of this newsletter. Please send your responses to Customer Value. We'd like to send pairs of complimentary movie passes to the first ten responses. Congratulations once again to Mark Lucas, and I look forward to seeing many of you at SUGI31!
RiskAdvisory Summit Draws Record Numbers The 3rd Annual RiskAdvisory Utility Risk Management Summit, held Nov. 9-10 at the InterContinental Hotel in Chicago, brought together high-profile energy risk management experts and attracted delegates from across North America. This year, in response to delegate feedback from 2004, the event was expanded to two full days. As hosts, RiskAdvisory (a division of SAS) attracted corporate sponsorships from SAS, NBC Global Risk Management and Energy Central. The event drew a record number of utilities executives, regulators, marketers and consumer representatives who engaged in candid discussions about natural gas and electric utility hedging programs across North America. Attendance at the event increased 50 percent over 2004, with attendees representing more than 50 organizations, including 30-plus natural gas and electric utilities from across North America. Feedback from delegates' evaluation forms was positive, with 25 out of 42 scoring the event as "excellent" and 17 as "good." No one ranked the event as "average" or "poor." Summit attendees were surveyed regarding their thoughts on utility hedging. This press release summarizes the findings of that survey. Plans are underway for the 4th Annual Summit, which will most likely take place Fall 2006 in Chicago. If you're interested in finding out more, contact Kathy Walsh at Kathy.Walsh@sas.com. Back by popular demand ... So You Want To Attend SUGI It's a common occurrence: You're being asked to create more reports, cut costs in your department, find a quicker way to analyze your data. Whatever the requests, they're coming at you faster than ever before. The problem is, you don't have the training or resources to do what needs to be done. You could learn what you need to know at SUGI, but training and travel budgets have been slashed. How can you convince your manager to approve your SUGI attendance? We talked with three SUGI 30 chairs, Greg S. Nelson, conference chair; Andrew T. Kuligowski, section chair for tutorials; and David Johnson, section chair for posters, to get their advice and suggestions. As an experienced SAS user, Johnson has battled the travel constraints from time to time. "My argument that I would be able to positively influence the work of other people was often persuasive," he says. As an independent consultant now, Johnson has to persuade himself of the value of SUGI. "I leave for SUGI with at least three key and current questions I want my training to answer and a similar number of methodological questions I want my peer group to answer. I always return with those answers, and a handful of others, and implement changes immediately. Sometimes the answer is: You are doing it the best way it can be done. That, too, is a valuable response," Johnson explains. User Group Subscriptions and Schedule If you'd like to receive information about user groups in your area, please subscribe to our email list. Once this list has been updated, we will only send emails to those that have registered online. This is a great way to change any of your details as well so that our database is current. Dates for upcoming user group meetings are still being finalized. Please check our Canadian User Group Web page regularly for updates.
User Group Meetings:
Rick
Watts
I
have a background in information technology, having cut my teeth as
a C programmer in the 1980s. My introduction to SAS came as an occasional
user "cloning" PROC report code to produce basic database
listings for clinical trials. I moved from southern England to Canada
in 2001 and joined Edmonton's only contract research organization
in 2003. I'm now programming in SAS pretty much full time. When I'm
not programming, I help out with other data management tasks. I'm
also an active member of the Edmonton SAS Users Group, and am on the
executive committee. I'm amazed that from a city of around 1 million
people, we can get a group of 60 SAS users together for a meeting.
I guess it just shows that SAS users are a dedicated bunch!
Gloria
Pierre I started with SAS in 1994 in a temp position in finance and then moved to book sales. This position was the first time in years that I was confined in an office. I started as a full-time employee in June 1996 in the Education Department as classroom coordinator. We had one classroom at the time. My greatest fear was that I'd be late and the students and the instructors would be here before me. Fortunately, it never materialized. For more on Gloria, click here. Techie Tip from Education provided by Lorne Rothman, Ph.D., SAS Statistical Services Specialist
Jim
Godfrey For more on Jim, including his "Techie Tip", click here.
SHRUG Two years ago, the SAS Halifax Regional User Group (SHRUG) set sail to provide a SAS knowledge forum for local SAS software users in business and academia. While the group attracts users from across the province, the executive committee actually has far greater reach, with members hailing from Poland, Sri Lanka, Greece, and even a little state in the U.S. called North Carolina! Although researchers and professors from Dalhousie University tend to represent a significant portion of the membership, many others come from Michelin, Xwave, Cancer Care Nova Scotia, various small businesses, insurance, federal and provincial government departments and more.
Bestselling
SAS Press Book Titles for Higher Education
We invite you to consider using our documentation as part of your curriculum! Click here for a list of the bestsellers. |
by Fulton Lee, SAS Toronto As a SAS®9 business intelligence (BI) consultant, I'm asked about administration and security of the SAS®9 environment, particularly as it pertains to SAS Libraries. The SAS Metadata Server Library helps in the management of authorization of users to specific SAS Libraries. When
multiple permissions are assigned to an object, the idea of precedence
has to be considered. Just as in math there is BEDMAS (Brackets,
Exponents, Division, Multiplication, Addition and Subtraction), in
SAS security there is ACE, ACT, U, G, GwG, SU, PUB. OK -- so
the acronym isn't perfect, but you get the idea: Access
Control Entries rank higher than Access Control Templates; Users rank
higher than Groups, Groups Within Groups, SASUSERS and PUBLIC.
Title:
Author: Michele Burlew Reviewed by: Erica Lynne Zwilling, Stroud Water Research Center. Reviewer's
Opinion: For more on this book click here
A
SAS Canadian Health and Life Sciences user group is coming soon !
SAS Maintains Double-Digit BI Growth Internationally "2005
FORTUNE magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work for in America" Click here to check open positions at SAS Canada... You
can easily find out what's new in SAS 9.1 from new products to updates
and enhancements. For details on all of SAS' products and solutions, click here.
SAS Public Courses online The complete January-June 2006 public course list is now available online. A variety of courses have been added across Canada with something for everyone. We have also added a new SAS course: Business Forecasting Using SAS: A Point-and-Click Approach. This course is recommended for those who want to create business forecasts using SAS/ETS software. Additional
classroom in Toronto SAS Training
and Certification at SUGI
San Francisco, March 26-29, 2006 Registrations are now open! We hope to see you there. Spring Tour - We'll be showcasing our latest technology in data integration, business intelligence and analytics. Stay tuned for details...
SAS® Canada establishes Healthcare Advisory Council – New council seeks to improve delivery of healthcare services throughout Ontario – TORONTO,ON. (December 7, 2005) – Furthering its commitment to the healthcare industry, SAS®, the leader in business intelligence, today announced the formation of the SAS Canada Healthcare Advisory Council. The new Council includes prominent industry experts and innovators who are all focused and dedicated to improving the delivery of healthcare services throughout Ontario.
Ontario Hospitals Report Report tool reduces result submissions from months to minutes.
Trivia game - Be the first one to submit the correct answer to one of the two questions below and win a pair of movie tickets! 1) Explain what
the function Propcase (name) does. Send your responses to the Customer Value Team. Suggestions/Comments Subscription
information Some
of the files in this newsletter can be viewed with the free Adobe
Acrobat Reader available via download from the Adobe Web site. If
you do not have the Adobe Acrobat Reader, click on the button below
to download it now. |
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