SAS® History: I just celebrated my fourth year as an instructor with the Education group of SAS Canada. My first contact ever with SAS was at University of Montreal in the department of mathematics where I learned to use SAS on Windows and UNIX. My background is statistics but like many instructors at SAS, I teach a wide array of courses including programming, statistics, data mining and business intelligence.

I love to teach and share my knowledge of SAS with customers. In my job, I travel all over Canada for training. This gives me the opportunity to meet people with diverse backgrounds and experience. Every time I teach I am amazed by the broad range of ways in which people are using SAS. I learn something new each time myself.

Partner/Family: I am married and have two kids – a girl and a boy. They are in elementary school and they are growing up fast.

Pets: I am a cat person and we have a cat at home, but recently we also got a dog. Family and friends think that the dog is cute. I refer to it as the demon from the bottomless pit. Now we have to hide all the shoes and pray for the best.

Sports/Hobbies: I used to play badminton and practice iaido, but with my hectic instructor’s schedule, I am on the road a lot and it’s hard to be disciplined. I am a big football enthusiast. I have season tickets for les Carabins, the University of Montreal football team. On the NFL side, I am a devoted New York Giants fan. Go Big Blue!

Favorite Foods: French bistro cuisine. My favorites are duck confit and beef tartare. Oui! Oui!

What your ideal weekend would be: My ideal weekend would be to spend time with my family in a nice resort and relax. No dog eating shoes, no cell phone and no stress. On the other hand, a weekend in New York City and a football game at Giants Stadium would also be welcome.

If I could be anything at all (besides a SAS programmer): I would be living in southern France on a wine estate, refining my products and enjoying life as it should be. When I was a teenager, I spent four months in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France and fell in love with the people, the gastronomy and the culture.

One thing every SAS programmer should know: Did you know that you can set the language in your SAS session with the DFLANG = system option? Once you have enabled this option, you can then leverage a wide variety of international date formats to display the month and day of the week in the language of your choice. Learn more here: “SAS Software Formats: Going Beneath the Surface” (pdf)