It’s September already! Where did the time go? Here at SAS Canada’s head office in Toronto our rooftop rain collectors are straining at the seams, a result of one of the wettest summers on record. The trade-off, of course, is that gardens and parks have rarely looked so beautiful in the dog days of August and our tanks are heartily equipped with plenty of rain water ready to be treated and reused in normal building functions.

SAS Canada is committed to contributing to environmental sustainability. In fact, it has been at the forefront of our activities and events this past quarter. More than 50 Toronto-based SAS employees downgraded their daily commutes for a week to reduce carbon emissions in support of Pollution Probe. While the initiative did result in sore muscles for some, everyone who participated had a smile on their face for the whole week. When all was said and done, employees saved 2,160,329 grams of carbon emissions by parking the car and enjoying some exercise.

The sustainability theme continues as SAS prepares to roll out the long-awaited SAS® 9.2 platform in the New Year. Existing SAS customers have been gradually upgrading to the initial SAS 9.2 release, and many have been opting to support environmental responsibility. In an effort to reduce packaging and production elements, SAS is proud to offer the SAS 9.2 upgrade as a downloadable package, with backup physical copies also to be made available in support of the downloads.

Users group activity continues to accelerate in leaps and bounds. With roughly half the meetings completed for the year, almost 3,000 SAS users have attended or presented at meetings across the country. Executive committees in each city centre are firmly driving the meeting agendas and sourcing presenters and presentations from within their own rapidly growing SAS communities. The SAS Academic Program, which focuses on growing SAS usage in university and college settings, continues to pick up steam as well, with almost 1,000 undergraduate, post-graduate and doctoral students participating in SAS-sponsored conferences and forums.

Finally, it’s the time of the year when we seek to acknowledge and celebrate the outstanding contribution of a member of the SAS community by bestowing the Customer Value Award on that individual. The award winner receives airfare, hotel and registration for SAS Global Forum 2009, to be held in Washington, DC, from March 22-25, in addition to an award presented at a special dinner honouring Canadian users groups and customers. We need your help to determine the winner! On this Web site, you’ll find an outline of the qualities the Customer Value Award winner should possess, as well as a form to nominate someone you feel is deserving.

Here’s looking forward to a successful and productive end of 2008 for the whole SAS community. On behalf of the Customer Value team, we hope you enjoy the best of what the new season has to offer and we look forward to seeing you at a users group meeting soon!

All the best,
Wally Thiessen
Manager, Customer Value