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 Whoa! Hang on to your hats folks – change
is in the air!
Opportunities
for SAS users in Canada abound as Customer Value - SAS
Canada's customer care program - enters its second
year. Over the past year, many of you participated
in one of our regional and/or in-house user group
meetings, contributed to our Customer Satisfaction
survey, SAS Usage survey, and more. Most
recently, many of you were able to join us at one of our
Celebration Tour stops to celebrate our mutual success
with SAS! One of the highlights from the Tour was
the introduction of the SAS Customer Support Center Web
site - http://support.sas.com/ - providing current
information on everything from tips and tricks to
training to technical support. As we wrap up the
tour, we’re pleased to report that around 600 attendees
across nine cities will have taken part in the
festivities. We look forward to meeting up with many of
you again this fall!
Events such as these are only a part of the Customer
Value team's mission. A little over a year ago,
SAS Canada formed this team in an effort to continually
improve the SAS user experience - to find ways to help
you get maximum value from SAS. In
addition to offering the high-level of SAS services
you’re used to, such as tech support, education,
consulting, and the like, we wanted to help you explore
new ways of getting the knowledge and understanding that
you need, in ways that are most beneficial to you.
So don’t be surprised
when you hear of a local user group starting
up in your area, or a Webinar on various facets
of SAS usage or … a regularly published newsletter
designed especially for you – the SAS user!
We want to make sure we’re meeting
all of your SAS needs, so if there is something
we can do to help you, or if you feel we're
missing something, please contact Martha Casanova,
Christy Hobley or myself at cvp@can.sas.com.
For starters, we’d like you to help us
name this newsletter … we’re looking for something
with a little pizzazz. So give it a try...the
chosen entry wins a prize!
Since we don't like
spam any more than you do, this will be the
only unsolicited issue you will receive. If
you like what you see here, and would like to
get updates on SAS every quarter, then click
the Subscribe
link. It's that simple. This newsletter
is for you, and we welcome your input to shape
this into a relevant information portal. Just
click contact
Customer Value team and send us an e-mail.
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Celebration Tour - A Success!
 From Halifax to
Whitehorse, SAS' Customer Value team has presented a
series of half-day seminars for users across the country
to celebrate our mutual success. Attendees at
these events got the inside scoop on new features in
SAS® 9, services available to SAS users and a firsthand
introduction to the SAS (Canada) Customer Value
team.
Listed below is a wrapup of the 2003
Celebration of Success:
|
Date |
City |
Location |
Number of Attendees
|
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Feb.26 |
Toronto
|
The
Ontario Club |
190 |
|
Mar.11 |
Montreal
|
Hôtel Omni
Mont-Royal |
80 |
|
May
2 |
Ottawa
|
Chateau Laurier
Hotel |
190 |
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May
9 |
Kananaskis
|
Kananaskis
Mountain Lodge |
24 |
|
May
29 |
Halifax
|
Convention Centre
|
27 |
|
June 3
|
Whitehorse
|
Best
Western Gold Rush Inn |
21 |
|
June
4 |
Vancouver
|
UBC Robson
Square |
26 |
|
June
25 |
Winnipeg
|
Sheraton
Winnipeg |
27 |
|
June
26 |
Regina
|
Hotel
Saskatchewan Radisson Plaza |
31
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SUGI28:
The Canadian perspective
More than 70
Canadians attended SUGI28 in Seattle, many of them
giving presentations or accepting awards. Wally
Thiessen from the SAS Toronto office hosted a Canadian
booth and gave out one of the most sought-after gifts at
the conference: the popular “I am Canadian” T-shirt.
He also hosted a casual cocktail hour. For
further details and access to papers from SUGI28, click
here.
Awards & Recognition - Chris
Heeney from Ottawa wins award!
In keeping with our
customer-driven philosophy, SAS employees from the
Technical Support Division and other SAS user
departments nominate and select a recipient each year
for the SAS User Feedback Award. This award
honors the individual who has made the most outstanding
contribution to enhancing SAS software through his or
her suggestions. This year's voting resulted in a tie,
producing the award's first ever co-winners: Randy
Collica of Hewlett-Packard and Chris Heeney of the
Canadian Department of National Defence. Annette
Harris of the Technical Support Division said both
winners "exemplify the type of engaged users who help us
with the continual enrichment of our software
solutions." Full
story...
A total of 10
papers/presentations were given by Canadians and three
won awards!
Category: Applications
Development
Best
Contributed Paper: "Watch Your Language!" – Using SCL
Lists to Store Vocabulary, Paper 30
Presented by Greg
McLean, Statistics Canada
Category: Data
Warehousing and Enterprise Solutions
Best Contributed Paper: SAS
in the Office – IT Works, Paper 157
Presented by Peter W. Eberhardt, Fernwood Consulting Group Inc.
Honorable Mentions:
Integrating
SAS ® and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 for Better and
Faster Reporting, Paper 153
Presented by Helen Kim, Helen Kim
Inc.
For a complete list of all Canadian papers,
click here
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Dennis
Mikalson–Lethbridge, Alberta
 Company: Alberta Department of
Agriculture for 35 years.
SAS History: I am a self-taught user who
started using SAS in the late 1980s. At first, I used
SAS for the statistical analysis features, and still use
REG, GLM and mixed modeling. Early PCs really limited
the power available using SAS, but as PCs became faster
and had more memory, I started doing everything in SAS.
I love SAS/GRAPH–it takes time to learn and set up, and
I am no expert, but using macros and GREPLAY templates
makes it quick and easy to prepare report graphics for
agriculture research and scientific papers.
I have used SAS to build databases for water
allocation and global warming modeling, time series
analysis for flow modeling, QC for water hammer studies
in irrigation pipelines as well as many Base SAS
procedures. There are often many ways to attack a
problem with SAS, and I may not always use the most
sophisticated technique, but when I need help, SAS
support is always there. I study SUGI proceedings and
technical tips because there is always something to learn.
For more on Dennis, including his “Techie Tip,” click
here | |
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Title:
The How-to Book for SAS/GRAPH
Software
Author:
Thomas Miron
Reviewed by: Lesley Harschnitz,
Senior Technical
Leader, Dofasco Inc.
Lesley has been with Dofasco
Inc. for 22 years. She is currently a senior technical
leader in the IT Services department, and has worked for
the past three years leading the Information Security
group.
Lesley's
Opinion: The How-to Book for
SAS/Graph Software is an excellent basic reference for
creating business graphs with SAS. The sections are well
organized and the code is properly commented and easy to
understand.
Full
review...
If you would like to review a book,
please contact the Customer Value
team. For a complete list of the popular books
on our review list, click
here. |
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–Customer Satisfaction surveys were
conducted earlier this year. The results
from this survey provide us with useful insights as to
how we can serve you better. Thanks to all who
participated!
Highlights:
- 79% were "extremely"
or "somewhat" satisfied with SAS.
- 91% would "definitely" or "probably"
recommend SAS to a colleague.
- 89% expect their organisation to be a SAS
customer in five years.
- 35% expect their organisation to increase
SAS usage in the next 12 months, compared
with 6% who expect a decrease.
–SAS was on
60 Minutes!
Sunday, April 20,CBS rebroadcast the
feature segment on SAS, featuring President and CEO Jim
Goodnight that originally aired last October.
The
12-minute segment, narrated by Morley Safer, was filmed
during two separate trips to SAS world headquarters in
Cary, North Carolina, last August. See
the story...
–You can get
up-to-date technical and business information
by subscribing to SAS'
e-newsletters. Click
here for details.
–Get a peek
into future releases of SAS 9 by watching SAS
System 9, The Revolution Continues. This video
provides a high-level overview of the features and
functions contained in this version. It also touches on
the four SAS 9 cornerstones - usability, scalability,
manageability and interoperability - and their
significance to the success of the new version.
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–Our
June-December 2003 SAS training catalogue is mailing now. To get your name added to the
mailing list, contact us at sastraining@sas.com. But
don't wait to view the complete June-December
2003 course schedule! It is available online at
http://support.sas.com/training/canada/
–Scheduled
for the first time in Canada, Survival Data Mining:
Modeling Customer Event Histories. This course is
taught by Will Potts, chief statistician at Data Miners
Inc. Will has designed this course for professional data
analysts working on business prediction problems. If you
are one of the many data analysts who has recognized
that many problems, such as churn prediction, resemble
typical survival analysis problems, and want to know the
benefits and pitfalls of using survival analysis for
business intelligence, this is the right course for you!
Don't miss
out. This course will be offered Sept. 10-12 in Toronto
for $2,805, or use EPTO units to save more. . Click
here for full details.
–For the
latest information on education training courses, register
now to receive EDUmation –
the monthly electronic newsletter from SAS
Training. |
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–Help us
choose the name of this
newsletter
Send
your suggestions to the Customer Value team.
If your idea is chosen, we'll send you a special SAS
prize!
–Can you
guess where the picture at the top of the newsletter was
taken? The first person to submit a correct
answer will win a prize. Be specific! Send your answers to the
Customer Value team.
–
Suggestions/Comments
If you have any comments or suggestions for future editions of
this newsletter, please let the
Customer Value team
know!
–
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