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Message from Vice President, Professional
Services & Alliances -- Anne Dixon
In the coming weeks, the SAS Users Group
International (SUGI)
conference will celebrate its 30th anniversary. As one of the largest
IT user conferences in the world, it’s interesting to note that
SUGI started out as a user-driven conference for sharing SAS knowledge
-- and it’s still driven by that philosophy today. SUGI’s
dramatic growth over the years is testament to its appeal to SAS users.
From 206 attendees in 1976, the conference now attracts more than 3,000
attendees from all over the world.
 Canadian SAS users have played a
role in SUGI’s growth. Roughly 25 percent of attendees at SUGI 29
were Canadian, and a Canadian consultant, Robert Fecht, will chair SUGI
32 in Orlando. But whether they’re Canadian, European, Asian or
American, all SAS users recognize SUGI as the most effective forum for
the exchange of ideas regarding SAS usage. And to help you make the
case for attending SUGI 30, we’ve enclosed an article, “So You Want to Attend SUGI,” from our
alliance partners at IBM.
One of the most exciting things planned for SUGI
30 will be discussions on the impact of SAS®9
in our clients’ environments. Following its launch in 2004, we
have seen many companies take advantage of the capabilities offered
through the SAS®9 architecture. Members of
my services staff have seen this first-hand through our involvement in
everything from SAS®9 Readiness Assessments
and training programs through to SAS®9
Migration Planning and Implementation. We’re pleased to share
with you our many SAS®9 success stories,
which feature a wide variety of platforms and industries.
Looking ahead, we’ll be working with the
rest of the SAS Canada team to introduce a “SAS®9
Corner” starting in our next issue of INSIGHTS. Many thanks to
Kamran Jaffry at RBC for the suggestion!
Finally, following our theme of profiling some of
the people and companies who use SAS day in and day out, we hope
you’ll enjoy learning more about Bruce Densmore, the IBM Global
Services employee who recently won our Customer Value 2004 award, as
well as Bill Klein at Ryerson Polytechnic University in Toronto.
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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.
Whenever Kuligowski received management approval
to attend SUGI, he always promised to write up a trip report within 30
days of his return or within two weeks if his "to do" list wasn't
stacked up. “That trip report contained a standard set of topics,
including ‘most useful papers attended,’ ‘major
announcements,’ ‘contacts made/renewed’ and
‘most valuable tip learned.’ I made sure I planned my time
in such a way that I would have something significant to put in each
category. This trip report was then routed to management, as well as
all interested SAS users,” he notes.
Kuligowski offers another tidbit of advice.
“Whenever I ‘borrow’ a coding tip that I learn at a
SAS conference, I put a note in the comment section crediting the
author and referencing the appropriate proceedings, paper number and
page number. This way, folks who look at the code after me will know
where to go for further reference. It also ensures there will be
something tangible to show a corporate resource…proving valuable
information is learned at SAS conferences.”
“I justified a SAS training course by
costing the issue the employer faced. I conservatively estimated the
impact my work might have and balanced that against the airfares and
accommodations. It was persuasive in reversing a previous negative
decision,” states Johnson.
Johnson also notes that SUGI papers can be used to
support a travel argument. “If your SUGI paper has been accepted,
this can also be used as a persuasive tool. Presenting a paper casts a
positive light on your employer and provides valuable market
visibility.”
As this year’s chair and president of
ThotWave Technologies, Nelson is, of course, a big advocate of SUGI.
But he also has to justify his employees’ attendance. “SUGI
is the single best place to get the training you need. You also come
away with an outstanding overview of new SAS technologies, SAS product-
and solution-specific information – not to mention the networking
opportunities with other SAS users,” he says.
“If you’re really having a hard time
getting your manager’s approval, try being proactive. Look for
opportunities to share accommodations with your co-workers. Also check
into alternative booking sources. Places like Expedia and Priceline may
offer affordable lodging,” notes Nelson.
If you are fortunate enough to be able to attend
SUGI, be sure to show the value of the experience to your employer upon
your return. In addition to the suggestions above, be sure to:
- Train others. Give a presentation on what you
learned to your co-workers.
- Implement at least one change or technique
immediately upon returning to work. Document the savings (time or
monetary) for management.
- Create a logbook with code samples and fixes
you learned, so it can be shared with co-workers.
Good luck, and we hope to see you at SUGI!
Spring User Session schedule
now available.
The following is a
list of events and locations. If you are interested in attending,
please register at this link.
(Events will be added to this Web site approximately four weeks prior
to date.)
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 Bill Klein
– Toronto
Company: Ryerson University
Ryerson University uses SAS to program a
computerized testing service. Students fill in their answers to
examinations and surveys on an optical sheet. After the sheets have
been scanned, programs written in SAS produce a confidential report
that the instructor uses to measure the students’ grasp of their
subjects.
Options have been built into the control sheets so
that the instructor can tailor the results that he or she requires,
including a psychometric assessment of the fairness and reliability of
the test itself.
The system has been used to score 32,000
examinations since it was introduced in 1990. Although there have been
inevitable foul-ups with lost sheets or misunderstood instructions,
there has never been a single claim that the system gave a student an
unfair test score.
Reports are printed in detail, but instructors can
also receive the results by e-mail. The system shows the usual
percentage scores for each student and student numbers are also used to
allow the results to be posted without names. Instructors can choose
any maximum score in their marking scheme. There are penalties for
guessing and the questions can be broken down into subtopics so that
the instructor can detect which subjects give the students the most
trouble. Documentation has been placed on Ryerson Universty’s Web
site.
The entire system comprises 5000 lines of SAS
code. Bill is working on an expansion of the testing service into an
Internet format with SAS.
With the time saved from the drudgery of marking
multiple-choice examinations, instructors can concentrate their
energies on designing better courses and counseling students.
To learn more about Bill Klein, click
here.
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 Stephen
Keelan – Toronto
SAS Canada
Stephen is the national education manager for SAS
in Canada. He joined SAS in 1997 as a member of the team teaching core
SAS technology – from data management to Web applications.
Stephen came to SAS with experience from both the business and academic
worlds and with an appreciation for the value of receiving the right
training at the right time.
For more on Stephen, including his "Techie Tip", click
here.
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 Karl Quon
– Toronto
SAS Canada
SAS History: six years using SAS
Karl is a senior technical consultant with SAS
Canada. He joined SAS in 1998 and has worked on numerous projects
involving Marketing Automation, Data Warehousing and Anti Money
Laundering.
For more on Karl and his "Techie Tip," click
here.
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 Bruce
Densmore – Toronto
Company: IBM Canada Ltd.
SAS History: I joined the Bank of
Nova Scotia after graduation in 1977. My introduction to SAS came in
the early 1980s while working with mainframe performance and capacity
data and analysis. Since then, I have been using and supporting SAS
software. In 1985, I moved to an end-user support role involving more
than 300 SAS clients running on MVS, VM/CMS and Windows platforms. In
2001, I was “outsourced” to IBM, where I continue to
support the SAS end-user community at the Bank of Nova Scotia.
I am a member of the Toronto Area SAS Society,
serving on the executive board for more than 10 years. I have been a
SAS Certified Professional since the certification was introduced in
1999. SAS plays a large part in my daily support and analytical
responsibilities. In the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to
explore the use of SAS software for grid computing and Web publishing.
For more on Bruce and his "Techie Tip," click
here.
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–SAS
ranked No 8 in “2004 FORTUNE magazine’s 100 Best Companies
to Work for in America"?
The company has been among the top 20 companies, and six times among
the top 10, all seven years that the list has been published. Read
on...
In 2004, SAS Canada was also
recognized as one of the top 100 employers in Canada by Maclean's
magazine. Click
here to view our current positions.
–You
can easily find out what’s new in SAS 9.1 from new products to
updates and enhancements.
Go to the SAS 9 link from our support.sas.com
website.
–For
details on all of SAS' products and solutions, click here
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–SAS®9 Readiness Assessment and SAS®9
Migration Service
SAS Consulting is here to help make your upgrade to SAS®9
as effective as
possible, providing you a stable high-performance environment. SAS
consultants
have developed a migration methodology to assess your current
environment and
quickly develop a migration plan to suit your specific needs.
During the assessment phase, SAS
consultants will make sure that the benefits of SAS®9
for your environment are well understood. During the migration,
we’ll work with your SAS administrators and users to ensure that
they receive the SAS®9 knowledge they need
to maximize their use of this powerful software.
With SAS Consulting, the
assessment, planning and migration of SAS®9
technologies will result in a quick and efficient adoption, providing
your user community with a solid, robust and scalable environment.
For more information
please contact: consult@can.sas.com.
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–Training at SUGI
Get the most out of your SAS Users
Group International (SUGI) experience
by joining us for a variety of SAS training courses at SUGI 30.
Starting April
6, SAS Education will offer 14 courses covering frequently requested
SAS topics.
The training will be held prior to the conference at the Pennsylvania
Convention
Center. Save on SUGI training by using your Canadian EPTO. Register now!
You can also leave SUGI 30 as a SAS Certified Professional.
On Saturday, April 9 in the Pennsylvania Convention Center, you will
have the opportunity to take any currently available beta or production
SAS Certified Professional exam. Exams will be offered in two sessions
beginning at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. All exams are $150 USD (except for the
SAS Warehouse Technology exam, which is $75). Use this opportunity to
optimize your time at SUGI and to earn a professional credential
signifying your SAS knowledge.
–Live Web classes
have never been easier!
With the Virtual Lab, you
enjoy Internet access to the software used in class. That means you no
longer need the software on your local PC. Wherever you are, we'll
bring SAS instructor-based training to you. Check out the Live Web
courses that currently offer the Virtual Lab.
–SAS®
Enterprise Miner™ course update
“Predictive Modeling
Using SAS Enterprise Miner” is the foundation for further courses
in the data mining curriculum. It has been updated to SAS Enterprise
Miner 5.1, and is designed to give data analysts the necessary skills
to build successful predictive models in SAS®9.
We have added course dates to our Montreal and Toronto classrooms. Check
out the full outline.
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–MODERNIZED
STAFFING AND PLANNING
Public Service Commission analyzes personnel data with SAS®
Effective human resources
management is fundamental to
the success of any enterprise and especially vital for large,
multifaceted organizations.
As Canada's largest and most diverse employer, the federal Public
Service Commission
of Canada (PSC) has a major interest in any tool that can support human
resources
planning and improve efficiencies in the staffing system. Recently the
PSC and
SAS combined their expertise to develop such a tool. Read More
–SAS®
Revenue Optimization Suite helps retailers alleviate profit-killing
deep discounts - SAS introduces first solution in retail industry that
optimizes pricing in all areas simultaneously NEW YORK, N.Y. (Jan. 17, 2005) – In the world
of retail, it’s no secret that the key to success is the ability
to offer the right product to the right customer at the right price and
at the right time. Until now, few retailers have been able to
consistently achieve this rarefied combination. SAS, the leader in
business intelligence, remedies this challenge with the introduction of
SAS® Revenue Optimization, the only truly integrated revenue
optimization product that helps retailers manage revenue and margin
through the entire merchandise life cycle. This suite of integrated
software solutions includes SAS Regular Price Optimization, SAS
Promotion Optimization, and SAS Markdown Optimization. Read
on...
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–Name
That Photo contest - Congratulations to Steven Hawken! He was the first
to submit the correct response in the “Name That Photo”
contest. The photo at the top
of the last newsletter was the Halifax Citadel Fort in Halifax, Nova
Scotia.
The Halifax Citadel is an
edifice of national importance, commemorating Halifax's role as a
principal naval station in the British Empire. It is also a reminder of
the city’s contribution to Canada's evolution from colony to
nation. It was formally recognized as a symbol of Canadian nationhood
when it was designated as a National Historic Site in 1951. Learn
more
Be the first to identify the place and city in the picture at the top
of this newsletter and win a prize!!! E-mail your guess to cvp@can.sas.com.
– A
SAS Canada Blog
We are considering
adding a SAS Canada blog to the SAS Canada website. A blog is basically
a journal that is available on the web. Postings on a blog are arranged
in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most
prominently and they are typically updated daily.
Would you be interested in
seeing a SAS Canada blog? Let the Customer
Value Team know!
– 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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SAS Business Intelligence Imperative Web
Seminar Series