Last Friday I had the pleasure of kicking off this year's user group season with the TASS group in Toronto. I'm always in awe when this particular meeting kicks into planning mode. The large executive committee is extremely engaged and always willing to step forward to present, volunteer colleagues and help out in any way possible. The strength of the meeting is entirely a testament to the work ethic and 'hands-on' nature of this team.
I must confess that I have a guilty (not-so-guilty) pleasure when it comes to this meeting. Periodically, we manage to finangle an A-list guest speaker out of the United States... often, this person works for SAS but just as often, the individual is a legend within the SAS user community. Classic TASS President Art Tabachneck is usually responsible for this as his vast network of contacts includes some of the best and brightest. I suppose we should expect no less from a SAS-L Hall of Famer! The pleasure I derive from this meeting is twofold: I get to hear from phenomenal guest speakers periodically and I also get to know them personally over dinner the night before the meeting.
This meeting, our feature presenter was Jan Squillace. Jan was a long-time manager in the Data Step/Macro divison of Tech Support - yes, THAT data step!!! Picture discussing SAS coding practices with someone who had heard virtually every single issue, complaint, problem and roadblock which a customer could encounter... and you get a pretty good idea of our dinnertime conversation. It was great to get to know someone with such amazing depth of knowledge a little bit better.
The meeting itself was destined to be fantastic given the strength of the presenters. Jan delivered two great talks: one around SAS version 9.4 and some of the new features of the upgrade and a really interesting talk which clearly hearkened back to her tech support days and featured discussions on the types of notes and warnings you might see in your error log when writing data step or macro code. I think that absolutely EVERYONE in the room got something out of both of these talks: in fact, attendees were asking for a copy before the presentations were even concluded. Always a great sign of a job well done. Kudos, Jan!
We also had another 'first' for TASS. Tom Kari of Ottawa - infamous in the OASUS/OPUS user group circle and of course, the 2011 Customer Feedback Award winner - was slated to present on scraping the web with SAS in Toronto. His sudden recall back to Ottawa meant we had to scramble a bit to find a solution to his absence. With some great teamwork and rigorous testing, we were able to set up a WebEx presentation from the SAS office in Ottawa which more than adequately conveyed his talk. The only pity was that we didn't get to see Tom in person. His energy and passion is infectious... and I enjoy spending time with him. Ah well, I will certainly see him in Washington DC for SAS Global Forum and we will certainly make it up then.
Art was not off the hook either for this particular meeting. He reprised an earlier talk on Proc Export which he will now be delivering at SAS Global Forum and which was mind-blowing (to put it kindly)... although to be honest, I've come to expect nothing but the most dazzling, innovative and interesting talks from Art. He certainly didn't disappoint!
The afternoon session featured a talk from Carl Wang of Indigo which really got underneath the hood of the power of scripting. This dovetailed nicely with the SAS tips and tricks presentation which featured custom tasks in Enterprise Guide and more. All in all, a very successful day of meetings and talks.
I'm always proud when I get great feedback from my colleagues in the United States on the style and substance of our user group program here in Canada. It's gratifying to think that some of the best and brightest in the SAS world think so highly of how our groups come together. It really comes down once again to that magic word, 'community'. We all pull together for a common goal here in Canada: there is no ulterior motive or questionable mandate, simply a desire to support SAS users as well as possible. Our partnership - really, our friendship - with our user community allows this to happen easily and naturally.
As I write this I'm keeping an eye on the clock as I'll be flying off to Winnipeg and then the province of Saskatchewan later this week. It's going to be a fun trip, but a nerve-wracking one at the same time. I'll be giving a talk on statistics in Enterprise Guide... and I am certainly no statistician. Gulp. Wish me luck! I'll be sure to let you know how it goes over the coming week. In the meantime, you'll be able to pick up the TASS presentations on the TASS website.
Until then...
Showing posts with label TASS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TASS. Show all posts
Monday, March 10, 2014
Monday, September 16, 2013
Community the Star on (lucky) Friday the 13th
I frequently and loudly preach the mantra of ‘community,
community, community’ through the user group meetings and social media. To me,
the real strength of SAS – and the reason for our success as an organization –
is because of our dedication to the SAS user community and our longstanding,
mutually beneficial partnership. In this the 10th year of SAS Canada
sponsoring the user group program it seems more appropriate than ever to give a
nod to this strength. It would come to bear as we launched the Fall/Winter 2013
user group season with the TASS user group meeting last Friday in Toronto.
TASS is the ‘grand old dame’ of the Canadian user groups. It
precedes not only the formal user group program of SAS Canada, but also SAS
Canada the organization. TASS is now in its 26th year of existence
and it’s fair to say, doing just fine, thank you! The quarterly meeting has
remained the largest and most consistent of the Canadian groups with attendance
over the full day usually hovering around 250 people. The success of this group
is in no small part thanks to the outstanding Executive Committee. It’s of this
rare group of dedicated, selfless individuals I’d like to speak for most of
this post.
To set the scene for my story, it’s important to understand
that none other than Rick Wicklin – SAS statistician of no small repute and
author of famous blog ‘The Do Loop’ – was to be our guest speaker at TASS. Rick
was flying up to join 13 of the executive committee and myself for dinner on
Thursday night, and then he would be keynoting the statistics-themed meetings.
I can tell you that the entire user community in Toronto was buzzing about
this, in particular, the statisticians. It’s a rare occasion when a true legend
comes to visit, and we were as ready as could be.
Unfortunately, Mother Nature was in an ill-mood and
contrived to ground Rick halfway to his destination in New York City. Having
spoken to a very dejected Rick, it was clear that he had tried his best and
that circumstance and nature were going to ultimately win the day. His closing
words to me were spoken while waiting in a ‘3 city-block long line for cabs’.
What a horrible experience! Outside of Rick’s safety and comfort we suddenly
had another problem to worry about: two significant holes in the agenda.
Here’s where the strength, resiliency and resolve of the SAS
community comes in to play. Quickly, two volunteers stepped forward at the
dinner table and offered to reprise talks which had been given in the past and
also to deliver brand new ones which had never been seen before. A suggestion
was made to call up SAS guru Marje Fecht who was planning on attending. With an
all-caps ‘EMERGENCY’ subject line, I fired her off a quick note explaining the
situation. To my everlasting gratitude, Marje not only called back and
indicated she was more than happy to help, but by the time we were having our
main courses served, her talk was nearly complete. Unbelievable.
The meeting itself passed by in a blur for me. It was
delicate dance of balancing existing content with new and trying to keep the
timing correct as best as possible. I can tell you that Tim Gravelle of
PriceMetrix and Art Tabachneck of myQNA Inc. both delivered excellent,
compelling talks, including picking up some of the slack from the missing talk
of Rick’s in the morning. I may also have been in a bit of a daze as my old
professor Richard Boire of the Boire Filler Group did lead off the morning with
a talk on building successful analytic processes: a real flashback to my
post-graduate days.
The afternoon featured Marje’s outstanding talk on SAS
Enterprise Guide 5.1 tips and tricks which built nicely on Chris Jiang’s talk
on the Data Explorer of the same tool. We offered the Posed Problem Solutions
and a strong, strong talk on model tuning in SAS Enterprise Miner by Lorne
Rothman of SAS Canada and before I could take a breath (or so it seemed), it
was all over. Again, unbelievable.
The strength of community is what made this meeting succeed.
In no small way, it’s indicative of the trust, friendship and sense of
collaboration which has been finely crafted over 10 years of the user group
program. It’s why we all stay involved – whether as a volunteer on an executive
committee or as a driver from the SAS Canada side. It’s what keeps this career
of mine so much fun, and so rewarding. And it’s why I’ll keep doing it until
someone tells me not to – or that I can’t.
I’d like to take a moment to issue a huge ‘thank you’ to the
entire TASS executive committee. Their quick thinking, willingness to discuss
and explore options and focus on the best rather than dwell on the worst is
what made this meeting a huge success. In particular I’d like to thank Art
Tabachneck, Tim Gravelle and Marje Fecht for their last minute contributions.
Rather than being ‘filler’, their talks all added true value to the meeting.
I’m off to Regina for their user group next: here’s hoping
we meet with even a sliver of the same success we had in Toronto! Given the
huge turnout and tremendous wave of enthusiasm I experienced last time I was in
Regina, I have no reason to think otherwise. I’ll be sure to let you know how
it goes.
Until then…
Monday, March 4, 2013
A Great Start to the 2013 User Group Season
The last two weeks have ushered in the 2013 user group season through the two oldest groups in Canada. Last week, the SAS Halifax Region User Group (SHRUG) held their kick-off meeting on the east coast. I myself wasn't there, so I can't write too much about it... other than to say how jealous I was of my colleague Mark Morreale who did get to attend. From him comments the meeting was as wonderfully typical as it gets for Halifax: a small but strong group which was punctuated by great conversation, strong local presentations and wonderful camaraderie. This past Friday, the Toronto Area SAS Society (TASS) had it's first meeting of the year, and I was most definitely in attendance. It was a great way to kick off the season here in Toronto; TASS has certainly thrown down the gauntlet to the Toronto Data Mining Forum and the Health User Group! I'm quietly confident that they'll give a very good run at matching the energy, enthusiasm and content of TASS.
Of course, it helps that TASS had some serious star power to help solidify a strong start to the season. No less of a SAS luminary than Susan Slaughter made the trip to Canada to serve as our keynote speaker. I must admit, I gushed like an Apple fanboy at the release of a new Apple-branded... well, anything. When I was completing my post-graduate work at George Brown College it was the last version of 'The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide 4.1' which included a working demo disk that became my temporary SAS bible. In fact, I actually had to get a second copy because of the extreme wear and tear throughout the years. I can directly credit Susan and her co-author Lora Delwiche for helping me develop my early SAS skills... or perhaps blame is a better word? At any rate Susan was wonderful and approachable in real life; she clearly loves SAS and was an inspiration to the many new and seasoned users who attended the TASS meeting.
Susan offered three separate talks. The first was one which had some appeal to everyone, an introduction to macro programming. Macros are phenomenal for efficiencies: as Susan said in her talk, 'think about it like writing a program that writes a program'. It really didn't matter if you were a new programmer or a savvy SAS veteran: the methodical nature of the talk ensured that everyone was introduced or reminded of the best practices to keep in mind when leveraging this powerful option. A side benefit: I learned that Susan is a passionate bicyclist! As a loud proponent of giving a personal as well as professional view of one's image, it was nice to be able to relate to Susan outside of the SAS framework.
After offering up a break-out session around how to become a SAS author - a session that had the break-out room overflowing - Susan would energize the afternoon session with her talk around summary tables in Enterprise Guide. I've given a talk or two which featured this particular task previously, but Susan's step-by-step approach was much better suited for the newer Enterprise Guide users in the audience... and to be honest, I learned a few things myself. For example, if you impose a condition on a variable through the wizard, that condition will remain on the variable even if it's removed. That could explain a lot of the strange results I've received from some of my pet projects. I'll be re-running them while bearing this in mind, to be sure!
Of course, Susan wasn't the only star of the agenda. In fact, the rest of the meeting was jam packed with SAS goodness. In the morning session, Wayne Levin of JMP software fame navigated a few pitfalls (or pickle-falls, more appropriately) to successfully demonstrate some of the capabilities of JMP. The demo gods were not smiling on Wayne initially but his quick thinking and knowledge of his data allowed his to swiftly switch his presentation nearly seamlessly. TASS President Arthur Tabachneck also delivered his usual high-quality work, showcasing a talk which he will be delivering at the Midwest SAS User Group and potentially at SAS Global Forum as well. Art always blows me away with his talks: he seems to effortlessly find ways to make SAS work better, faster and more innovatively... and almost always through his collaborative work with his fellow SAS gurus from all over the world. His talk on transposing SAS data sets certainly continued this trend. In the afternoon, Chris Battiston really got under the hood of ODS and also bravely popped open a spontaneous live demo while really showcasing how a little curiosity and knowledge can go a very long way. Finally, the solution to the posed problem was a real hit. Not only did it fortuitously build on Susan's summary table talk, but we also had four separate contributors. Jim Burkhardt did a great job of MCing the solutions and each presenter gave a simple - but elegant - walkthrough of each. You can see all the solutions here: great job, guys!
Finally, I myself got into the spirit of the live demo by showcasing the new SAS Visual Analytics suite. It was a lot of fun to see a favourable reaction from the audience. I can understand why, as it's tremendously powerful and versatile, and the data I was working with was relative to all. Using over 169 million records with 60 variables, I was able to quickly run forecasting routines and drill into global variables to demonstrate how powerful visual analytics can be. I hope it was well-received, because it sure was fun to deliver. At the very least, I hope that the opportunity to demo the solution yourself - a SAS first! - was enough of a takeaway to make the session valuable. I encourage all readers to do so as well, whether by industry or job role. You can find out more on the official Visual Analytics site.
We're already building towards the June meeting, believe it or not... and we've also secured a very special guest speaker for September... but much more on that later down the road. In the interim you can check out the presentations from the last meeting here, and stay tuned for information about upcoming TASS sessions as well. You may also want to join us in the SAS Canada Community where discussion is ongoing, all the time. We hope to see you there!
Next for me: the eye of the hurricane, the calm before the storm... or perhaps the darkest night before the morning? I'm in a quiet state until mid-April with next to no travel or activites until then. But rest assured, when things get going they just won't stop! May and June will be hotbeds of activity. So stay tuned for more thoughts from the road.
Until then...
Of course, it helps that TASS had some serious star power to help solidify a strong start to the season. No less of a SAS luminary than Susan Slaughter made the trip to Canada to serve as our keynote speaker. I must admit, I gushed like an Apple fanboy at the release of a new Apple-branded... well, anything. When I was completing my post-graduate work at George Brown College it was the last version of 'The Little SAS Book for Enterprise Guide 4.1' which included a working demo disk that became my temporary SAS bible. In fact, I actually had to get a second copy because of the extreme wear and tear throughout the years. I can directly credit Susan and her co-author Lora Delwiche for helping me develop my early SAS skills... or perhaps blame is a better word? At any rate Susan was wonderful and approachable in real life; she clearly loves SAS and was an inspiration to the many new and seasoned users who attended the TASS meeting.
Susan offered three separate talks. The first was one which had some appeal to everyone, an introduction to macro programming. Macros are phenomenal for efficiencies: as Susan said in her talk, 'think about it like writing a program that writes a program'. It really didn't matter if you were a new programmer or a savvy SAS veteran: the methodical nature of the talk ensured that everyone was introduced or reminded of the best practices to keep in mind when leveraging this powerful option. A side benefit: I learned that Susan is a passionate bicyclist! As a loud proponent of giving a personal as well as professional view of one's image, it was nice to be able to relate to Susan outside of the SAS framework.
After offering up a break-out session around how to become a SAS author - a session that had the break-out room overflowing - Susan would energize the afternoon session with her talk around summary tables in Enterprise Guide. I've given a talk or two which featured this particular task previously, but Susan's step-by-step approach was much better suited for the newer Enterprise Guide users in the audience... and to be honest, I learned a few things myself. For example, if you impose a condition on a variable through the wizard, that condition will remain on the variable even if it's removed. That could explain a lot of the strange results I've received from some of my pet projects. I'll be re-running them while bearing this in mind, to be sure!
Of course, Susan wasn't the only star of the agenda. In fact, the rest of the meeting was jam packed with SAS goodness. In the morning session, Wayne Levin of JMP software fame navigated a few pitfalls (or pickle-falls, more appropriately) to successfully demonstrate some of the capabilities of JMP. The demo gods were not smiling on Wayne initially but his quick thinking and knowledge of his data allowed his to swiftly switch his presentation nearly seamlessly. TASS President Arthur Tabachneck also delivered his usual high-quality work, showcasing a talk which he will be delivering at the Midwest SAS User Group and potentially at SAS Global Forum as well. Art always blows me away with his talks: he seems to effortlessly find ways to make SAS work better, faster and more innovatively... and almost always through his collaborative work with his fellow SAS gurus from all over the world. His talk on transposing SAS data sets certainly continued this trend. In the afternoon, Chris Battiston really got under the hood of ODS and also bravely popped open a spontaneous live demo while really showcasing how a little curiosity and knowledge can go a very long way. Finally, the solution to the posed problem was a real hit. Not only did it fortuitously build on Susan's summary table talk, but we also had four separate contributors. Jim Burkhardt did a great job of MCing the solutions and each presenter gave a simple - but elegant - walkthrough of each. You can see all the solutions here: great job, guys!
Finally, I myself got into the spirit of the live demo by showcasing the new SAS Visual Analytics suite. It was a lot of fun to see a favourable reaction from the audience. I can understand why, as it's tremendously powerful and versatile, and the data I was working with was relative to all. Using over 169 million records with 60 variables, I was able to quickly run forecasting routines and drill into global variables to demonstrate how powerful visual analytics can be. I hope it was well-received, because it sure was fun to deliver. At the very least, I hope that the opportunity to demo the solution yourself - a SAS first! - was enough of a takeaway to make the session valuable. I encourage all readers to do so as well, whether by industry or job role. You can find out more on the official Visual Analytics site.
We're already building towards the June meeting, believe it or not... and we've also secured a very special guest speaker for September... but much more on that later down the road. In the interim you can check out the presentations from the last meeting here, and stay tuned for information about upcoming TASS sessions as well. You may also want to join us in the SAS Canada Community where discussion is ongoing, all the time. We hope to see you there!
Next for me: the eye of the hurricane, the calm before the storm... or perhaps the darkest night before the morning? I'm in a quiet state until mid-April with next to no travel or activites until then. But rest assured, when things get going they just won't stop! May and June will be hotbeds of activity. So stay tuned for more thoughts from the road.
Until then...
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Quarterly TASS Meeting Hits All the Right Notes
Last Friday saw the return of TASS... and my premonition that it would be a well-attended, well-received meeting proved to be accurate. Almost 250 people attended the full-day session and it was great to see so many familiar faces after a few months absence. I even had the opportunity to wish many a long-overdue happy New Year!
The reason the meeting was so well-attended isn't a mystery, of course: it has everything to do with the strength of the agendas of both Classic TASS and TASS Interfaces. The groups are very fortunate as there is a very strong contingent of willing and able presenters that enjoy presenting at TASS who are globally recognized for their SAS knowledge. In fact, many of the talks we enjoyed in the morning session were 'dry-runs' for the upcoming SAS Global Forum taking place April 22-25 in Orlando, Florida.
Leading off was Barry Hong, Past-President of TASS' sister group, the Golden Horseshoe SAS User Group (GHSUG). The talk centered around the ODS Graphics Designer, and it really did peel back the layers of mystery which seem to often surround graphs and graphing procedures. As Barry explained, 'it's pretty intuitive once you open up the code'. Perhaps not to this humble author and admittedly amateur-ish SAS programmer, but the majority of the audience certainly appreciated the step-by-step approach towards creating and sharing graph templates. It was quite compelling stuff: Barry took a significant amount of quite complex code and broke it down in layman's terms bit by bit. Such was the interest that one of the open breakout session spots was co-opted by Barry and a hardy group of graphing enthusiasts a little later in the morning. This talk definitely had SAS Global Forum all over it... perhaps you'll update and submit it next year, Barry?
Not to be outdone, the always entertaining Peter Eberhardt delivered a talk which he'll be giving in Orlando in about seven weeks' time. Known for his humour, his energy and his deep knowledge of all things SAS, Peter's presentation certainly didn't disappoint in any respect. His 'One Guy On Hash' talk was a scaled-down version of his SAS Global Forum talk which he'll be delivering with a collaborator. Although I did learn more about hash objects and why they're so useful than I thought I ever could in 45 minutes, I can't help but to be reminded of the image of Peter which led off the slide deck. Featuring Peter in the 1970s on a Disneyland visit, it even more shockingly featured Peter with shoulder-length hair. I was stunned... and impressed! Those of you going down to Orlando would be well-served by attending the extended version of this talk... or catching Peter at some point as he expertly chairs the Enterprise Guide section of SAS Global Forum. In fact, if you're interested in volunteering your time to help him out, send him an email and tell him I sent you; he'll be very grateful for your interest!
As I alluded to earlier, the break-out sessions at this past TASS meeting were something special. Michael Lerner has traditionally offered compelling, consistently interesting discussion in the 'Statistics' group. This meeting was the first time during my tenure at SAS that he wasn't leading this session. We were privileged to have Bob Saarimaki of DatamaApp who walked through some 'whens & how's' of statistical processes for the purposes of modeling. His room was literally bursting at the seams: standing room only was definitely the order of the session... I'm sure new friendships were forged due to forced proximity more than any other reason! Of course, TASS President Art Tabachneck wasn't about to surrender his title of 'most attended breakout session' without a fight. Explaining that he had recently had a third presentation accepted for SAS Global Forum as a 'back-up', he was more than happy to try it out on a willing audience in his Coder's Corner break-out session. His presentation around unusual date formats and how to handle them was incredibly full as well. I'm very pleased that there were only a few individuals who weren't in one of these two talks: clearly, they were just what the Doctor ordered (and the Health User Group isn't taking place until April 13th).
The afternoon session was extremely well attended and featured at least one nervous presenter. Yes, it's true: for the second TASS meeting in a row, I delivered a technical talk... with the added pressure of a live demo this time. Given the amazing level of expertise of the SAS users in the room, I wasn't sure if my talk on how I used Enterprise Guide to help set my darts team's line-up to best advantage was going to go over well. At the very least, I hope the attendees were amused as I walked the room through the high and lows of how I strategized for a darts match on a semi-professional level. It was a lot of fun to deliver, and to be honest, I hope I encouraged others to consider giving a talk as well. It's amazing to see how one can extrapolate and correlate examples which may seem simple to more complex, real-world business issues... in this case, using darts to illustrate an operational research problem.
New TASS Interfaces President Laurent Josso also delivered a great talk around SAS Graph NV. There's something about the ability to visualize and manipulate relationships which the vast majority find fascinating... including myself. Laurent demonstrated how this type of manipulation of data can be both informative and intuitive from a micro and macro perspective. The meeting's presentations concluded on a high-note: SAS Canada Training Specialist Barb Crowther walked us through a DataFlux presentation and demonstration which really showcased the importance and power of data cleanliness.
The last item of note for the afternoon session was the SAS User Exchange. Led by Jim Burkhardt, this new element is actually an old feature from the TASS meetings of yore. Users are free to bring their general SAS issues, questions and comments and direct them to the group. The executive committee and fellow attendees then try and help walk through these problems in a collaborative fashion. Nothing says community more than group collaboration!
As we say goodbye to TASS until the early days of June, it would be remiss of me if I didn't thank and acknowledge the work of Past President of TASS Interfaces, Craig McCulloch. His efforts helped grow this group through the first two years of its existence from a concept to a vibrant community of Enterprise Guide, Enterprise Miner, JMP and DataFlux users. Craig will be taking a well-deserved break from the leadership function, but it's important to note that his contribution to the group's forward momentum will be a lasting one. Many thanks, Craig.
As always, there seems to be another meeting just around the corner... and in fact, one managed to slip by me (due to a bout of illness) that I haven't yet blogged about; the Halifax SAS User Group took place just a few weeks ago! I'm going to try and catch you up on the wonderful dialogue and presentations which took place then and look ahead to the Health User Group taking place in about a month's time. Stay tuned!
Until then...
The reason the meeting was so well-attended isn't a mystery, of course: it has everything to do with the strength of the agendas of both Classic TASS and TASS Interfaces. The groups are very fortunate as there is a very strong contingent of willing and able presenters that enjoy presenting at TASS who are globally recognized for their SAS knowledge. In fact, many of the talks we enjoyed in the morning session were 'dry-runs' for the upcoming SAS Global Forum taking place April 22-25 in Orlando, Florida.
Leading off was Barry Hong, Past-President of TASS' sister group, the Golden Horseshoe SAS User Group (GHSUG). The talk centered around the ODS Graphics Designer, and it really did peel back the layers of mystery which seem to often surround graphs and graphing procedures. As Barry explained, 'it's pretty intuitive once you open up the code'. Perhaps not to this humble author and admittedly amateur-ish SAS programmer, but the majority of the audience certainly appreciated the step-by-step approach towards creating and sharing graph templates. It was quite compelling stuff: Barry took a significant amount of quite complex code and broke it down in layman's terms bit by bit. Such was the interest that one of the open breakout session spots was co-opted by Barry and a hardy group of graphing enthusiasts a little later in the morning. This talk definitely had SAS Global Forum all over it... perhaps you'll update and submit it next year, Barry?
Not to be outdone, the always entertaining Peter Eberhardt delivered a talk which he'll be giving in Orlando in about seven weeks' time. Known for his humour, his energy and his deep knowledge of all things SAS, Peter's presentation certainly didn't disappoint in any respect. His 'One Guy On Hash' talk was a scaled-down version of his SAS Global Forum talk which he'll be delivering with a collaborator. Although I did learn more about hash objects and why they're so useful than I thought I ever could in 45 minutes, I can't help but to be reminded of the image of Peter which led off the slide deck. Featuring Peter in the 1970s on a Disneyland visit, it even more shockingly featured Peter with shoulder-length hair. I was stunned... and impressed! Those of you going down to Orlando would be well-served by attending the extended version of this talk... or catching Peter at some point as he expertly chairs the Enterprise Guide section of SAS Global Forum. In fact, if you're interested in volunteering your time to help him out, send him an email and tell him I sent you; he'll be very grateful for your interest!
As I alluded to earlier, the break-out sessions at this past TASS meeting were something special. Michael Lerner has traditionally offered compelling, consistently interesting discussion in the 'Statistics' group. This meeting was the first time during my tenure at SAS that he wasn't leading this session. We were privileged to have Bob Saarimaki of DatamaApp who walked through some 'whens & how's' of statistical processes for the purposes of modeling. His room was literally bursting at the seams: standing room only was definitely the order of the session... I'm sure new friendships were forged due to forced proximity more than any other reason! Of course, TASS President Art Tabachneck wasn't about to surrender his title of 'most attended breakout session' without a fight. Explaining that he had recently had a third presentation accepted for SAS Global Forum as a 'back-up', he was more than happy to try it out on a willing audience in his Coder's Corner break-out session. His presentation around unusual date formats and how to handle them was incredibly full as well. I'm very pleased that there were only a few individuals who weren't in one of these two talks: clearly, they were just what the Doctor ordered (and the Health User Group isn't taking place until April 13th).
The afternoon session was extremely well attended and featured at least one nervous presenter. Yes, it's true: for the second TASS meeting in a row, I delivered a technical talk... with the added pressure of a live demo this time. Given the amazing level of expertise of the SAS users in the room, I wasn't sure if my talk on how I used Enterprise Guide to help set my darts team's line-up to best advantage was going to go over well. At the very least, I hope the attendees were amused as I walked the room through the high and lows of how I strategized for a darts match on a semi-professional level. It was a lot of fun to deliver, and to be honest, I hope I encouraged others to consider giving a talk as well. It's amazing to see how one can extrapolate and correlate examples which may seem simple to more complex, real-world business issues... in this case, using darts to illustrate an operational research problem.
New TASS Interfaces President Laurent Josso also delivered a great talk around SAS Graph NV. There's something about the ability to visualize and manipulate relationships which the vast majority find fascinating... including myself. Laurent demonstrated how this type of manipulation of data can be both informative and intuitive from a micro and macro perspective. The meeting's presentations concluded on a high-note: SAS Canada Training Specialist Barb Crowther walked us through a DataFlux presentation and demonstration which really showcased the importance and power of data cleanliness.
The last item of note for the afternoon session was the SAS User Exchange. Led by Jim Burkhardt, this new element is actually an old feature from the TASS meetings of yore. Users are free to bring their general SAS issues, questions and comments and direct them to the group. The executive committee and fellow attendees then try and help walk through these problems in a collaborative fashion. Nothing says community more than group collaboration!
As we say goodbye to TASS until the early days of June, it would be remiss of me if I didn't thank and acknowledge the work of Past President of TASS Interfaces, Craig McCulloch. His efforts helped grow this group through the first two years of its existence from a concept to a vibrant community of Enterprise Guide, Enterprise Miner, JMP and DataFlux users. Craig will be taking a well-deserved break from the leadership function, but it's important to note that his contribution to the group's forward momentum will be a lasting one. Many thanks, Craig.
As always, there seems to be another meeting just around the corner... and in fact, one managed to slip by me (due to a bout of illness) that I haven't yet blogged about; the Halifax SAS User Group took place just a few weeks ago! I'm going to try and catch you up on the wonderful dialogue and presentations which took place then and look ahead to the Health User Group taking place in about a month's time. Stay tuned!
Until then...
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