SAS Global Forum 2012: Will I See You There?

This post was kindly contributed by Business Intelligence Notes for SAS® BI Users - go there to comment and to read the full post.

Check out the results of my SAS Enterprise Guide code – 41 days til SAS Global Forum 2012 in Orlando, Florida!  I’m excited – I can’t wait to meet some of my Web friends face-to-face finally!  Oh and also catch up with some of my old buddies!

Why Should I Attend SAS Global Forum?

Here’s the reasons I like to attend:

• Like Minded People
  Working in smaller organizations, I was sometimes was one of a handful of data geeks running loose in the halls. It’s great to meet 3,000+ others who actually know what “code or let SAS EG do it?” means. 
  The SAS users are one of the things that make this a great product to use.  
  

  There are several meetups planned (think it use to be called Birds of a Feather) – I want to check out the joint SAS-L, SASCommunity, and SAS Discussion meetup.  Plus after you arrive there are others – for instance, new SAS users, SAS BI users, etc.

  Oh and the .. Kick Back Party … you know you want to show off all your groovy dance moves! Don’t worry I’ll have my camera!

• Exchange of Ideas
  Each time I attend – I come away with some new ideas or approaches. You can often meet others who either already know how to solve a situation you are facing or they can rattle off about 10 different approaches.  After one conference, I created a dashboard based on a discussion with an experienced user that landed me a big fat raise the following year.  While I cannot promise you a raise, I can promise your professional skillset will increase.
   
• Demo Hall
  This is probably the area I head to first – love to see the cool new toys and talk to the SAS developers.  I’m hearing some rumors about the next release of SAS BI – might be some big changes in store.  

  Make sure you stop to meet Paul and Michelle at Metacoda and check out the latest release of the Metacoda Security plug-in. (Tell them Tricia sent you-it’s worth a free demo.)

  Plus the SAS Posters are usually in that area – so you can pick up some cool tips from reviewing those. There are some artists among us … who knew?

  And ….  SAS Press has a little corner setup with all of their books, some sofas, and candy.  You can look through the books to figure out which ones you want to take home – 20% off.  They are offering a deal where you can order books at 20% off and pick them up at the conference.

Ok, I might be Interested …

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Let me tell you about some papers already on my schedule.  By the way, after you register you can assemble your schedule online so you always know where you are going.  Here’s all the papers for #SGF2012.

• Get the Fast Pass to Building Building Business Intelligence with SAS and Google Analytics 
  You know I was going to talk about my own paper first!  Angela and I can hardly wait to tell you all about SAS BI and Google Analytics.  I’m hearing rumors that SAS Publishing may be giving away a free copy of the book.  I may be biased – but I’m pretty sure this will be one of the best presentations.    
   
• Lost in Wonderland? Methodology for a Guided Drill-Through Analysis Out of the Rabbit Hole
  Steve Overton, who blogs here,  is talking about “data infrastructure needed to support this type of information system through the use of OLAP technology, effective data architecture, report linking, and information maps.”  Steve is doing two other papers – one about moving users from MS Active Directory to SAS Mgmt Console and another about develping a flexible ETL process so changes are noted within the entire data warehouse.  And you thought he only knew about SAS OLAP cubes!
   
• Create Multi-Sheet Excel Workbook for Large Data Sets by SAS® and VBA, Charlie Huang will demonstrate a quick way to create multiple sheets for you SAS output.  Very cool method using some VBA code that is easy to learn! Charlie blogs at SAS Analysis – always some cool, practical ideas from him.
   
• An Advanced, Multi-Featured Macro Program for Reviewing Logs, Chris Swenson shows you how to use his super-fancy %CHECKLOG macro to review your programs.    Chris Swenson blogs at Thoughts from Both Sides and his macro library is the bomb! 
   
• Capitalizing on SAS® and Hadoop.  Been hearing a lot about SAS and Hadoop – so I curious to learn more about what Hadoop is and what cool things it will bring to SAS BI.  There are some other  papers on this topic as well – so I may be a busy lady.
   
• Leveraging an Upgrade to Improve Metadata, Brent Whitesel and Angela discuss strategies for working with SAS folder metadata structure. This paper will be a little advanced – but I’m sure there are some tips for all the SAS Administrators out there. 
   
• You Don’t Have to Go Home…but You Can’t Stay Here, Chris Hemedinger was chatting last week in his blog about this topic.  Even though it will be the last paper presented – Chris has an awesome speaking style so you won’t want to miss it. He has some other papers planned – so be on the look out for those as well.

More to Come … 

These are the main papers that have caught my attention this week – I’m still scouring through the papers to see what else is out there. I’ll have more in a few weeks.  What papers are on your agenda? And don’t forget to sign up if you haven’t already!?! You don’t want Tinkerbell to cast a spell on you!!

Credit:  All Disney images courtesy of Free Disney Clipart Site. 

This post was kindly contributed by Business Intelligence Notes for SAS® BI Users - go there to comment and to read the full post.