It is possible there was drinking: SAS Global Forum Day 1

SAS Global Forum has the usual required conference amenities. There is a nice hotel.

There is swag. See photo below received by knowing trivia answers.

Hint: A good place to find the trivia answers in advance is the SAS users blog.

It is also good to know the name of the SAS Global Forum chair and the location of Chris Heimidinger.

As proof for my accountant that it was not ALL just sitting out on balconies, and is therefore legitimately tax-deductible, I will offer some actual information that I want to follow up on later:

At the local users group reception, I met (again) fellow WUSSie William Benjamin of Owl Consulting (who I always mistakenly call Benjamin and who is always very nice about it). He is giving a talk on connecting Excel and SAS. In short, his program allows you to request SAS reports that will then be delivered in Excel format. It is way cooler than that, though, because SAS actually passes back to Excel information that is used in formatting the Excel files.

I could see what he is doing being useful for me, but unfortunately, he is presenting at the same time as me and my presentation on SAS On-Demand is better.

{Shameless plug” Hands-on Workshops, Southern Hemisphere I
SAS® Enterprise Guide® with SAS® On-Demand for Academics: Everything You Need to Know After “It’s Free”   De Mars, 1:30–3:10 PM, 152-2012}

Well, I don’t actually know if it’s better, but I’m doing it.

As consolation, though, I found out that Bill’s Excel presentation will be part of the SAS Global Forum Takeout. (Check out the takeout from last year if you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s pretty cool. )

At the tweet-up, organized by Waynette Tubbs I met Iain Brown who is presenting on advanced modelling for imbalanced data sets using Enterprise Miner on Monday. There is another session I want to attend at the same time, so now I need to decide which to attend and which to just read the paper in the proceedings. I really want to go to both of them. Where is my clone when I need her?

I also realized and immediately rectified my omission of not following Gordon Cox on twitter. Gordon is in EBI at SAS but it looks like he may be doing more on grid computing which is the wave of the future. Okay, well, one of the waves of the future.

Having put in so much actual work (are you reading this, Donna), I am going to head to the pool and meet-up with LABSUG chair Kim Le Bouton where we will tan, um, I mean discuss very important LABSUG business.

 There are no post-possible drinking photos as I am saving those for blackmail purposes. Bribes to delete all possible photos from all of my electronic devices will be accepted through the end of the conference.