NOTE: SAS Global Forum 2016 - Call for Content is Open #SASGF

Have you thought about sharing some of your knowledge with fellow SAS practitioners at SAS Global Forum 2016 in Las Vegas, April 18 - 21? User participation is what makes SAS Global Forum (SGF). Attending the papers from SAS staff is always informative, but user contributed papers provide knowledge from real-word experiences and are equally valuable.

If you're interested, or unsure, take a look at the Call for Content section of the event web site. You don't have to be the world's most eloquent speaker, nor do you have to be a SAS guru. Forum attendees are always keen to pick up nuggets of information from fellow attendees.

The benefits to fellow attendees are obvious, but there are several benefits for speakers too. It's great for professional development; it will reflect well on you with your employers or clients; and you will be surprised how much you will learn as you go through the writing process. And if you're still not convinced, be assured that you can supported by a mentor too.

Go on, give it a try!...

Note how the event appears to have shifted one day later in the week than normal, i.e. in 2016 it will start on a Monday (pre-conference tutorials?) and then run from Tuesday to Thursday. And the favoured twitter hashtag no longer contains the year. Goodness, it's all change at SGF!!

Summer of Coding

I'm always keen to encourage an awareness and uptake of coding in my kids. I think that coding brings a lot more than the simple ability to write programs. Coding requires a set of disciplines and an approach that are of great benefit in all walks of life.

As the summer holidays are upon us, with weeks upon weeks for kids to idle away their time, now is a good moment to revisit some of the online opportunities to give kids an insight into the joys of coding.

I've previously mentioned Scratch and App Inventor 2 (AI2) as two very accessible means for getting kids (and adults!) started, and producing a useful app that they can share with their friends very quickly. Both sites are free and use a clever building blocks interface to allow budding programmers to quickly understand the requirements of syntax. Scratch builds web-based apps and AI2 builds apps for Android devices (phones and tablets) with surprisingly powerful blocks for accessing web-based resources.

Scratch has always encouraged its users to share their work. Earlier this year App Inventor added its own gallery for showing and sharing.

Whilst it's not free, I've heard good things about Tynker. Tynker also takes the building blocks approach to syntax, and offers structured courses to help guide its students to exciting results.

Another means of getting your kids inspired is Lightbot. This is a series of programming-related puzzles featuring a cute robot character in a games app - available for Apple iOS, Android and other platforms. Great fun, and challenging too when you get to some of the higher levels.

As technology becomes more pervasive, traditional trades disappear, and the world of work becomes more globalised, the skills that newer members of the workforce need are changing: problem solving, team working, and communication are but three "21st century skills". Digital literacy (ability to find and use internet-based resources and information) and creativity— and the latter’s close relative, entrepreneurship—are close behind. And, the young have become more comfortable learning on their own, especially on topics of interest. They just need to be pointed in the right direction!

NOTE: SAS UK Forum

If you haven't already seen a notice, there will be SAS Forum events in the UK again this year (in previous years they've been known as SAS Professionals Convention, but I guess the "forum" tag provides consistent branding with events such as SAS Global Forum).

The conference will be held in two locations; Warwick Business School, The Shard, London on 10-11 June and Salford University, Media City, Manchester on 24-25 June 2015.

Alongside a range of good speakers there will be opportunities to sit SAS certification exams too (albeit on non-conference days!).

More details, including registration, can be found on the event web site.

NOTE: Enterprise Guide vs DI Studio - What's the difference?

A favourite interview question of mine is: Compare and contrast SAS 9's stored process server and workspace server. This question is very good at revealing whether candidates actually understand some of what's going on behind the scenes of SAS 9. I mentioned this back in 2010, together with some notes on my expectations for an answer.

I was amused to see Michelle Homes post another of my favourite interview questions on the BI Notes blog recently: What’s the difference between SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS DI Studio? This question, and the ensuing conversation, establishes whether the candidate has used either or both of the tools, and it reveals how much the candidate is thinking about their environment and the tools within.

For me, there are two key differences: metadata, and primary use.

Michelle focuses on the former and gives a very good run-down of the use of metadata in Data Intergration Studio (and the little use in Enteprise Guide).

With regards to primary use, take a look at the visual nodes available in the two tools. The nodes in DI Studio are focused upon data extraction, transformation and loading (as you would expect), whilst the nodes in Enterprise Guide (EG) are focused upon analysing data. Sure, EG has nodes for sorting, transposing and other data-related activities (including SQL queries), but the data manipulation nodes are not as extensive as DI Studio. In addition to sorting and transposing, DI Studio offers nodes that understand data models, e.g. an SCD loader and a surrogate key generator (I described slowly changing dimensions (SCDs) and other elements of star schema data models in a post in 2009). On the other hand, EG has lots of nodes for tabulating, graphing, charting, analysing, and modelling your data.

One final distinction I'd draw is that EG's nodes are each based around one SAS procedure, whilst DI's nodes are based around an ETL technique or requirement. You can see that DI Studio was produced for a specific purpose, whilst EG was produced as a user friendly layer to put on top of the SAS language and thereby offers a more generalistic solution.

For the most part, I'm stating the obvious above, but the interview candidate's answer to the question provides a great deal of insight into their approach to their work, their sense of curiosity and awareness, and their technical insight.

NOTE: Additional SAS Professionals in London

Whilst the scheduling of the international Analytics 2013 event in London in June (hosted by SAS) precluded the annual SAS Professionals conference, we're being treated to a series of SAS Professionals Roadshow events in Marlow, London and Dublin (and Scotland and Manchester early next year). I attended the Marlow event in October and found it most informative. I wrote about it at the time (here, here and here).

It seems that the upcoming London event has proved more popular than anticipated and so SAS have added an extra date. December 11th is sold-out, but December 12th is now available to be booked. The SAS Professionals web site has full details. If you're not already signed-up for a date, don't miss your opportunity for the new date. Book ASAP!

NOTE: SAS Talks Archive - A Treasure Trove of Training Goodness

In last week's post on Enterprise Guide custom tasks I mentioned a video in the SAS Talks archive. Some of you wrote to me to say that the archive was difficult to find; I have to agree.

SAS Talks is an ongoing series of monthly webinars from SAS. The subject matter is wide and varied. The presenters range from SAS's own staff through to SAS customers. The topics are generally technical and range from Base SAS syntax though to use of Enterprise Miner and Enterprise Guide.

You can view the upcoming schedule from the SAS Talks web page; be sure to register if you intend attending an upcoming session.

The SAS Talks home page also includes links to a curated set of highlights, but if you really want to dig into the treasure trove of sessions, you need to look for the link to the archive in the introductory paragraph at the top of the page, or click the link at the very bottom of the page.

To receive email information about new talks, you can subscribe.

See also the Expert Channel at SAS Professionals, another veritable vault of valuables.

Note to self: alter your approach with regard to articles, all of this alliteration is alarmingly annoying some of the audience!

NOTE: Every Day's A Learning Day For Presenters #sasgf13

I recently spotted some cracking advice from Charu Shankar (SAS Education) on the SAS Users Groups blog. No matter how many times one has presented at conferences, there's always room for improvement; and the biggest influence on one's presentation is the preparation. Charu has tips for before, during and after making a presentation. The one that most caught my attention was:

The Pause – The pause is probably the most powerful technique to grab user attention and allow time for your clever tip to sink in. You don’t have to be a yogi to know the value of breath to allow the words that follow to be crystal clear and articulate.

Thanks for the tips, Charu!

NOTE: SAS Talks Revisited

It's been quite a while since I last mentioned the excellent SAS Talks series. In the intervening period, the archive of talks has grown enormously. The archive of talks is a veritable treasure trove of SAS knowledge.

SAS Talks is principally a series of live webinars. The next live event is Getting Started with SAS with Chris Hemedinger and Stacey Syphus (both from SAS) on Thursday April 11th. The information page tells you more about the event, and offers the ability to register for the free event.

The number of past events in the archive has grown to the point where some structure has been applied to the archive. The videos are now split into:

• Meet the expert
• Meet the instructor
• Meet the author
• Meet the customer

As you can see, the SAS Talks cover all aspects of SAS and its usage, from all perspectives.

Take a look! There's sure to be a topic that relates to your current project.

When and Where Do You Learn?

In a previous post, I mentioned a favourite interview question of mine: Stored Process Server vs Workspace Server - What's the difference? I thought I'd mention another. Outside of incidental information picked-up through your regular work, how do you gain new knowledge?

If you rely on your regular work tasks to guide you into learning new stuff, you're likely to be limited to a slow pace of learning, and likely to learn more about what you already know, but much less likely to learn completely new concepts and technologies. For instance, you don't *have* to use hash tables, there are plenty of adequate alternatives, but once you've got to grips with the concepts of hash tables you'll see how you might approach your work in a different way and/or approach tasks that you'd previously thought too difficult.

Take regular expressions as another example. SAS has a raft of string functions, so why learn a completely new way of handling strings? Well, those who've put time into understanding regular expressions will tell you that the ability to do complex string functions in a simple fashion with regular expressions makes your coding and testing simpler too.

And, it doesn't have to be code syntax that you learn. Perhaps you could make better use of Enterprise Guide's interface and features, strengthen your adoption of modular design, or gain a stronger grasp of the concepts and rationale for change management.

So, voluntarily learning new things (and practising their use with code katas, maybe) is a "good thing". How might you go about it?

There are two broad approaches. The first is to pick topics of your own choosing, and then go and research them; the second is to be randomly given new topics to understand and learn.

For the first approach, you have a choice of courses and books, but you also have a cornucopia of information on the world wide web which is available through a small number of well-chosen searches. Conference papers are an excellent, readable source of information.

Taking the latter approach, you might subscribe to one or more blogs such as NOTE:. Not every article will be of interest or relevance to you, but you shouldn't feel obliged to read and learn everything that comes your way! My December article on the use of blogs and RSS readers spelt out how to make the best use of tools such as Google Reader, and offered advice on the discipline required to read when you've got time, and discard when you don't.

Attending conferences offers opportunities for both approaches. You might attend papers because they are focused on a topic of specific interest, but you might also choose sessions from the agenda in a less focused approach which is driven more by a sense of curiosity.

Having encouraged you to learn new things (and I do strongly encourage everybody to do so), I should offer a word of caution. Code has to be maintained and supported; by people other than yourself. So it is unforgivable to write code that is so complex that it is beyond a reasonable expectation of understanding by others. When you do learn something new and distinctly different (perhaps hash tables are an example), always take the opportunity to share your new-found knowledge with others. Your team mates will appreciate it and respect you all the more for doing so.

What steps to new learning will you take today?

NOTE: DS2, Final Comments #sasgf13

In my previous posts, I've covered many aspects of DS2 (previous posts are listed at the bottom of this post). It's time to wrap up by offering a few more final details.
Whilst DS2 provides a wide range of data types, not all types are supported by all output data structures. The BASE engine, for example, has not been updated to allow storage of anything other than numeric and character variables in SAS datasets, so an attempt to create a data set with a variable of type BIGINT will be met with a warning message:

WARNING: BASE driver, creation of a BIGINT column has been requested, but is not supported by the BASE driver. A DOUBLE PRECISION column has been created instead.

The traditional SAS numeric variable is known in this context as a double precision column!

Paired with the SAS Embedded Process, DS2 enables you to perform processing similar to SAS in completely new places, such as in-database processing in relational databases, the SAS High-Performance Analytics grid and the DataFlux Federation Server.

If you want to know more, consider attending Mark Jordan's pre-conference tutorial at this year's SAS Global Forum. In the seminar, entitled "What Will DS2 Do for You?", you will learn the basics of writing and executing DS2 code. Mark promises to shows attendees how to explicitly control threading to leverage multiple processors when performing data manipulation and data modeling. He will demonstrate how DS2 improves extensibility and data abstraction in your code through the implementation of packages and methods. It's an extra fee event ($155) but could add a powerful extra string to your SAS bow!

DS2:

NOTE: DS2. Data Step Evolved?
NOTE: DS2, Learn Something New!
NOTE: DS2, SQL Within a SET Statement
NOTE: DS2, Threaded Processing
NOTE: DS2, Final Comments
NOTE: DS2, Final, Final Comments

NOTE: SEUGI Proceedings

Did I miss this? The proceedings of the SAS European User Group International (SEUGI, the European equivalent of SUGI and SGF) are now all online on the SAS Community web site. Papers from 1983 to the last event in 2007 are there.

Most of the pages were created in January 2013, so I think this is relatively fresh news.

A fabulous opportunity for European SAS practitioners of a certain age (like me!) to reminisce.

NOTE: UK Events, Good News and Bad News!

Good news 1: SAS UK will be running Analytics 2013 in London on 19th and 20th June. This is part of a series of such conferences, its predecessor being held in Cologne, Germany last June. The 2012 conference included Data Mining, Forecasting, Text Analytics, Fraud Detection, Data Visualisation, Predictive Modeling, Data Optimisation, Operations Research, Credit Scoring, and High-Performance Analytics. A wide varity of analytics topics! I'm sure the 2013 conference will be well worth attending.

Good news 2: There will be a series of 'SAS Professionals road shows' early in 2013. I've long extolled the virtues of the annual SAS Professionals Convention held in Marlow. Now you don't even need to travel as it comes to you! Keep checking the SAS Professionals web site for details when they appear.

Bad news: There isn't any really. There won't be a full-blown SAS Professionals Convention in 2013, but with all of the above, it's no great surprise, and nobody is a loser.

NOTE: Present Thinking

Christmas approaches, I've opened 18 windows in the SAS Professionals advent calendar (without winning anything, yet), written most of my Christmas cards, and my mind is firmly focused on the remaining Christmas shopping. However, I've allowed my mind to wander a little and think about what SAS-related gifts I might like to give or receive.

• Number one has to be a trip to next year's SAS Global Forum. Not only is it the best opportunity of the year to learn about SAS technology, to meet fellow SAS practitioners, and to meet SAS developers, it's also a great opportunity to visit the great city of San Francisco. I'll be there; will you?
• Along the same theme, a trip to SAS Professionals Convention in Marlow has to be the best value event of 2013 if the prices of 2012 are retained. Frustratingly, we're still waiting for the dates to be announced.
• If I'm looking for something a little cheaper than trips to Marlow or San Francisco, there are a few books I'm looking forward to reading. Firstly, The 50 Keys to Learning SAS Stored Processes by Tricia Aanderud and Angela Hall. It was published earlier this year,but I haven't gotten around to getting my own copy yet. Stored processes (as I said yesterday) are an excellent means of packaging your code and making it available anywhere (seemingly). You can never know enough about stored processes
• Another book I'm looking forward to reading is Chris Hemedinger's Creating Custom Tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide using Microsoft .NET, due to published early next year. I mentioned Chris's book back in October. EG custom tasks are not as widely-accessible as stored processes (limited, as they are, to just EG and Add-In for Microsoft Office) but they nonetheless provide great benefit as a means of packaging your functionality and making it available to you and others in a parameter/wizard-driven fashion.  
• Books I've already read and would recommend jointly are: Performance Dashboards by Wayne Eckerson, and The Design of Information Dashboards Using SAS by Christopher Simien PH.D. These two publications make an excellent pairing, taking you from the high-level theory of dashboards (as something much more than colourful reports) through to copious SAS examples of dashboarding techniques. Both books rightly highlight the need to design a dashboard as a human interaction mechanism prior to diving into the coding. If you're not familiar with the works of Few and Tufte then you'll struggle for respect as a producer of dashboards. 
• If £20 is stretching your budget(!), you could do much worse than to look at Phil Holland's App/Books that I mentioned back in September. Available for Android, Chrome, and webOS, the books are delivered as apps to your device and updated with extra pages (and information) for free from time-to-time. Each app/book costs just £1 - £2.

Okay, day-dreaming over, I'd better get my concentration back to my real Christmas shopping list. Will the Bluewater mall be empty of shoppers this evening? Wish me luck! 

How Do You Read?

[UPDATE: In this article, I recommend the use of Google Reader. Google retired Reader on 1st July 2013. This article still holds value; just substitute Feedly for Google Reader! I now highly recommend Feedly for reading news feeds.]

There's a lot of information out there in internetland; constantly being updated and added to. A lot of it is good, intelligent information, but it's spread across many web sites. Visiting each of those web sites on a regular basis, checking for updates, is time-consuming and frustrating.

Wouldn't it be so much easier if the new and updated information came to you when it was published, rather than you searching for it? But you don't want it sent to your email inbox because you're concerned that your inbox will become full-up. An RSS Feed Reader will solve all of your problems. It's like having your own personal newspaper, full of new and fresh content about things of your own choosing.

You don't need to download and install any software on your desktop if you use a browser-based RSS Feed Reader such as Google Reader. At the end of this article, I've provided a step-by-step guide to get you started.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way of collecting regularly changing web content from your favourite sites. It enables you to get all the latest information and news summaries in one place, as soon as it is published, without having to visit the individual websites you have taken the feed from.

To receive an RSS feed you will need a Feed Reader. This is a piece of software that automatically checks the feeds from your chosen sites and lets you read any new articles that have been added. And once you've read an article, most Feed Readers will then hide it so that you can easily distinguish between read and un-read articles. A variety of Feed Readers are available for different platforms. Some are accessed through your browser but you can also use a downloadable application.

Feed Readers bring automatically updated information straight to your desktop, tablet or mobile phone. You can monitor news, blogs, job listings, personals, and classifieds. More and more sites offer feeds, which you can identify by a small button that says either RSS (see the logo above) or XML. However, if you click one of these links, you will most likely get a page full of code in your browser. To properly read the feed, you need an RSS Feed Reader; take the URL of the page and paste it into the Subscribe option of your Feed Reader.

I use Google Reader on my desktop (via a browser), tablet and mobile phone. The advantage of a cloud-based reader like Google Reader is that its list of read and un-read articles is synchronised between all of my devices. So, when I'm sat on the train in the morning, I can read my feed via Google Reader on my tablet; if the train is full, I have to stand, and I don't want to hold my tablet, I can use Google Reader on my phone; and if I have some spare time during my lunch break, I can use the browser on my client's desktop computer to read my feed. Google Reader keeps a central record on new articles and read articles. All-in-all, I have my personal newspaper wherever I go, it's always up-to-date, and I never read the same article twice.

Google Reader isn't limited to Android devices and browsers for desktops; you can get suitable readers for Apple's iOS, e.g. MobileRSS and Byline; and you can try Flux and NextGen Reader on Windows Phone.

Over time, I've subscribed to a wide variety of web sites and blogs on a wide variety of topics (SAS, Android devices, motorsport, project management, technology, and my kids' own blogs). Some feeds are keepers, others I unsubscribe after a few days or weeks. Google Reader lets me keep my subscriptions in folders, so I can distinguish between topics.

Before I finish, let me offer one piece of advice. You need discipline in order to occasionally avoid becoming overwhelmed by the number of new articles. Unlike a daily newspaper that's has a predictable number of pages and articles each day, the number of articles appearing in your Feed Reader will vary. On occasion, you will have an overwhelming number to read. Don't be afraid to use the Mark As Read feature to ignore or skip them. Look at it this way.. If you hadn't started using your Feed Reader you probably wouldn't have seen those articles; so if you skip or ignore some articles occasionally, you haven't really lost anything. It takes discipline to "throw away" good information, but sometimes it's necessary.

All-in-all, I'd be lost without my Feed Reader. On each of my devices, I am kept up-to-date with all of the topics in which I hold an interest. And, as you may have noticed, some of those articles make their way into NOTE: from time-to-time.

HOW DO I GET STARTED?...

Oh, so I convinced you? Fab. Here goes...

1. Launch a browser on your desktop, skip over to http://reader.google.com, create yourself a Google account if you don't already have one, and login

2. Subscribe to some content. Let's try a couple of examples...

3. You're first choice will be NOTE:, right?!
3a. Go to http://www.NoteColon.info and look for Subscribe From A Feed in the right-hand margin
3b. Click the Posts button (showing the RSS icon) and then click the Add to Google button
3c. In the resulting screen, click the Add to Google Reader button
3d. It's all done - that was quick and easy. You're now in Google Reader, with the ten(?) most recent articles shown as unread. Read them and scroll down; Google Reader will automatically mark them as read as you scroll past the bottom of each article. In the left margin you'll see the number of unread articles in bold alongside the subscription

4. How about BI Notes blog? It doesn't show an RSS icon...
4a. We like the material at http://www.bi-notes.com/, but there no RSS icon to click
4b. No problem, just copy the URL, go to Google Reader, click Subscribe near the top of the left margin, enter the URL for BI Notes, and click Add
4c. All done. In the left margin of Google reader you now see two items in the list of Subscriptions; the bold numbers tell you how many unread articles you have

5. It's easy to unsubscribe from a feed; just  hover your mouse over the name of the feed in the list of Subscriptions; you'll see a little pull-down arrow appear at the right-hand end of the name of the feed; click on the pull-down arrow and select Unsubscribe from the menu

6. You can now download a Google Reader app on your mobile device(s), login, and see a synchronised list of subscriptions and unread articles. And your mobile app will allow you to add (and remove subscriptions) too

7. Once you've got more than a few feeds, spread across multiple topics, you can add folders to Google Reader and then move your feeds into them. Just hover your mouse over the name of the feed in the list of Subscriptions; you'll see a little pull-down arrow appear at the right-hand end of the name of the feed; click on the pull-down arrow and select New Folder from the menu

Happy reading!

NOTE: SAS Professionals Advent Calendar

It's December 1st, and that means it's time to hop over to the SAS Professionals web site to begin the daily pleasure of opening the advent calendar to bring some Christmas cheer - and possibly winning a gift.

And if you're not already a member, I recommend that you sign-up and check-out the Expert Channel's videos and the forums, and benefit from the ability to network with fellow SAS practitioners online!

And, don't forget to attend next year's SAS Professionals Convention in Marlow to grab more networking opportunities and to learn from papers delivered by a mixture of SAS staff and customers.

Our digital radios are tuned to Smooth Radio Christmas, and we'll be heading out to get our Christmas tree this weekend. I offer an early "merry Christmas" wish!

Coding For All - Competition for the Family

There's a debate in the UK, and many other countries around the globe, regarding the content of the IT curriculum (or, ICT as it's known in the UK). Speaking from experience, my kids have been taught how to use Microsoft Office products, but they haven't been taught programming in any of its guises. I've bemoaned this in the past, and I continue to do so.

There is an increasing number of fun ways to learn programming and computer science. The Raspberry Pi device is one good example. Another, not mentioned in these pages before, is the App Inventor for Android. You don't need an Android phone to use this Google-initiated tool to develop real-life apps for Android phones. I showed this to my daughter and she was instantly inspired to create a One Direction soundboard app and share it with her Android-toting friends. Result!

As I say, you don't need an Android device to use App Inventor. That's because it has a built-in phone emulator that you can run on your PC. The emulator is a precise emulation of an Android phone, so you have to wait for Android to load on the phone and then swipe horizontally to unlock it.

The concept of App Inventor is to permit the creation of programs by visual means - designing the screen, then creating the program by slotting together a wide variety of jigsaw-like programming constructs. It sounds limited but it's not.

App Inventor started life as a Google experimental lab project in 2010 but it was halted at the end of 2011. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) took over the support of the project and it's now known as MIT App Inventor. It has a few rough edges, but it's worth persevering through those small problems because the ability for kids to create mobile phone apps is inspirational. Not only is my daughter hooked but those to whom I've recommended it now have their own kids hooked on producing increasingly complex and functional apps too.

And what better way to promote something than with a competition. That's just what MIT have done. With four different age categories (including an open age category for adults), and a first prize of a Nexus 7 Android tablet in each category, there are many good reasons to get the app of your kids chosen as "most outstanding". The competition closes December 12th so you have a good number of weeks in which you or your kids can i) think of a great app idea, and ii) get familiar with App Inventor and get coding.

To get started with App Inventor, go to the site, click Explore, go to the Learn tab and follow the tutorials. In the Setup tutorial, make sure you install the App Inventor software on your PC. However, to enter the competition you'll need to join the App Inventor Community Gallery (The Gallery is in Beta, go to The Gallery to request full access).

There is some excellent learning material on the App Inventor web site, but you can also find a lot of fabulous information at Professor David Wolber's site. Prof Wolber teaches computer science at the University of San Francisco (spooky, San Francisco again!) and uses App Inventor in his courses - and he wrote the App Inventor - Create Your Own Android Apps book.

Enjoy yourself. Good luck!

NOTE: The Expert Channel at SAS Professionals

Next year's SAS Professionals Convention will be in Marlow, 10 - 12 July. If you're in the UK, or able to travel to the UK, it's one of the most valuable training events you can attend in 2013. And very reasonably priced too (£150 for three days in 2012). However, the SAS Professionals web site offers a lot of valuable information year-round, including the Expert Channel. The Expert Channel offers expertise direct to you on-demand and via interactive live sessions.

If you're not already a member of SAS Professionals, get yourself over to the web site and sign yourself up (for free) immediately! Members should take themselves to the Expert Channel group page and make sure they have joined (for free). And once you're in the group, click on the large blue "To Access the Expert Channel On Demand Click Here" graphic and get yourself to the Expert Channel Navigator page.

From the Navigator page, there are videos aplenty to view and learn from. One of the most popular series is SAS In 60 Seconds. This series is sub-divided into Base SAS, SAS Enterprise Guide, and SAS Web Report Studio. In each sub-division there are plenty of short (60 second) videos on key topics. The bite-size videos are a great way to pick-up new information.

Much of the other On Demand material on offer is derived from the live web sessions that are offered on a monthly basis. These recordings are usually closer to an hour in length. There's a large set of recordings in the  SAS Certification Tutorials sub-section. If you're planning to sit for any of the SAS certifications in 2013, you should check these out.

Depending on your circumstances (and your time zone), the live sessions might be more difficult to access. But it's good to know that the sessions are recorded and made available on demand. Yesterday's session was "SAS Certified Advanced Programmer for SAS 9 Tutorial", next Monday's will be "SAS Certified Base Programmer for SAS9 Tutorial", and this will be followed by "SAS BI Content Development for SAS 9 Tutorial" on Monday 26th November. Events continue into December with topics including Data Integration and Platform Administration. You can see the full programme in the Events section. If you plan to attend any events, be sure to register (it's free).

So, all-in-all there is a wide variety of quality material available. It's worth taking the time to get through the multiple steps required to join SAS Professionals and then join the Expert Channel group. And don't forget to make sure you've budgeted for SAS Professionals Convention 2013!

NOTE: Always Striving to Learn More

Aren't SAS users groups and conferences great? We all strive to continue learning, and we can do that a piece at a time through subscription to blogs and newsletters, and we can get great gulps of new knowledge from attending SAS users groups and conferences. If you don't have a convenient local users group (or your employer refuses to let you attend) then you have my sympathy, but all is not lost. The SAS Users Groups blog is run by a great team from SAS and provides highlights from users groups meetings in US.

This month was the turn of the South East SAS User Group (SESUG). Judging by the highlights presented in the SAS Users Groups blog it was clearly a good conference. Two blog articles (linking to conference papers) particularly caught my eye:

Why Use Hadoop?

Macro Headaches. Learn How to Prevent Them

And the Best Contributed papers at Mid West SAS Users Group (MWSUG) offers plenty of quality reading too.

So, even if you don't go to any of the conferences, you have plenty of opportunity to benefit from the presented material. What would you like to know more about?...

Enthusiasm and Vision #RaspberryJam

Well, that was an interesting evening! Lots of enthusiasm, lots of  geekiness, lots of vision, and lots of printed circuit boards. Inspiring.

I've just been to the third Raspberry Jam in London, an event designed to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and experience of the exciting new Raspberry Pi microcomputer. Its British creators call it "an ARM GNU/Linux box for $25", but to me it's an attempt to recreate the fun and learnings I experienced as a teenager in the 1970's with an Atari 400 (or BBC micro, TRS 80, or Sinclair Spectrum). We called them microcomputers in those days.

This wasn't just a trip down memory lane. The British approach to teaching Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has consisted largely of teaching kids how to use the primary components of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Publisher), producing posters, leaflets and the like. That's not what got me excited about computers as a teenager. I got hooked on computing by coding stuff - being creative and building something that didn't exist until I created it from my own design. Being able to drive Microsoft Office applications is a good office skill, but it won't produce a new generation of computer scientists in the UK; that's computer scientists who will contribute to the music, video, movie and games industries amongst others.

I secretly harbour ambitions to be an IT teacher at a senior school (age 11-18). When I say IT teacher, I'm thinking of teaching kids how to write code, how to think about design, and how to create new technology. There was an enthusiastic group of teachers at tonight's event with just the same ambitions. Their schools and their pupils are lucky to have such an enthusiastic and visionary bunch of people. I was glad to meet like-minded people.

I was expecting the main part of this evening to be one or two presentations from people who've done interesting stuff with their Pi's. Instead, our hosts (Mozilla) had kindly provided several monitors and display stands so that anybody with a Pi could hook it up and show it off. This left the rest of us to circulate and (big intake of breath) talk to each other. As a child I was taught not to speak to strangers; as a British adult, I continue to follow the same teachings!

The Mozilla office is located in St Martin's Lane, near Covent Garden, in London's theatre district. The character and ambience inside the building were artistic and creative. The free beer, nuts, Pringles and Doritos helped too. I had no trouble talking to strangers!

All-in-all, it wasn't the evening I expected, but it was an enjoyable evening nonetheless and I hope to return to the next event (in October). Moreover, I hope that the Raspberry Pi fans can continue to influence ideas about what we should be teaching our kids with regard to technology: how to use it, or how to create it. I say "how to create it".

My thanks to Ben and colleagues for their organisation of the event, and to Mozilla for kindly hosting it.

NOTE: A Book That Grows? That's Got To Be A New Concept!

Following my feature of Metacoda and their security plug-ins last week, I have to feature Phil Holland. As I said last week, I'm a keen supporter of the third-party market for SAS-related products. In addition to his two published books (Saving Time and Money Using SAS, and Power User's Guide to SAS Programming), Phil has a collection of apps that act as books but deliver the flexibility of apps. Let me explain.

Phil's apps are available for WebOS, Android, and Chrome. I sat down with Phil and a whole bunch of different bits of his hardware a couple of weeks ago. Phil explained his (unique?) concept to me over dinner and a few beers. The apps are a series of eBooks about SAS software programming. They focus on frequently asked questions and answers, and they are illustrated by code samples. The code samples can be sent by email directly from the app (copy-and-paste would be of no use because the apps are on mobile devices). So far, they sound like relatively conventional eBooks. So, why has Phil developed them as apps?

Phil has designed the eBook/apps to encourage users to contribute additional "how do I do this" questions. Questions (and answers) that are of interest to the wider audience are then added to upgrades of the apps by Phil. The upgrades are delivered free, over-the-air to the mobile devices. So Phil's eBook/app readers get the benefit of additional content, and their books just grow and grow.

The current titles in the series are:

• Data Steps
• Platforms
• SQL
• Enterprise Guide

The cost of each is minimal, and there's also a free sample book. With the content coming from Phil, you can be assured of its quality and accuracy.

I think Phil's concept is imaginative and could be applied in many areas, not just SAS. The apps are a relatively new venture for Phil, and I wish him well. Go take a look!