Knoware Blog/News

Knoware hosted the second meeting of the SAS Visual Analytics (VA) special interest group,

Presentations included:

• MSD user story – overview of using VA with David Sercombe from MSD
  (PowerPoint in PDF format 1.3 MB)
• FMG user story – Tim Wipiiti-Benseman and Carlo Nocos from FMG
  (PowerPoint in PDF format 0.3 MB)
• Scheduling with VA – Mark Bodt from Knoware
  (PowerPoint in PDF format 1.1 MB)
• Latest VA and VS news – Milo Davies from SAS

If you would like to come to the next session in early 2016 , please register your interest by emailing suzanne.turner@knoware.co.nz

This is the first meeting of the SAS Visual Analytics (VA) special interest group, hosted by Knoware. We had three presentations and lots of good networking. Moving on from the stress of the job and the resulting effects on hair, Gavin Knight, Chief Data Scientist for New Zealand Police, talked about the classification of their users and the definition of their roles. These may change or blur over time, but it’s a good step forward to identifying the roles that people play in information delivery. Another key point was the demo information system delivered to managers, closely tied to the strategic priorities of the organisation – a good move away from the all too common operational silo approach to information delivery.

Colin Harris, Technical Director of Knoware, gave some tips and techniques in using Visual Analytics. These were based on commonly expressed user questions, and useful tricks of the trade. A practical paper, attendees came away with some new ideas to try out and some suggestions for future topic areas for the next VA SIG. Milo Davies, Principal Solutions Consultant at SAS completed the presentations with an overview of future advances and changes in VA. VA has come a long way quickly, and it is being further developed rapidly with a 6 month release cadence. Watch this space! The feedback was that this was an excellent event for all attendees. Do come to the next one!

You can view Milo’s presentation here (PowerPoint in PDF format 4.2 MB)

Click here for Colin Harris’s presentation here (PowerPoint in PDF format 1.5MB)

Selena Smeaton (Knoware’s intellectual lead for information governance) and Colin Harris (Knoware’s) Technical Director spoke at May’s lunchtime session for IITP (Institute of IT Professionals). The subject of their presentation is directly relevant for all of you working for both corporates and government.

“The promise of data has never had so much appeal as it has right now. Industries, organisations and data practitioners continue to debate, argue, deliberate and plot the data path from “insights to value”. Data governance methodologies, frameworks, tools and best practice approaches abound, analytics capability gets top billing at the Board table. Selena and Colin’s talk covers the ‘rules of the game’, what they mean for data governance, and get right down to details on what you actually need to consider at a grassroots solution design level.

For more information go to this link

This year the SAS global forum was held in Dallas, Texas, USA

you can find out more details from the forum website

SUNZ Conference 2015 Tuesday 17th February 2015 Wellington

Here is the link to SUNZ 2015 Wellington, New Zealand organised by SAS New Zealand.

An excellent conference was held this year and again Knoware was a key sponsor and speaker at this important conference for all SAS professionals.

The conference was also attended by Bill English Deputy Prime Minister who spoke about the importance of data analysis saying “Pragmatic governments need more hard data to serve their ‘customers”.

You can read the press article on Bill English’s speech here

This link takes you to the official SUNZ photos on Flickr

Knoware has a keen interest in the information management aspects of using Sharepoint as a key EDRMS (electronic document and records management system). This event is the big one for Sharepoint users. There is a lot of information on the “sharethepoint web site” to check out.

see www.sharethepoint.com for more details

Session-SAS® Enterprise Guide®—Your Gateway to SAS, Dave Shea 

Many of you will know and have worked with Knoware’s Dave Shea. He’s a senior SAS developer of many years standing: a devotee of PC SAS, who has become an evangelist of SAS Enterprise Guide! Whatever your level of SAS EG expertise.

Dave gave a terrific briefing which was enjoyed by the great turnout of people.

Dave’s excellent presentation can be viewed here (in PDF format size 0.87 MB)

Knoware and SAS ran this event attended by over 50 people with the theme of “let’s talk analytics” ! Knoware’s Robert Noe interviewed Mike O’Neil (Data Warehouse Manager, Ministry of Social Development) on his personal views, experiences and what he’s learned from the analytics projects at the MSD, covering such areas as:

• What are we trying to achieve with Analytics?
• Why do it?
• Practical implementation considerations
• What organisational support is required to make it work
• The evolution of the Analytics team
• The role of innovation

The SAS Global Forum was held in Washington D.C. USA. This is the annual worldwide conference for users of SAS software and it is big… with over 4,000 people from 30 countries. Knoware had a team of 3 at the forum to chair forums, present papers and to soak up the latest developments and ideas. Check out the SAS site for more about this important conference

The 2014 Annual SAS User’s Conference was held on Tuesday 18th February 2014 in Wellington, New Zealand organised by SAS New Zealand.

Full details of the agenda and papers can be found on the SUNZ website operated by SAS New Zealand.

Knoware again sponsored this important conference for all SAS professionals, which was attended by more than 240 SAS professionals.

This seminar is the logical extension to our very popular seminars on techniques for getting data out of SAS and into Excel which have been attended by more that 150 SAS analysts.

This time we have turned the direction completely around and the focus is on explaining various techniques for “getting data from Excel into SAS” and the pros and cons of each technique.

If you would like information on what was covered at the seminar, please email info@knoware.co.nz