Most Recent Blogs
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My Fifteen Minutes
Last year, I was fortunate enough to attend David Pogue’s dynamic presentation at SAS on Web 2.0. In addition to being a popular New York Times columnist, author, and CBS news correspondent, to my delight, Mr. Pogue is also a former Broadway conductor. Experiencing Mr. Pogue’s one-man show, combining technology, creative genius, and singing, was incredible. For a tech industry girl who used to choreograph dances for unwitting younger neighborhood kids and continues to make up ridiculous songs at home for her husband, his presentation was truly inspiring. So shortly after becoming a Twitterholic last spring, I began to follow (no, NOT stalk!) Mr. Pogue on Twitter (@pogue). When @pogue announced that he was going to pose 1 or 2 questions per day and eventually create a book based on contributions from fellow tweeters, it struck a chord. Each evening I eagerly awaited the newest questions and tried to respond with as much late-night wit as I could muster in 140 characters or less. I even persuaded my best friend from childhood (@sjacob09), who was new to Twitter, to join in. Scores of others followed suit and before long the holy grail of social media had been obtained—a genuine conversation between @pogue, participating tweeters, and others enjoying the ride. With over 500,000 followers at the time (and now over a million), Pogue’s concept for creating a crowdsourced book was indeed a hit. Out of 25,000 tweets, Pogue eventually whittled them down to 2,500, and the book The World According to Twitter was born to strong early acclaim (one of my tweets was even mentioned in the review: "I was crowned Miss Watermelon at local pageant as a teen. Parade, interviews ... embarrassment to last a lifetime!"). As a thank you, a personalized complimentary copy of the book was delivered to each contributor. I was so excited to have a few tweets included in this book and received my copy a few weeks ago. Even though the inscription reads “To Julieanne's mom” and I don’t have any children—all of course is forgiven (and can probably be blamed on fatigue from his book-signing marathon). If you do happen to know Julieanne’s mom, though, please let me know. Follow Shelly Goodin on Twitter: @sgoodin
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by John West, Acquisitions Editor, SAS Press
Last week I had the pleasure of representing SAS Press at the Western Users of SAS Software (WUSS) conference in San Jose, CA. As the heart of Silicon Valley, San Jose is the perfect location for all things SAS to converge for an action-packed, three-day conference, including lots of pre- and post-conference SAS training classes. The conference got off to a great start on Tuesday with a thoroughly entertaining keynote by Michael Raithel titled, “It’s Not Easy Being a SAS Programmer!” For Wednesday’s SAS Customer Appreciation Luncheon, John Sall, SAS Institute co-founder, gave an enlightening presentation titled, “History of SAS—The Early Years.” Who knew that SAS employees consume twenty tons of M&Ms a year! SAS was invited to present a record number of paper presentations and demos this year. Many of the papers and demos were about the hot topic of ODS, which ranged from titles like “Customize Your Graphs with ODS Graphics Editor” by Sanjay Matange and “Getting Started with the Output Delivery System” by Dan O’Connor to “What’s New in ODS 9.2” by Eric Gebhart and “New SG Procedures in SAS/GRAPH Software” by Sanjay Matange. I’m always excited to reconnect in person with many of our SAS Press authors at conferences, many of whom attended this year’s WUSS conference: Art Carpenter, Ron Cody, Cynthia Zender, Kirk Lafler, Eric Gebhart, William Benjamin, Ginger Carey, Helen Carey, Lora Delwiche, Susan Slaughter, and Michael Raithel. In the SAS Press booth, we had an enthusiastic response to the many preview copies of books on display that are due to be published over the next six months or so. Here are just a few of them:
Kathy Council, vice president of SAS Publications, gave a very informative presentation on Wednesday afternoon titled, “Roadmap to Documentation, Training, Technical Support, and support.sas.com.” Kathy’s presentation highlighted all of the documentation, support, and training resources that are available to SAS users. Look for SAS Press at next year’s conference, November 3-5, 2010, in San Diego, CA!
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SAS Press has just delivered its first set of fraternal twins!by Stephenie Joyner, Acquisitions Editor
OK, maybe that's stretching things a bit. But we are proud to announce that we have just published two new JMP books at the same time (and, of course, we've already picked out their names): Analyzing and Interpreting Continuous Data Using JMP: A Step-by-Step Guide, by José Ramírez and Brenda Ramírez, and Jump Into JMP Scripting, by Wendy Murphrey and Rosemary Lucas. It has been exciting (and fun) to see these books develop over the last several months. From the authors' early ideas about what to include, to the growing volume of text as they wrote their drafts, to finalizing the manuscript during copyedit and production, the books have been a labor of love for everyone involved in these projects. José and Brenda Ramírez have been avid users and supporters of JMP and SAS for more than 15 years, and Jose won the SAS User Feedback award in 2002. As JMP Technical Support representatives at SAS, Wendy Murphrey and Rosemary Lucas have shared their JMP expertise with countless users over the last 10 years. It has been delightful working with so many experts who are so committed to providing JMP users with the information they need to do their jobs more effectively. We welcome these new books into the SAS Press library. We hope you'll be pleased with how much you can learn from our two newest deliveries!
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It's who you know (and a little of what you know)by Shelley Sessoms I'll let you all in on a little secret. I am not the least bit technical. Sure, I can set a clock, hook up a DVD player, use my BlackBerry. But that's where the technical skills end. When something happens to my computer at work I try the good 'ole standby method of turning it off, waiting 10 seconds, and turning it back on. If that doesn't fix the problem, then I know the numbers to Pubs Help by heart. This lack of technical knowledge did not deter me from editing the SAS Tech Report for nearly five years. I didn't know how to answer the questions that came into my inbox, but I made a lot of friends in Tech Support who I could forward those questions to. They were always more than happy to help out. And those same friends still help me to this day. When I receive a book proposal, I forward the material to my buddies in Tech Support, Education, R&D, etc., so they can help me decide if the material constitutes a viable book. They make suggestions, reorder chapters, suggest examples, and more to help make the book the best it can be. Through my association with these intelligent minds at SAS, I've gotten better with technical information. But I still don't consider myself a technical person. So, I've decided I want just a tiny bit more of the knowledge these SAS folks have. I recently decided to sign up for an Intro to Programming course, taught by SAS Education. I'm hopeful that it will give me enough information to tell a good program from a bad one. And allow me to help our SAS Press authors create the strongest proposal possible ... something that will wow the rest of the SAS folks into saying, "Yes, we need that book now." Wish me luck!
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Output Delivery System: The Basics and Beyond – Coming Soon!by John West, Acquisitions Editor
Many of you also know Lauren Haworth as the author of another SAS Press book, PROC TABULATE by Example, and as a frequent presenter at regional and national SAS User Group conferences. Lauren will be the chair of SAS Global Forum 2010 next April 11-14 in Seattle. Cynthia Zender is the ODS and Report Writing Curriculum Manager at SAS. A SAS user for over 20 years, Cynthia is responsible for the ODS curriculum development, including topics that range from introductory ODS to advanced topics such as ODS and XML. Cynthia divides her time between instructing and curriculum development. A SAS user since 1980, Michele Burlew is the author of four other SAS Press books: Debugging SAS Programs: A Handbook of Tools and Techniques, Reading External Data Files Using SAS: Examples Handbook, SAS Guide to Report Writing: Examples, Second Edition, and SAS Macro Programming Made Easy, Second Edition. Michele’s fifth book, Combining and Modifying SAS Data Sets: Examples, Second Edition, will be available this fall. The new book, Output Delivery System: The Basics and Beyond, will be available this October.
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Do you Believe in Magic?by Shelly Goodin, Marketing Specialist, SAS Press
Last weekend, I joined the merry band of muggles who descended on theatres across America to catch the opening weekend of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Although not strictly by the book, the movie captured the teenage angst and special brand of magic that makes this particular novel so powerful. (Confession: this sixth novel in J. K. Rowlings’s series is the only book that has ever made me cry—hard!) Yet, while the movie was certainly dazzling, it didn’t quite convey the emotional impact of the 600-plus-page tome. As delighted as my husband and brother were that I didn’t cry in public, I was secretly wanting the big cathartic cinematic meltdown from a book that has stayed with me long past turning the last page. While SAS Press books hopefully won’t bring any of our users to tears, we hope that they are also making a lasting impression on you. From statistical titles to programming guides to business essentials—we want to reach and satisfy the demands of our entire audience of SAS and JMP users. And I believe that our authors and our staff are casting a little bit of our own magic when everything comes together and we present the finished product to you. Okay, maybe this is a stretch, but I think one could say that SAS Press is a little like Hogwarts. We work with subject matter experts (think code instead of potion masters) to provide a gifted group of people (you) with life-enhancing tools.
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by George McDaniel, Acquisitions Editor
We talk a lot here about how we’re using social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook to publicize our books. I was a late comer to these applications and, like a lot of people of my generation, came to them with a high degree of skepticism. I won’t say that that skepticism has been entirely eliminated, either, since I’ve seen so many fads and fanaticisms come and go over the years. However, I can relate a recent experience that suggests the usefulness of social networking for persons and organizations with a product to sell and for individuals interested in products to buy. I have been a long-time (and I mean LONG-TIME) fan of the Scottish folk singer Al Stewart. (Those who remember Al from the sixties remember one song, “Year of the Cat,” and that’s about it. There have been lots more.) After I’d been using Facebook for a few weeks, I poked around and found a fan page for Al and signed up, joining another thousand or so fans. A thousand fans is not a shabby number but it’s still a small following by Facebook standards. From time to time, I would post a thought or two on the page’s wall, nothing very much, and while I listened frequently to his music, the Facebook page remained In the background, more or less forgotten. I was surprised, therefore, when in the past week, Al’s lead guitarist Dave Nachmanoff sent me a message (probably sent to all the fans or at least those who had posted) informing me of a new live CD that could be ordered from his Website. Visiting the site, not only did I order the CD, I also noticed that Al and his band would be coming to the Cary area this fall. I wrote back to Dave and he responded with a friendly note and we’ve exchanged a few since. That is a kind of interaction that was probably not possible until very recently. The upshot is that, come November, I can look forward to meeting my favorite singer and in the meantime, I can enjoy listening to his latest work. All thanks to Facebook. Social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter can make possible a closer interaction between performer and fan, writer and reader, seller and buyer than has ever been possible before. This one small experience illustrates that. We here at SAS Press and SAS Publishing are working toward furthering that interaction, in our own way, every day.
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Author, author!by Stacey Hamilton, SAS Press Acquisitions Editor If you’ve visited our SAS Publishing Web page lately, you might have noticed some changes. Previously, SAS Publishing titles had a corresponding companion page that featured author biographies and sample code, among other book related items. But we thought: our authors are our best asset and should be the focus of our Web presence. This led us to create author pages, which bring the attention back to our valued authors and their expertise. On each author page you will find:
We hope you will find our redesigned Web site easy to navigate. Please let us know what you think!
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Technology and Patienceby John West, Acquisitions Editor, SAS Press
I’m a self-described bookworm who’s been a little slow on the upstart with cutting-edge technology and the social media that’s intertwined with much of how we go about our daily routines. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like technology, I love it and I marvel at how productive I can be with so many technologically advanced tools at my disposal, like Google, Facebook, Twitter, smart phones, etc. It’s just that I’m in the generation gap where the first place I went for answers to any question was the Encyclopedia Britannica, all 26 volumes, and an atlas the size of a small Radio Flyer. The Britannica, housed in their own custom, brown bookcase in our living room, were revered in our family, as were all books. Fast forward a few decades and long gone are the days of having to look up anything in an encyclopedia. Just use Google and you’ll find an answer to just about any question that you have, which certainly makes work, and life, much easier. Instant access to information is an absolutely wonderful thing, as anyone who’s purchased a smart phone will attest to. I can also attest to this since I just recently bought an iPhone 3GS. I had no idea what I was missing out on! The iPhone has certainly changed my life for the better. And it’s so easy to use! With the flick of a finger, I have instant access to everything I need, the Web, e-mail, Google, YouTube, voice-recognition calling, 3-megapixel autofocus camera and video camera, compass, weather, clock, maps, and well, you get the picture. Access to all of this information is great, but it can be a double-edged sword, at least for me. In our 24/7 society, I’ve become conditioned to want everything fast, fast, fast. Why should we have to wait for anything? I grumble when I have to wait in line anywhere for more than a few minutes, which doesn’t help my blood pressure! But, as with most things, you have to find balance. I’m still working on the patience thing, but for once, I’m glad that I’m not behind the curve with my new smart phone.
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