I published a list of available training courses for 2017 in January this year, but this course list is actually intended for companies, and not for individuals, as the courses have a fixed price no matter how many people attend them. All the training materials are personalised and supplied in digital form, and so can be duplicated for that client to re-use internally.
Individuals looking for SAS training should subscribe to the SAS course in the SAS Programming Forum instead, which is specifically targeted at individual SAS learners and programmers, and is priced as a low-cost monthly subscription. However, the SAS Programming Forum is not just there for the SAS course, but can be used to get answers to any SAS-related questions you may have too, even if they are from homework or interview questions.
Are you attending SAS Global Forum in April this year? If you are then you have the opportunity to see me present “Making Graphs Easier to Validate – The Benefits of ODS Graphics” on Wednesday 5 April from 1100-1150hr. I’ll be in the Americas Seminar Room on Dolphin Level 5 at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando, Florida. In this presentation I’ll be talking about how to make your graphs easier to validate by using ODS Graphics and a lot of common sense!
However, maybe you are not going to be in Orlando in April, but you and your colleagues would still like to see me present on this topic. What can you do about that? Well it should still be possible, because I’m currently developing a 1/2 day training session which I’m calling “Defensive SAS Programming”. This will include “Making Graphs Easier to Validate – The Benefits of ODS Graphics”, but also “Writing Reusable Macros” and another new topic “The Art of Defensive Programming: How to Cope with Unseen Data”.
You’ll see from the link above that I don’t have to be in the room with you to present, therefore I could present through your company’s video-conferencing system from my own office at home to your conference room wherever you are instead. The “Available” and “Coming Soon” training sessions can all be booked in advance, but the “Coming Soon” training sessions will be developed specifically for you, if you are the first to request them.
Going back to “Making Graphs Easier to Validate – The Benefits of ODS Graphics”, this presentation and paper will be available for download from the Product Shop shortly after it is presented for the first time, but may also be available from the SAS Global Forum site before the conference too!
I’m looking forward to SAS Global Forum, and hope to see you there, or elsewhere in the near future!
There is now a new Training Course list for 2017, which can be downloaded from here. The courses available in 2016 are still there, but I’m developing some new SAS-related courses, based on the SAS course, which you can accelerate to production status by requesting them:
½ day SAS Data Step training
½ day SAS PROC SQL training
½ day SAS macros training
½ day Defensive SAS Programming training
Your interest in any of these courses will result in them being developed as priority tasks!
I’m sure you’ve seen this sign many times before, but it is a very important statement!
At Holland Numerics we strive to provide good service at all times, so we will never even consider providing fast service cheap, because it will not be good! That said, we can provide good service fast, but it won’t be cheap, and good service cheap, but it won’t be fast.
Sometimes we have to sit back and consider Oscar Wilde’s view (from his play “Lady Windemere’s Fan”) that at his point in time a cynic, but now everyone, knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing! This is particularly relevant for consultancies like Holland Numerics trying to determine appropriate pricing for consulting services.
That is why the SAS Programming Forum is accessed for a small subscription, not because we need it to be an income stream, but because we want to make certain that subscribers really want to access the valuable SAS-related information I have added over several months in that forum. I like to think this is perfectly exemplified by another quote, this time from my all-time favourite novel “Time Enough for Love” by Robert A Heinlein:
Following my SAS blog server crash in September I have experienced occasional access interruptions from a few minutes to several hours since then. There have been various reasons for the down time, including WordPress plugin updates causing incompatibilities, server software updates, accidental disconnecting of the router, and my internet service provider temporarily interrupting their service to me.
To correct the last problem I decided to change my broadband connection from ADSL to a “Superfast” fibre, which meant changing my provider. This has now been completed, but the changeover process did more than change my internet service provider. While running the two broadband connections in parallel I discovered some issues in the setup of the network gateway, which had itself caused a number of interruptions. I can’t guarantee that there won’t be more short interruptions in the future, as I’m in the process of reorganising the cabling in my office, but I wanted to assure everyone that, if you have difficulty connecting, then wait a short while before trying again, as I will be back, and the blog could be quicker too!
It is rather sad that everyone knows the price of everything and the value of nothing! I have paraphrased this statement somewhat from the original written by Oscar Wilde for Lord Darlington in “Lady Windemere’s Fan”, but the reality is very much in evidence everywhere today. But how is that relevant to the SAS Programming Forum?
I wanted to create a place where students of SAS programming (which includes myself, as I try to learn something new about SAS every day) could ask SAS-related questions, even if they were from interviews or homework, without being criticised. However, I wanted to exclude those asking questions because they were too lazy to research the answers themselves (#LAZYWEB), so I hoped that charging a small amount to access the forum would filter out those trying to get free information with no effort, but encourage those enthusiastic enough to pay to learn about SAS an opportunity to do so. The SAS Programming Forum subscription is only GBP 5.00 per month for up to 3 months via PayPal, so it can be stopped at any time, but also renewed easily, and includes access to my SAS course about SAS programming topics, which I’m progressively building, and currently includes 4 sections on SAS components, Data Steps, PROC SQL and SAS macros, and now totals 25 topics in all. The sections are intended to be read sequentially, but are, for the most part, independent of each other. The key feature of the SAS Programming Forum and the SAS course is that questions can be asked at any time and they will be answered, provided sufficient information is given in the question. This is not a “get out” clause, but a learning point for all prospective SAS programmers that without sufficient information you cannot write a SAS program that meets the customer’s needs, so you have to be able to ask question yourself!
The SAS course and the SAS Programming Forum continue to grow, I have just started a new course sub-section about calling SAS macros, and there are now 24 topics in 4 different sections:
More topics and sections are being developed, so register for free now to be kept up-to-date about all of the news, so you can take advantage of the Programmer level when it suits you best!
The SAS course and the SAS Programming Forum continue to grow, I have just added a new course section about SAS macros, and there are now 23 topics in 4 different sections:
More topics and sections are being developed, so register for free now to be kept up-to-date about all of the news, so you can take advantage of the Programmer level when it suits you best!
There were 2 new prize draw winners of my most recent SAS book in the last few weeks, with the 2 prize draws held at the SAS Forum UK in Birmingham at the end of September 2016, and at the PhUSE Conference in Barcelona this month.
September 2016: Congratulations to Charlotte King who won my new book in the Prize Draw at the SAS Forum UK in Birmingham
October 2016: Congratulations to Cathal Gallagher who won my new book in the Prize Draw at the PhUSE Conference in Barcelona
Would you like to win a copy of my latest book “SAS Programming and Data Visualization Techniques”?
Are you attending the 2016 PhUSE Conference in Barcelona between 9 and 12 October?
If the answer to both these questions is Yes, then visit the CK Clinical stand in the Exhibitors Area at the conference and take your business card, or write your name and email address on the cards provided, and drop it into the box. The draw will be made towards the end of the conference and you could win a sealed copy of my book. I’ll sign it for you too, if you want!
There will also be a copy for you to read at the stand, so you’ll be able to see whether it is worth the risk! 😉
I suspect many of you will have a “bucket list”, a list of places you would really like to visit and activities you would like to do. I have bucket list myself, which included visiting the Alhambra in Granada in Southern Spain. Last week my wife and I joined a tour of Andalusia, which included a visit to the Alhambra on the first day, where we enjoyed the splendour of the Moorish palace.
Little did I know at the time, but just after we had left for our tour my blog server switched itself off. I have still not determined the exact reason for the crash, but I think it could have been a local power cut that caused the shutdown. Anyway, I was 900 miles away with no remote access to the server, so I had to relax and enjoy the rest of the tour. On returning to the UK it was simply a matter of restarting the server, and normal service was restored in a few minutes.
I will conclude with some simple questions for you. I could have bought and installed an uninterruptible power supply to the server, which would have, hopefully, prevented the crash. However, I would not have been able to tell you about my bucket list!
My questions for you are:
What is the value of a blog, more or less than the cost of purchasing and running an uninterruptible power supply, or flying back to fix it?
Would a week where the blog is unavailable affect its value?
Should I have told you all about the crash immediately, or when it was fixed?
I’m presenting “Writing Reusable Macros” in the Coders’ Corner stream at the PhUSE Conference in Barcelona from 10-12Oct2016. You can download my paper and presentation from here.
I’m sure you’ve seen this sign many times before, but it is a very important statement!
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