Recent posts

SUGUKI SAS user group in the UK & Ireland – September & October updates

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SUGUKI is an independent SAS User Group, staffed by volunteers – and we are in continuous need of speakers, venues, sponsorship, and general support. Our web site can be found at https://www.meetup.com/SUGUKI. We’d love to hear from you. We also now have a community on SAS Communities!!

Our events are always 6-8pm on a Thursday, with two SAS presentations and drinks. Sign up below!

06SEP2018 – London SUGUKI meetup – https://www.meetup.com/SUGUKI/events/bvxtjpyxmbjb/ – Come and see David Shannon (Amadeus) present “Come on, Baby, Light My SAS Viya”.
20SEP2018 – Manchester SUGUKI meetup – https://www.meetup.com/SUGUKI/events/253408203/
04OCT2018 – London SUGUKI meetup – https://www.meetup.com/SUGUKI/events/bvxtjpyxnbgb/ – I’ll be presenting “Converting Annotate to ODS Graphics. Is it possible?” and offering copies of some of my latest ebooks in a free prize draw for attendees!

All these events are free, but you must register for security and capacity reasons.

Are you recruiting for SAS jobs in India? Would you like free advertising space?

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Are you recruiting for SAS jobs in India? Would you like free advertising space?

I am looking for recruiters to post on my blog site, at least 1 for each of the 5 regions: Americas, Europe, UK, India and Pacific, because the registered members come from all 5 regions. To maintain the free trial any recruiter must post at least one SAS job from their region in each calendar month, specifically in India, where more than 1/3 of the membership live and, in addition, more non-members visit the site from there too, but there are currently no active recruiters for India. You should be aware that posting in other regions will be perfectly acceptable, but only job posts in your specified region will maintain your free trial. Note, however, that if you miss a month, then the trial period will end, and you will need to decide whether or not you want to pay a subscription to regain Recruiter status.

Join us and register as a Free member on http://blog.hollandnumerics.org.uk and then reply to the registration email you will receive with your selected region to start your unending trial.

The SAS Forum UK 2018 Book Draw Winner was … Igor Khorlo!

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Subtitle: Never leave prize draw cards out for cleaners to see!

Congratulations to Igor Khorlo from Syneos Health, who won a copy of my latest book, “SAS Programming and Data Visualization Techniques”. Thank you also to all the SAS Forum UK 2018 attendees who entered the book prize draw, but didn’t win this time. I hope you will try again at another conference where I’ll be holding a book prize draw in the future.

Unfortunately, I have a confession to make. I presented “The Art of Defensive Programming: Coping with Unseen Data” on the 1st day at this conference, telling my unexpectedly large audience that I was running a free prize draw for my latest book. After my presentation I actually saw a queue of attendees filling in the prize draw entry cards and putting them in the bag. Regrettably, I left that bag at the SAS Analytics Hub stand overnight, and on the 2nd day it was gone, so everyone’s entry card from the 1st day had been thrown away by the cleaners!! I tried to tell as many attendees as I could on the 2nd day to re-enter the draw, but many of the original entries were lost, so I’m pleased that Igor did re-enter the draw, but sorry that many who entered on the 1st day were not able to win. I will try to learn from this in the future!

As far as the conference as a whole was concerned, it was a success for me:

  • Paul Kent’s keynote presentation “Using SAS in the best possible way, driving intelligence, putting it in to practice and gaining competitive advantage” was a great start to the 1st day.
  • England beating Tunisia in the World Cup, with the England and Tunisia themed food, was a great way to end that day.
  • SAS UK are always very welcoming at their events, and this conference was no exception.
  • My only concern would be that the Vox Conference Centre may be too small for the 2019 event, but only if the attendees continue to grow.

SUGUKI SAS user group in the UK & Ireland – see Tony Barr in London

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SUGUKI is an independent SAS User Group, staffed by volunteers – and we are in continuous need of speakers, venues, sponsorship, and general support. Our web site can be found at https://www.meetup.com/SUGUKI. We’d love to hear from you. We also now have a community on SAS Communities!!

Our events are always 6-8pm on a Thursday, with two SAS presentations and drinks. Sign up below!

All these events are free, but you must register for security and capacity reasons.

Scheduled blog server maintenance in the evening of 17Jul2018 (UK time)

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My blog server runs WordPress software, which I can update hourly while the server is running, if necessary. However, the underlying Apache, PHP and MySQL software requires server downtime to update, so I have scheduled their updating to take place in the evening (UK time) of Tuesday 17 July 2018. I am hoping it will only take 1-2 hours to complete, but, having never done this big an update before, I can’t be more precise.

Did you miss the links to the blog posts and forums? They are now visible again under the menu!

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Did you miss the links to the blog posts and forums? They are now visible again under the menu! I’m not sure when these links vanished, but I re-instated them this morning:

  • Blog posts are visible whether you are logged into the blog or not.
  • The Forum widgets are only visible when you are logged in.

Beware of the 14th of June as the power supply for my SAS Blog server is being upgraded

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On the 14Jun2018 my power supply is being upgraded, which may cause server interruptions between 1200hr and 1600hr (UK time). I have an interruptible power supply attached to the blog server, but, while I’ve tested it for short interruptions, I can’t guarantee that the power supply will smooth over all of the disconnections for power upgrade.

Please accept my apologies if you are impacted.

If there is any interruption (to quote the movies) I will be back!!

Have you registered for SAS Forum UK 2018 yet? I’m presenting there!

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Have you registered for SAS Forum UK 2018 in Birmingham yet? It is being held at The Vox Conference Centre, Resorts World, Birmingham B40 1PU (next to the NEC) from June 18-19, and I’m presenting “The Art of Defensive Programming: Coping with Unseen Data” on Monday afternoon.

My highlights of the conference will be:

  • Paul Kent’s keynote on Monday morning, “Using SAS in the best possible way, driving intelligence, putting it in to practice and gaining competitive advantage”.
  • My presentation, of course! 😉
  • I’m hoping to be able to run a free prize draw for a copy of my latest SAS book, as I did last year!
  • The drinks reception followed by the Customer Awards on Monday evening.
  • Live screening of England’s World Cup match against Tunisia on Monday evening, including an England and Tunisian themed dinner and drinks. Note that, if you are not an England football fan, there will still be food and drinks!
  • Charles Senabulya talking on Tuesday morning, “SAS Update: Getting you In The Know on SAS developments”.

You may disagree with my highlights, so feel free to investigate the conference yourself. Full details about the venue, agenda and registration can be found at https://www.sas.com/en_gb/events/2018/sas-uk-forum.html.

In preparation for GDPR on May 25th I’ve added a Privacy Policy page

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In preparation for GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), which comes into force on 25May2018, I’ve added a Privacy Policy page to this site. GDPR is directly relevant to residents in the European Union, but supplies privacy tools to all web site users, who can now request a download of all their personal data stored on this site, but also can request the complete erasure of that data.

A link to this page can also be found at the bottom-left of every page on this site.

Vote for my SASware Ballot Idea: Browsing SAS data sets in Enterprise Guide without locking

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I’ve posted a new idea for the SASware Ballot about how to avoid locking SAS data sets when browsing them in Enterprise Guide (EG). Anyone who uses EG now will have discovered this at some point! However, I will need your help to get this idea into the real SASware Ballot for users to vote for it, which is why I need my idea to be voted up in the SASware Ballot Ideas Community at “Browsing SAS data sets in Enterprise Guide without locking“.

If you think this is a good idea, then please vote for it and tell your colleagues to vote for it too!
Just click on the blue voting button after logging into SAS Communities.

Many thanks in advance……….Phil

PS. The idea above is not the only SASware Ballot Idea I have submitted: