SAS Analytics Forum 2012

October 18, 2012.  I attended the SAS Analytics Forum at the New World Hotel* in Makati.  It was a free forum so we took advantage and almost the whole team was there.  I always find conferences such as these very helpful, especially in getting oneself updated on new technology, software and developments in the industry.  Since it was sponsored by SAS, the morning sessions were focused on its newest offering, big data analytics.  We were shown a demo of the capability and it was really impressive.  Data processing was fast, everything was easy to manipulate and it had almost real-time connectivity to mobile devices such as iPads.

Our company uses SAS in data pulls, analyses and reporting.  I have not used SAS before this job but I've had some programming background so I got the hang of it fairly easily.  What they have done for big data is to simplify (to me) the user processes and interactions but definitely added more power to the backend processing.  Even though I do not foresee using the new tool in the near term, it was still great to just know what is available out there.  They also showed a very nifty social media 'listening' tool which can be used more for brand/reputation management.

In the afternoon, there were three different tracks -- Operations Analytics, Customer Analytics and Risk Management.  I chose Operations Analytics, being the most applicable to what I do.  There were a couple of topics on optimization and one on forecasting.

A speaker mentioned that 'data scientist' is the sexiest job of the 21st century.  It is very easy to gather and store a lot of data but it is the person who can make sense of it, gather insights and use it to make decisions who will gain most from these technological capabilities.

Photo from Sally B.
Photo from Sally B.

*Second time in New World since July 2007.  I remember because this is where we had our wedding preps.=)

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