Meet Linus Hjorth
I was thrilled to have the chance to meet Linus in person at SAS Global Forum 2015, and now get to share more about him in this Q&A. Without further ado, here's what he had to say:
What do you do and what is your favorite thing about it?
I’m a SAS professional and consultant at Infotrek (where I was one of the co-founders), a SAS partner in Sweden (that recently went from Silver Alliance to Reseller status). My main role is being a Data Warehouse Architect. By doing that, I’m in the front line of transforming business needs to a solution. And for me, a very nice tool to use in this process is information and data modelling.
What are the top three things SAS users should consider when it comes to data management?
Data Management is in my opinion a quite extensive field (perhaps the widest of the ones represented in the SAS community). It ranges from platform architecture, data models, ETL and data quality tools, and the process of implementing and maintaining the whole information value chain. Three things I value (and perhaps are often disregarded by SAS users):
- Model your information based on the requirements. A specific “no-no”: transposing your data to columns/variables.
- Identify and document the information architecture.
- Be aware of the fact that data is not an IT thing. You need active participation from key business stakeholders.
What’s the most exciting project you’ve worked on and why?
Hard one. I have a few projects from like 15 years ago, where I can’t understand today how we managed to deliver quite complex and useful DW/BI solutions. A few of them are in fact still in use, which makes me a bit proud.
But my pick is a current project. We are delivering detailed sales reporting for a bank with a very limited budget. The site have been in dormancy for a couple of years, and the bonus is that they very active as a result of this initiative.
But, I think I’ll have the best project ahead of me. Still looking for implementing the perfect data warehouse…
Tell me your top 5 bookmarks – sites that you visit nearly every day.
- Of course: communities.sas.com/community/support-communities
- LinkedIn.com: group activities and news stream
- Twitter.com: but mostly via the App, not the url…
- Meetup.com: to see if there any interesting events or seminars coming up
- Support.sas.com – there are always some syntax details or some new stuff I need to check out
…and some various (Swedish) news sites
Let’s say one of your clients calls and asks you if you’re active in any online forums. What would you say about the SAS Data Management Community, and other forums you follow?
It’s a great place to get some real practical information about SAS and to use it. Some problems are just customer specific, and if you can’t get a spot on explanation in the documentation or elsewhere, there’s a lot a people who are more than happy to help you out.
Any ideas for improvements to the community?
Perhaps if there could be more intuitive ways to navigate and group threads according to your interests. The support communities are too wide for most people, and each community too narrow, and overlapping.
Also, it seems quite often the poster doesn’t know where to put their question. So moderators (or a “robot”) could more frequently move threads to an appropriate location to make each sub community more interesting.
Great feedback, Linus! Evaluation of community structure to help members ask questions and get updates in the areas most relevant for them is top-of-mind for the community team right now. It’s good to hear your support of some adjustments to make it a better experience.
Now to the important stuff, what can you be found doing on a Saturday morning?
Making breakfast for my wife and me! This usually means strong black coffee, rye bread with Parma Ham, smoothie and eggs. On rare occasions omelet, or Egg Florentine.
What’s your “pick” – from technology to movies to music, what are you into these days?
- Tech: starting to dive into the NoSQL world a bit. And graph databases have caught my interest. I hope I can find some use for this in the DW architecture.
- Music: I’m into a Swedish debut singer Seinabo Sey, who seems to building her career in the States right now.
- Love movies, and a quite recent one I can recommend is “The Imitation Game” about Alan Turing and his work on breaking the Enigma cypher. Great performances by Benedict Cumberbatch and Kiera Knightley!
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