In this edition of People Power, we’ll profile SAS Product Manager Jonathan Wexler. You may have seen Jonathan demo SAS Factory Miner at SAS Global Forum 2015 – if not, check it out!   Let’s get to know him even more…   What do you do? I am the SAS product manager responsible for the strategic direction of SAS Enterprise Miner and SAS High-Performance Data Mining. I meet with many customers to get a pulse of the analytic needs of SAS software, and work with SAS R&D to identify and prioritize features to implement in our software. What surprises you most about your job? I am always surprised by the novel ways that people use our software. Since SAS offers a rich suite of programming mechanisms, combined with GUI interfaces, customers always come up with new exciting ways to solve business problems. What aspect do you like best? Worst? I love working with customers and looking for new and emerging analytic challenges. I also love that I can walk down the hall and get an answer to complex analytics in minutes. It’s fun to walk in to someone’s office and talk about procedures they wrote that I have used for years. Fill-in-the-blank: Because of what I do ...people solve a wide spectrum of business problems, find cures for diseases, and make the world a safer place. Memorable moments? Presenting on the main stage at SAS Global Forum 2013 and 2015, in front of 4000 - 5000 people. What is your fantasy job? General Manager of the Boston Red Sox – Saber Metrics! What is your ‘pick’ – from technology to movies to music, what are you into these days? Love iPhones any Apple device. They’re educational for the kids, and essential for communication for adults. We all share the same toys! ... View more

Want to see Google Analytics page views, keyword searches and mobile preferences alongside other digital marketing metrics from Twitter and Facebook? Now it’s possible with SAS Visual Analytics 7.2 that allows you to view and analyze all kinds of Google Analytics data. You’ll find several out-of-the-box dimensions and groupings through which to pull Google Analytics data. Example categories include: Acquisition E-commerce Geography Mobile Technology (browser and OS preferences) Behavior Search   Here’s a sample report: (click to enlarge)   Comment with how this integration may be helpful for you, and see what other features SAS Visual Analytics 7.2 has to offer. ... View more

If you’re in a marketing or customer service role, no doubt a major piece of your reporting puzzle includes analyzing social media interactions. Say you’re preparing for an upcoming meeting with your manager and you’d like to report on customer service levels using data from call centers and social media channels – all in a cohesive dashboard. In addition to Twitter feeds and other data, you can now analyze Facebook with the newly released SAS Visual Analytics 7.2. Facebook conversations often reveal quite a few details on customer service interactions. For example, you can analyze company representative replies to customer complaints through the specific, targeted conversations. On the other hand, Twitter may uncover talk of categories of companies in general, with less elaboration. Nonetheless, having both data streams available for analyzing and visualizing in SAS Visual Analytics 7.2 will give you an even bigger picture of customer service and digital marketing efforts. You can perform a sentiment analysis of your organization’s Facebook page via a word cloud, for example. Or track volume of web traffic in a line chart. SAS Visual Analytics will automatically group topics people are talking about, and monitor engagement metrics such as ‘likes’ and ‘shares.’ Here’s some sample Facebook data in a word cloud: (click to enlarge)     How will the ability to integrate Facebook enrich your reports? Comment with thoughts! And get the scoop on more SAS Visual Analytics 7.2 features. ... View more

The latest version of SAS Visual Analytics – 7.2 – is now available. Some of the new or enhanced features within SAS Visual Analytics Designer include:   The new default report theme, SAS Snow (see example below). Existing reports can be manually changed to the new report theme by using the Styles tab. New options (for example, adding page numbers, including comments and adding a cover page) for printing to PDF. You can attach a PDF of a report to an e-mail message. Parameterized URLs to open reports to set initial values used in filters, top/bottom rankings, calculations, or display rules. Calculated data items and grouped category data items can be changed into geographic data items and used in geo maps.   Example showing Snow theme: (click to enlarge) How will these new capabilities help you? Dive into the SAS Visual Analytics 7.2 documentation for more details, and follow the community for updates on other features. ... View more

Cool, cool and cool. Explore your own Internet of Things in SAS Visual Analytics. Nascif Abousalh-Neto, SAS Sr. Development Manager, visualizes his personal analytics, and tells us about it in a three-part blog series. I can't wait for the next one! ... View more

If you don’t subscribe to the SAS Users blog, you should. It offers regular SAS Visual Analytics tips on a number of topics that come up on this community. A recent post by SAS’ Teri Patsilaras gives a step-by-step guide on how and why to include Info Windows in your reports. What’s been your experience with Info Windows in SAS Visual Analytics? ... View more

The article series on data scientists continues with Keeping the science in data science, from SAS Senior Machine Learning Scientist Patrick Hall. Many of you likely recognize Patrick from his community tips on open source integration with SAS. In the article, Patrick asks that data scientists apply the scientific method to their work and comments on the discipline: "We'll all be better off in 20 years if data science is a vibrant and respected branch of the mathematical sciences rather than a stale marketing term.” You can learn more about Patrick’s day-to-day in this Q&A that includes a video highlighting some of his favorite machine learning techniques. You can also catch Patrick at SAS Global Forum 2015 at the SAS® Enterprise Miner™ booth and during his sessions:   SAS® Does Data Science: How to Succeed in a Data Science Competition Tuesday, April 28, 11:00 a.m. - 11:50 a.m. U.S. Central De-Mystifying Deep Learning Tuesday, April 28, 4:00 p.m. - 4:50 p.m. U.S. Central In related news, DataKind founder and data scientist Jake Porway recently blogged about the abundance of opportunities for data science to improve society. I’m sure looking forward to seeing his keynote presentation at SAS Global Forum next week. If you’re not planning to attend, tune into a live streamed broadcast of his keynote on Tuesday, April 28, at 1 p.m. Central. ... View more

If so, we’d love to see you in Dallas! Chris Hemedinger and I will be there doing a myriad of things from shooting videos to milling about the Quad (a.k.a. demo floor) to meet as many community members as possible. What’s your schedule looking like during the conference? Not sure where to start? Check out these handy sample session agendas to get going. If you’ll be there a tad early on Saturday, April 25, don’t miss the #SASGF15 #TweetUp that Michelle Homes and TriciaA have been talking up. I know many of you are going – saw you mentioned it in a recent article comment, Andrew Howell – and I look forward to meeting you! Chris and I will be at the SAS Community/Support Site booth on Sunday, April 26, from 4:30-6:30 p.m. and Tuesday, April 28, from 4-5 p.m. Lainie Hoverstad will also be at the booth for during most of the Quad open hours. Stop by and say hello. BONUS: if you’re in need of a head shot for your community avatar, we've got you covered. We can stroll over to the SAS Photo Booth to snap a photo for you to use as an avatar and post to other social sites to tell the world you’re at SAS Global Forum 2015! Also on Tuesday, you don’t want to miss the Online Communities Linkup from 6:30-8 p.m. for a packed agenda covering the latest developments of six SAS-related communities: communities.sas.com, SAS-L, sasCommunity.org, SAS Canada Community, SASProfessionals.net and the SAS Professional Forum. Can you tell I’m a bit excited? Share your pre-SAS Global Forum thoughts here! Are you presenting? What’s your favorite thing about the conference? ... View more