Companies benefit even more from analytics when leadership takes a strong role in setting that direction.
Leaders need information and tools to effectively implement and integrate analytics into their operations.
This new track is being offered for leaders and champions of analytics to share experiences and highlight effective
approaches to promoting analytics in an organization.Whether you are a senior leader with a mature analytics unit or
just starting up an analytics effort, we want to hear from you!
Presentation topics can include, but are not limited to,
Case studies for new analytics initiatives
Monitoring model performance
Measuring analytical maturity and capabilities
Leveraging data and analytics to drive transformation
Managing and growing data science teams
Moving from Business Intelligence to Analytics
Making analytics value propositions
Papers are not required but welcome for presentations in the Analytics Leadership track.
Presentation proposals need to be submitted by June 13 using the same link as for abstracts.
Every SAS® programmer, from the beginner to the expert, has found new or unusual ways to solve problems
with SAS. Coder's Corner is the place to share tips and tricks, useful nuggets of programming, or techniques that
make jobs easier. Presentations are 10 minutes in length and can come from a broad range of topics.
Come and share your simple tricks to unlock some of SAS's mysteries!
Data manipulation and integration have been mainstays of SAS® software since its inception.
Over time SAS has grown to include a full suite of data management capabilities like Data Quality, Data Flux,
Data Governance, Master Data Management, and Data Federation. This section intends to highlight the capabilities of
traditional Base SAS and SAS Data Management as well as the various ways SAS leverages Big Data. These presentations
will cover topics like data integration, data federation, data quality, data access, and data governance while
providing helpful insights and lessons learned along the way.
The E-Poster Section covers any area including: SAS® fundamentals; statistics; business intelligence;
medical research; data mining; survey/panel results; social networking; and industry applications for the
pharmaceutical, finance, education, environmental and entertainment industries. E-Posters will be displayed
electronically on a wide screen monitor. In addition, a corresponding paper based upon the poster will be published
in the conference proceedings. There will be allotted time to meet authors to discuss their E-Posters with conference
attendees (Meet the Presenter session). Attendees will have the opportunity to examine E-Posters at their own pace
and revisit displays several times during the conference.
Hands On Workshops (HOW) provide an engaging forum to share a variety of SAS skills in an interactive setting.
These sessions are typically 1.5 to 2 hours in length. Presenters will demonstrate SAS code and procedures in real
time with a specific task or goal in mind. Any SAS topics that are better explained in an interactive setting are
ideal for Hands On Workshops. These sessions are not reserved for complicated or elaborate SAS techniques only.
A power point presentation, as well as sample code for the demonstration, is needed for the workshop. The datasets
and code should be made available for download prior to the session, enabling attendees to run the code on their
personal computers.
Workshops this year will be set up such that attendees bring their own device.
We will be using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to make presentation materials and SAS software available to attendees.
Attendees will need a laptop, web browser, and Remote Desktop client.
Please make sure you have an appropriate Remote Desktop client for your operating system.
* Windows users: the default Remote Desktop client is fine
* Mac OS X users: download the Microsoft RDP v10 app from
here.
Attendees do not need to have SAS licenses on their own computers. However, if attendees decide they want to use
their own computers and SAS licenses during the presentations, class materials will be available for download.
No laptop? No problem! Attendees are welcome to attend HOW sessions and watch as the instructor works through
the exercises on the screen.
Papers in the Government section will focus on using the SAS System to help local, municipal, state, and federal
government agencies apply analytics in delivering quality services in the face of budgetary and human resource
constraints.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Taxpayer funding, budgeting, and finance management
Defense contracting
Tax revenue and waste reduction oversight
Public protection and safety
Internal and external regulatory and policy compliance
Papers in the Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals section will focus on using the SAS System to provide quality healthcare
outcomes - saving patient lives; hospital readmission rates; drug/device discovery, injury and disease prevention;
patient care and satisfaction; healthcare costs and delivery.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Patient safety and personal healthcare
Medical and pharmaceutical intervention effectiveness
Clinical trial evaluation
Epidemiological, environmental, socioeconomic, and genomic studies
Papers in the Education/Institutional Research section focus on using the SAS System to find solutions for
reporting and analysis in the education community. This section will present techniques, best practices,
and solutions for data needs in primary, secondary, and postsecondary education.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
School systems evaluation
Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) reporting
This section is primarily intended for programmers new to SAS, and includes topics essential for building the
knowledge and capacity of beginner SAS users. Appropriate topics include SAS programming fundamentals,
SAS program design, basic SAS procedures, and SAS debugging techniques. The presentations will provide beginning
programmers with a greater understanding of SAS coding procedures, rules, and troubleshooting. Programming topics
across all fields and industries are encouraged and welcome.
Know your SAS: Advanced Techniques provides instructional content for intermediate and advanced SAS users.
These presentations will help advanced programmers implement enhanced techniques to build on the power and
flexibility afforded by SAS software. Programming topics across all fields and industries are encouraged and welcome.
Subject matter will include advanced SAS programming topics including:
ODS
SAS Macro Facility
Sophisticated and efficient PROC and DATA step programming solutions
SAS Enterprise Guide functionality
Integration with third-party software and databases
Innovative application development and data integration
Open Source software has become popular for data visualization, analytics, and data manipulation and management.
This year, SESUG will pilot a new section featuring open source software that can be useful to the SAS user community.
As SAS states, "As we think about the entire analytics life cycle, it's important to consider data preparation,
deployment, performance, scalability and governance, in addition to algorithms. Within that cycle, there's a role for
open source and commercial analytics.*".
* SAS Open Analytics White Paper
The Open Analytics section will offer a variety of papers on topics leveraging open source applications in
conjunction with or separately from SAS applications. Presentation topics that demonstrate clear benefit to
the SAS user community may include, but are not limited to:
Integrating open source software with SAS
Scaling open source models to the enterprise
Accomplishing specific tasks using open source software
Developing and solving smaller scale projects with open source software
Balancing user needs in an open analytics ecosystem
Providing opportunities for open source users to learn SAS
Managing diverse analytics assets and development tools
This section welcomes topics which include but are not limited to the following technologies:
If all or part of your SAS® time includes supporting users, whether through systems architecture and
administration
or through consulting, training, and hiring, this section is the place for you to share your experiences with other
members of the SAS community. This section will include guidelines, best practices, techniques, and resources for
working efficiently and effectively in the SAS support community.
Possible topics include:
SAS Systems architecture and administration
Installation, deployment, and migration
Virtualization
Performance monitoring and tuning
Other SAS systems support
Recruiting, hiring and maintaining qualified staff
The Reporting and Visualization section invites presentations that demonstrate unique and innovative ways to
visualize data and output. SAS provides many tools for visualizing and reporting data and results including
Visual Analytics, SAS/Graph, SAS SG procedures, DSGI, and JMP®.
Presentation topics include but are not limited to:
SAS graphics procedures, styles, templates, Output Delivery System (ODS) and Graphics Template Language (GTL)
Customized reports, dashboards, scorecards, graphs, and maps
SAS Visual Analytics
JMP applications
SAS and/or JMP integration with Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, R, Python, MATLAB, Tableau and TIBCO Spotfire
Presentations in the Statistics and Data Analysis section address ways of transforming raw data into useful
information that uncover important relationships and patterns in data to help gain insights for effective,
data-driven decision-making. Papers do not need to present new statistical methods, although such topics are
always welcome. Presentations are sought that involve the application of methods that many users of SAS statistics
may not commonly see, such as methods for categorical, longitudinal, or censored data. Methods to facilitate analysis
of very large data arrays, such as those that result from genetic studies or national surveys, are also sought for
this section. Topics in this section should be of interest to a broad spectrum of SAS practitioners including
analysts, developers, statisticians, data scientists, and DATA step programmers.
