Our European Analytics Intelligence Adventure

Inspiration and creativity

Our journey gave us the opportunity to hear many inspirational speakers share their thought leadership and experiences using SAS software to solve business challenges.

A particularly thought-provoking presentation for us was by Martha Rehnberg from Dare Disrupt at the SAS Business Forum Oslo. She talked about empowerment and technological intuition as the must-have skill of the digital era. Her wisdoms included ‘Define business by problems solved. Not products sold’ and she closed with the question, ‘What problem can you now solve if your product was free?’.

The events included technical streams where end-users shared applications of analytical intelligence, technical tips, and deep dives. The information sharing and collaboration helped to instil a real sense of community and creativity. It was impressive and a lot of fun to join SAS FANS Espoo attendees at the end of the day with a ‘Beat The Box’ team puzzle activity… especially challenging for us given that the instructions were in Finnish! ?

Analytics Platform Success

The theme for SAS Forum UK was ‘IN THE KNOW – Analytical Intelligence in Reality’. Paul Kent’s keynote on ‘Three Things: what you need to do well to use SAS in the BEST possible way’, set the scene and direction for delegates to learn, inquire and aspire over the two days. Paul – like others at the forums – referred to the Analytics Lifecycle and the Data, Discovery, Deploy process. His three takeaways were to:

1. Prepare the data
2. Build the models
3. Use the good ones

He spoke about the necessary personas and roles in achieving the Analytics Lifecycle, and highlighted that a system of analytics is needed, not just tools for success! You need to nurture the platform.

How do you know it’s secure if you don’t test it?

One of the ways that Metacoda helps nurture the analytics platform is in security.

At the SAS Nordic FANS user conferences in Oslo, Copenhagen and Espoo, Metacoda’s Paul Homes demonstrated methods for testing SAS metadata security. His presentation, ‘How do you know it’s secure if you don’t test it?’ included three aspects of testing:

1. Implementation testing – how has it been secured?
2. Outcome testing – what is the effective result of the implementation?
3. Best practice testing – how well does the implementation align with best practices such as the well-known Golden Rules?

With GDPR now in place, there was quite a bit of interest in how Metacoda software can be used to keep SAS platforms secure. Our presentation slides (which reference the GDPR articles we can help with) are available on the SAS Nordic Events & Presentations page.

As we often say to people who visit our stand: you’ll always know when you make a change to your security model that restricts people’s access (they’ll soon tell you!)… but will you know if you grant people more access? And what is the risk if people have access to more SAS data assets than they should? If you’d like to learn more about how Metacoda software helps with your SAS platform success, please contact us or register for a free 30-day trial.

Being Social on Social and In Person

For Metacoda, one of the highlights of attending SAS Forum events is the networking opportunities, especially meeting people who we’ve connected with online and on social.

It’s certainly no secret that Metacoda’s Michelle Homes loves the social side of SAS, so she was absolutely thrilled to receive the SAS Forum UK 2018 SAS Social Award in recognition of her contributions.

Many thanks to Rachel Lockwood and the SAS UK team for your support and acknowledgement, and to the wider SAS community for your comments/likes/shares in Twitter and LinkedIn.

It’s been said that if you didn’t get a selfie with Michelle you weren’t there! She certainly enjoys catching up with people, taking photos, and sharing with the community. It was rather apt that #NationalSelfieDay coincided with SAS Forum Deutschland – even the Metacoda koalas joined in the fun with their first ever selfie!