This is the first meeting of the SAS Visual Analytics (VA) special interest group, hosted by Knoware. We had three presentations and lots of good networking. Moving on from the stress of the job and the resulting effects on hair, Gavin Knight, Chief Data Scientist for New Zealand Police, talked about the classification of their users and the definition of their roles. These may change or blur over time, but it’s a good step forward to identifying the roles that people play in information delivery. Another key point was the demo information system delivered to managers, closely tied to the strategic priorities of the organisation – a good move away from the all too common operational silo approach to information delivery.

Colin Harris, Technical Director of Knoware, gave some tips and techniques in using Visual Analytics. These were based on commonly expressed user questions, and useful tricks of the trade. A practical paper, attendees came away with some new ideas to try out and some suggestions for future topic areas for the next VA SIG. Milo Davies, Principal Solutions Consultant at SAS completed the presentations with an overview of future advances and changes in VA. VA has come a long way quickly, and it is being further developed rapidly with a 6 month release cadence. Watch this space! The feedback was that this was an excellent event for all attendees. Do come to the next one!

You can view Milo’s presentation here (PowerPoint in PDF format 4.2 MB)

Click here for Colin Harris’s presentation here (PowerPoint in PDF format 1.5MB)