News

The SAS Data Mining Technology Conference: M2001, hosted by SAS'
Education Division on October 2-3, brought together 26 of the world's
most widely renowned experts in data mining and 225 conference
attendees to highlight creative and effective approaches to address a
range of important issues and problems that span industries and
application areas.

The caliber of speakers was exceptional (keynotes included David Hand,
Dick Deveaux, Herb Edelstein and John Elder) and ongoing feedback
reflects this.  Its reach was international (Canada, France, Germany,
Mexico, the UK and US).  "SAS is doing a valuable service to the data
mining community by organizing the M series of conferences," said
Jaideep Srivastava, M2001 speaker and professor of computer science
and engineering at the University of Minnesota. "It fills the gap
between academic forums like KDD and ICDM and the commercial data
mining sessions."

For the first time, SAS has made video sections of most of the tracks
(all speakers who agreed) available to conference attendees.  Since 3
tracks were offered simultaneously, only one could be seen live both
days of the conference--with videos available on the web, attendees
can see all tracks they care to see.  The conference also included two
new SAS course offerings: "Effective Web Mining: Attracting and
Keeping Valued Cyber Consumers" and "Predictive Modeling using
Enterprise Miner Software" (to register:
http://www.sas.com/service/edu/ustrain/ibt_list.html).

Sponsorship included long-time SAS partners Compaq, Sun, IBM and new
partner Blue Martini.  The fifth SAS Data Mining Technology
Conference: M2002 will be held October 22-23, 2002.

Anne H. Milley
Analytical Strategy
SAS Institute Inc.
SAS ... The Power to Know