Dear Readers,
I used to think that the most astounding example of social media’s increasing prominence was when I received a “friend request” from my Aunt Grace Giorgio. Aunt Grace, who is my Grandmother’s sister, is 88 years old and the same woman who, when I was a kid, refused to use her television’s remote control because it was “too complicated.”

But then I read about Dr. Craig Rogers, a surgeon at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Dr. Rogers made history last year when he performed a successful “live Twitter surgery” on a man with a cancerous tumor on his kidney. He shared updates throughout the procedure for the entire Twitterverse to read – transforming a smartphone into a virtual surgical observation area for his medical students and a portable, real-time waiting room for the patient’s loved ones.

Meanwhile, on the same hospital’s Twitter feed, followers could learn that parking at the institution would be limited while “Transformers 3” filmed nearby – proving that social media has more uses than a Swiss Army knife.

SAS Education certainly understands social media’s vast capabilities. When we launched our social media effort in May, we hoped to begin a conversation with SAS users that would be as helpful as our software and as welcoming as dinner with Aunt Grace (complete with after dinner Cannoli). We haven’t been disappointed. Last month, we received (and answered) great questions about certification exams on our SAS® Training fan page on Facebook and offered statistical how-to advice from experts on our SAS Training Post blog. And you can always go to one of our social media outlets – including the SAS Training Twitter account, and SAS Education video playlist on YouTube – to continue or open a discussion, or to learn something new. We won’t be using social media to perform any partial nephrectomies, or to direct Shia LaBeouf in a fight scene with a hunk of metal, but whether you update, tweet, post, connect or view, we’re as social and as engaging as you need us to be. We encourage you to join the conversation now and find out for yourself.
Thanks for reading,

Larry LaRusso
Editor, SAS Training Report