Australian Koala Foundation

Staying in Brisbane during March 2020 #metacodaNotInDC

Koala-ity cuddles

Hello human friends,

It’s the Metacoda koalas here wanting to share some caring koala-ity news with you…

Firstly, we hope you are all safe and well during this tough time.

While we miss travelling, we feel extremely fortunate that Metacoda is easily able to work remotely, that we can still get outside for a morning run, and that we have the technology to stay in touch with our friends and family around the world.

Two of the many things we miss, from our koala perspective, are a) good news and b) nature, so we thought we’d bring you a bit of both in this message…

Anwen koala with burns

Although it seems like forever ago, it’s just five months since huge bushfires devastated lives, livelihoods, homes, bushland and wildlife in many parts of Australia. As you may have seen on the global news, our koala friends suffered terribly.
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cherry blossom Metacoda Koalas with Aussie treats

SASGF 2020 in DC becomes a virtual conference

SASGF 2020 Virtual Conference - No Date

After careful consideration of the evolving concerns around COVID-19, SAS Institute has made the difficult decision to cancel the in-person SAS Global Forum (SASGF) conference in DC and transform it into a special virtual event.

In her LinkedIn article SASGF 2020 conference chair, Lisa Mendez, shared her disappointment, but stressed that she will continue working with the amazing conference team to “Do Great Things. With Us. Virtually.”
Metacoda shared our similar feelings in a comment on Lisa’s post:
“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.” Thank you Lisa, SAS and all the supporters to continue the enthusiasm, energy, learning and community spirit #SASGF brings. Whilst we will deeply miss the value of an in person event, it’s important to ensure the SAS community remains healthy. Thank you for making this wise and difficult decision and I look forward to your future posts as you and the team all now prepare for an uncharted approach to SASGF.

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Metacoda Christmas 2019 social

Celebrate the festive season with the confidence of a secure SAS platform

Metacoda Christmas 2019 social

As you’ve probably gathered, we love connecting with the SAS community, especially our Metacoda customers!

If you haven’t already, please take a few moments to fill in our survey about your plans with SAS® Viya® and how Metacoda can help meet your needs.

So far, common survey themes include securing the SAS platform, and the value that Metacoda provides. So if you haven’t yet experienced Metacoda software, consider giving yourself the gift of a free trial after the holiday season.

Greetings to all and happy new year from the Metacoda team! We look forward to helping to make sure that 2020 brings you the confidence of a secure SAS platform.

Cheers,
Michelle
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Koala Quest – Where to find them?

SAS Support Communities - Michelle Homes quote

In any community things tend to run most smoothly when each of us finds a role that best suits our strengths and preferences.

For me – as someone who loves socializing and connecting – my role in the SAS community has evolved into what some have referred to as a ‘cheerleader’.

Fortunately this is a role I relish, and I’m so grateful to those who recognize and support me for doing what comes naturally!

I’m also grateful to SAS users around the world who are doing their bit to nurture our wonderfully connected SAS community. The gratitude and support that we give each other is part of the glue that keeps this community so robust.

Another important part of the glue is the many events that help us to meet, share and grow. We’re big fans of SAS events and SAS User Groups and encourage everyone to join in however you can. (Find a group here)

When it comes to the in-person events – which are still so important in this digital age – the recent SAS US Regional Conferences were a highlight on the US SAS calendar.

SAS Regional User Group Conferences

While I wasn’t able to attend, I was so glad to be able to support the events as a SAS community advocate and sponsor, and to be represented by our furry friends, the Metacoda Koalas. (Meeting people IRL – in real life – is certainly where human connections happen, but tweets like this are the next best thing for feeling connected!) Read more

Paul demonstrating Metacoda software to Tamara Barker at SASGF 2019

Power to do Good: bringing analytics to life at #SASGF

Chris Hemedinger SASGF Facial Recognition Demo Tweet

When more than 6,000 SAS users came together at SAS Global Forum 2019 in Dallas, it was clear that we are living in exciting times, full of potential!

Dr Jim Goodnight, SAS CEO, set the scene perfectly in the opening session:
“We are witnessing a renewed focus on data and analytics, driven by the combination of increased computing power, a more connected world and more powerful technologies, like artificial intelligence, computer vision, natural language processing and machine learning.”

To support his words, he blew us away with a live facial recognition demonstration, using an enthusiastic group of volunteers (including Metacoda’s Michelle Homes) and a model TinyYOLO v2. The model essentially converts each face into a vector of 512 floating point numbers, looks it up using nearest neighbour, and then returns a name. But obviously behind the scenes there’s a lot more going on: the facial recognition uses approximately 11 million parameters… with more than 22 million floating point operations that have to occur on a workstation with 2 GPUs… which sends the data to SAS Viya running ESP on 4 GPUs… which sends the pixels in the bounding box into a model that has 55 million parameters from FaceNet! If you’re intrigued, please see Dr Goodnight’s opening session presentation for yourself (and notice that even funny faces can’t fool that clever underlying algorithm!) 😉

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Metacoda Koalas Gratefulness

Metacoda Koala Family - About Us

G’day!

As the year comes to an end, we wanted to say a special great big koala thanks to our less-furry friends for all your support!

We also wanted to show you the following video we made about our adventures in recent years. We’re a bit unusual in our love of adventure given that our real-live koala cousins in Australia don’t like to venture far from their favourite eucalypt tree (since it’s the only food they eat!).

We hope the clip brings back some happy memories and puts a smile on your face. Read more

Metacoda Koalas celebrate the new year

Metacoda koala magical moments from 2017

Metacoda Koalas celebrate the new year, 2018

Happy New Year!

It’s us – the Metacoda koalas back again full of effervescence, enthusiasm, and excitement for the year ahead – 2018!

We hope your festive season was as relaxing and fun as ours. For us, it was the perfect opportunity to catch up on sleep (we koalas need 20 hours sleep per day, you know?!) and to reflect on the amazing year just past.

2017 was definitely overflowing with magical moments, and we have managed to narrow it down to a short list of highlights to share with you below.

Of course, the next step is to create even more marvellous Metacoda koala memories with you in the year ahead… Read more

Reflecting on the 2017 Metacoda journey. Wishing you peace, joy & love.

Metacoda Christmas 2017

As 2017 ends and the festive season approaches we want to wish peace, joy and love to you and your families. We hope your 2017 reflection is one of success and happiness.

In thinking about the year – and the 10 years Metacoda has been operating – Paul and I feel very humbled to reflect on the benefits our customers have shared with us, and our contribution to the SAS community. In gives us great joy to contemplate where we were 11 years ago – brainstorming the plug-ins and tools – to where we are today. We’d like to thank our team, customers, partners, and friends for your support and alliance, and we look forward to continuing the Metacoda journey together in 2018.

As Colonel Chris Hadfield said at SAS Global Forum in April, “Love every step along the way. Life is not about your grand mission statements, it’s about what you do next”…

Happy Holidays!

Cheers,
Michelle
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SAS security best practices and secure the koalas’ future – Save The Koala Month!

Metacoda #STKM 2017

Metacoda celebrated its 10th birthday this month! It’s an exciting milestone and we’d like to extend a great big thanks to you for being part of our Metacoda community along the way.

We started off the year talking about journeys and, in particular, how we can help with your SAS security journey. We were wondering how it’s going?

In a recent blog post we highlighted how SAS Communities are aWEsome. We’d love to hear your experiences – please post a comment in the blog or chat to us in person at an upcoming SAS event.

Hope to see you in person or online soon!

SUGA - SAS User Group for Administrators

Webinar: SAS® Security Design and Best Practices

Did you catch the SUGA: SAS security design and best practices webinar on Tuesday 12th September?
If not, you can go to SUGA to get the webinar recording, Q&A and slides. Angie Hedberg (SAS Technical Consulting Manager) and Michelle Homes (Metacoda) covered key design best practices for securing SAS 9.4 metadata and the file system, and how Metacoda can help to secure your SAS environment.


Love is in the air - #STKM

Save The Koala Month

It’s Save the Koala Month (#STKM) and the theme is “Love is in the Air”. So as supporters of the Australian Koala Foundation, we want to do our bit to spread the Koala love far and wide! Join in the #STKM2017 celebration and find out how you can help save the koala.
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Capturing 2016 with the Metacoda koalas

Metacoda Koalas and chocolate

Hello friends!

It’s the Metacoda koalas again wanting to say a little “hooroo” to farewell 2016 and thank you for your support.

What a busy year we’ve had meeting incredible SAS users all over the world! Perhaps you saw us at a conference or event? Or even adopted one of our many furry siblings along the way?

When we sent out our latest Metacoda blog post, we were thrilled to read the reflective responses from friends about our Metacoda koala social images this year.

This got us thinking about the many Metacoda koala photos that have been tweeted or sent to us during the year, and we simply couldn’t resist sharing a few of them with you (see below). You’ll find Read more