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Friday, April 23, 2010 Conference 2010 Registration Open Registration is now open for Sawtooth Software Conference 2010. We are expecting between 200 to 250 attendees this year. The 2010 Sawtooth Software Conference will be held October 6-8, 2010 at the Newport Beach Marriott, in Newport Beach, California. Our US-based research conference is held just once every 18 months. Our research conference brings together some of the best minds in our industry to talk about practical issues in online interviewing and quantitative market research. It is not a sales-oriented event for our software, but a chance to exchange ideas and receive education from a variety of sources and perspectives. View Program Details and Register Today! Tuesday, February 23, 2010 Corporate Annual Subscription License Announced We have begun offering annual subscription licenses that may prove more cost effective and flexible for our more active customers. For an annual fee of $15,000 the Corporate Subscription License entitles up to 10 users within the organization licenses to the following components: CiW - Unlimited CBC Web with the Advanced Design Module CBC/HB CBC/Latent Class Adaptive Choice-Based Conjoint (ACBC) ACA/Web-30 ACA/HB CVA/Web CVA/HB MaxDiff/Web-500 Advanced Simulation Module HB-Reg CCEA With an annual subscription license, users would have access to the most up-to-date versions and automatically receive software upgrades. Please contact us at support@sawtoothsoftware.com if you have questions about the annual subscription license, or call us at 360/681-2300. Tuesday, January 26, 2010 SSI Web v7 Released We've completed the new version of our web-based survey platform, SSI Web v7. Its benefits affect all components within the platform (CiW, CBC, ACBC, ACA, MaxDiff, CVA). To see a demo survey highlighting v7's capabilities, visit: http://ciwweb.com/~demos/v7/ssiweb_v7_improvementslogin.html Improvements for the v7 upgrade include: No more limitation of 4 character studynames. Up to 24 characters now supported. Multiple CBC studies, ACA studies, and CVA studies may be included within the same project. This means less linking of surveys! Back button (not just the back button on the browser toolbar, but a back button within the survey). You can even back up to all parts of the survey after a restart. Graphical select and radio buttons (which also means you can dramatically change the size of buttons) Randomized Blocks of questions (e.g. the 3 blocks of questions: Q1-Q3; Q4-Q10; Q11-Q25 can be randomized, and Q1-Q3 always stay together as a block, Q4-Q10 always stay together, etc.) The standard formatting controls in the edit question dialogs now operate nicely in conjunction with styles. Previously, styles would override most of the formatting controls. SSI Web surveys now start by default with a more attractive style, so your surveys will look much better even before you apply your favorite style. Many new styles available in the library Dramatically improved data export speed Ability to export all the text for your survey to an XML XLIFF file format (commonly used by translation houses). Once your survey is translated, you can import the XLIFF file back into your survey in one step. Automatic survey upload and data download. The FTP process is now built into SSI Web, so this feature makes working with the server faster and less complicated. Incompletes (drop out) report. Reports what percent of respondents dropped out at each question. We've redone the way that "error messages" work (messages that tell respondents that they've missed a question on the page, or used an invalid response). In v7, we highlight the question with the problem using a (typically red) box, and place a (typically red) message within the box describing the nature of the error. We are committed to making sure that SSI Web works well for studies that involve a conjoint analysis component as well as studies that don’t include any conjoint analysis. The upgrade fees (as a % of first-time purchase price) are: CiW 40% CBC 25% ACA 40% CVA 40% ACBC 0% MaxDiff 25% Want to try v7 before purchasing the upgrade? You can install v7 (on a machine that doesn't already have a copy of SSI Web v6 or earlier) and use it in demo mode. To install v7 in demo mode, visit: http://www.sawtoothsoftware.com/download/info/ssiweb.php (Make sure to install v7 on a machine that doesn't already have SSI Web v6 or earlier installed!) Contact support@sawtoothsoftware.com for a quote and to purchase your SSI Web v7 upgrade. Tuesday, August 18, 2009 CBC/HB v5 Upgrade Available It's time to upgrade your CBC/HB system! Version 5 offers substantial improvements to the methodology, interface, and input/output file formats. There are goodies for both beginning and advanced analysts. General users appreciate the easier-to-manage file formats, including a much simpler input file in .csv format. Advanced analysts applaud the new ability to specify covariates in the upper-level model. Our Bayesian academic friends tell us: "Covariates in Sawtooth Software's HB? It's about time!" Covariates are explanatory variables, such as usage, behavioral/attitudinal segments, demographics, etc. that enhance the way HB leverages information from the population in estimating part-worths for each individual. Rather than assuming respondents are drawn from a single, multivariate normal distribution (and smoothing all respondents, to some degree, toward that global mean), covariates map respondents to characteristic-specific locations within the population distribution. Covariates that are predictive of respondent preferences lead to Bayesian shrinkage of part-worth estimates toward locations in the population distribution that represent a larger density of respondents that share the same or similar values on the covariates. Using high quality covariates can add new information to the model (that wasn't already available in the choice data) to improve the quality and predictive ability of the part-worth estimates. One particularly sees greater discrimination between groups of respondents on the part-worths relative to the more generic HB model where no covariates are used. Other improvements for v5 include: Updated interface. Additional input file formats. Don't like the .CHO file? You can use .csv files with rectangular layouts in v5. Output files have been reformatted to make them easier to read and manage. Faster handling of constant-sum datasets. 64-bit processing supported. Ability to create and manage projects using command-line scripts or an external program like Excel. Download a white paper describing the covariates model and giving a case study about how covariates improved modeling for a real dataset. CBC/HB v5 has undergone a 2-month beta test program among some of our most sophisticated and active HB users. Here are some of their comments: "With the old versions of CBC/HB, the best way to preserve differences between key subgroups was to ensure sufficient sample size for the groups and run separate models. Having covariates solves this problem and could potentially save you money in terms of sample cost." (Jane Tang, Angus Reid Strategies) "Because of the complexity of models we regularly estimate, we have been anticipating the ability to estimate covariate effects in CBC/HB for several years. In addition to having that capability we also appreciate the confidence we can have in Sawtooth Software because of their development process and resources that the routine is programmed and implemented in a practical, stable and efficient way. Also, in terms of efficiencies, we can now take advantage of the time savings and reduction in human error that comes from being able to estimate these types of models in the Sawtooth Software family of programs. While we greatly value the new covariate functionality, we have been surprised by the time-savings that have come because of the .csv formats that can now be used. The new .csv format is closer to the native file formats we typically work with and so is much easier to create and manage for CBC/HB estimation." (Chris Diener, Lieberman Research Worldwide) "I love the new CBC/HB version. What we have learned in the last 10 years using the Bayes procedure for Conjoint is that heterogeneity is a crucial point and we are getting better results for our studies compared to other approaches. But, it is not always correct to assume a single, normal distribution. The new CBC/HB version with covariates now gives us greater ability to explore respondent differences, and the first experiences are convincing. For advanced users, there are now more options to fine tune an estimation process. Last but not least, the look and feel of the software interface is nice, attractive and very user-friendly. It's running fast and precisely." (Leonhard Kehl, Kehl Pricing Research) The upgrade costs 40% of the original price of the software. Write support@sawtoothsoftware.com to request a quote and order your upgrade today. Friday, June 19, 2009 Conference 2010 at Newport Beach Marriott We are pleased to announce that the 2010 Sawtooth Software Conference will be held at the Newport Beach Marriott, in Newport Beach, California. This conference is held only once every 18 months. Given this location and the success of our last conference, we expect 200+ people for the 2010 conference. We have chosen the Newport Beach Marriott because of its excellent location just 5 minutes away from Orange County Airport (SNA), and 45 minutes from Los Angeles International (LAX), and also because of its excellent value. Our contract with the hotel will allow us to keep the conference registration fees at the low rates we had in 2009 ($900 registration for 2.5-day conference, plus $225 per optional tutorial). Also, your costs should be lower than 2009 since the room rates are $179, and it is 5 minutes from Orange County Airport (SNA) and also 45 minutes from LAX. The Newport Beach Marriott just won the Marriott food and catering competition, so you can expect that you will be treated to the top-notch experience that you are used to at the Sawtooth Software Conference. The conference dates are October 4-8, 2010 (just 16 months from now). Optional workshops and tutorials will be October 4-5, and the main conference sessions will run from October 6-8. So, mark your calendars and put it into your 2010 budget. A call for papers will be issued in January.

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