This September the greatest thing in the history of great things happening will happen. On Saturday September 16, in a metal club in Berlin, data platform MVPs Ben Kettner and Frank Geisler are JOINing[1] the two best things in the world: data and heavy metal.
Data Moshpit is a one-day community event with a heavy metal theme. The sessions will be metal. The speakers will be metal. The atmosphere will be metal. There will be beer and food and if my experience at metal shows in Germany have taught me anything, lots of brothers of metal and sisters of steal wearing leather and denim and the coolest jean jacket vests with giant Manowar back patches.
The Data Moshpit call for speakers is open now, and closes on July 7th. You can submit metal-themed sessions of your own, or just check out the exciting sessions already submitted.
If you’ve got a heart of steel and data for blood, this is the one event of 2023 that you cannot afford to miss. And if you’re not into metal[2], you should come anyway. It will be a great opportunity to connect with the community and learn something new. I hope to see you there!
If you’re interested in an extra learning day focused on organizational maturity and adoption of a data culture with Power BI, you should also consider joining me and Melissa Coates for our full day focused on “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Adopting Power BI in Your Organization.” At the risk of hyperbole, this session presents the most important information that you need to succeed with Power BI, and to increase the return your organization gets on its investments in data, in business intelligence, and in you.
The most important information that you need to succeed with Power BI
The more I think about it, I honestly think the risk of hyperbole here is very low. The Power BI adoption roadmap is based on the experiences of hundreds of enterprise Power BI customer organizations. The agenda of this pre-conference session is what Melissa and Matthew believe is most important for most audiences based on our collective decades of working in this space. This is the best of the best, the most important parts of the most important subject[2].
Most sessions teach you how to drive, or teach you some interesting aspect of driving. This session gives you a map, teaches you how to read the map, teaches you how to find out where you are on the map, and then provides best practices for navigation. If you’re driving for the sheer fun of driving, maybe this session isn’t what you’re looking for. But if you actually need to get somewhere, this session is going to give you what the other sessions won’t, and it will make all of the driving sessions more valuable.
If you’re going to be near Copenhagen in September[1], Dublin in June, or New York City in May – I have exciting news for you!
On Friday May 5th, I will be joining the incredible Melissa Coates to co-present our “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Adopting Power BI in Your Organization” full-day pre-conference session as part of SQL Saturday NYC.
On Thursday June 8, Melissa and I will be on the other side of the Atlantic presenting “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Adopting Power BI in Your Organization” as a full-day pre-conference before the Data Ceili conference in Dublin, Ireland. I’m very excited to be returning to Dublin this year – I was scheduled to speak at Data Ceili 2020, but for some reason that trip didn’t happen as planned.
It’s unlikely that Melissa will be able to join me for Power BI Next Step. I’ll still be using the content framework she’s built, but the bottom line is that we’re less likely to stay on schedule during the day, and more likely to have slightly off-color stories to punctuate key learning topics. Depending on your learning style and priorities this could be a blessing or a curse.
If you missed our initial delivery of this session at the PASS Data Community Summit last November, please consider joining us at one of these sessions. Event details and registration links are below!
New York, NY, USA: Friday, May 5, 2023
Matthew and Melissa will be co-presenting at the SQL Saturday event in New York City on May 5th. This event will be held at the Microsoft office in Times Square. It’s an in-person session.
[1] If you’ve never visited the Nordic countries in the fall, you don’t know what you’re missing. I’ll always be partial to the islands of Stockholm, but Copenhagen is a close second on my list of places I want to be in September and October.
[2] Believe me, I know how you feel. An entire day with Matthew is a lot.
If you’ve worked in tech for 25 years, you’ve seen some stuff, and you’ve learned a lesson or two. On October 1st, I presented a new session at Data Saturday Atlanta, sharing the story of my unplanned career, and some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way. This was the first time I presented this very personal session; and I’m incredibly grateful for the full crowd that attended, and for their feedback after the session.
My primary goal for the session is to show that you don’t need a computer science degree to build a successful career in tech – and that our industry needs more people from more non-traditional backgrounds.
My secondary goal for the session is to share some of the sharp edges that are typically hidden when people talk about their careers. Everyone wants to share their highlights, but sharing your own pain and failures is harder. This is important, because too often we’re each comparing our own blooper reel against everyone else’s highlights… and nothing good comes from that.
The Data Saturday event was in-person only[1], but I’d had a bunch of people mention they wanted to attend, but couldn’t make it to Atlanta. So…I packed a camera and microphone and recorded the video on my own.
[1] Please understand that there is no criticism implied here. Organizing a hybrid event is significantly more difficult than organizing an in-person or online-only event, and focusing on in-person community produced wonderful results.
At the 2022 PASS Community Data Summit this November, I’m thrilled to be co-presenting a full-day pre-conference session with the one and only Melissa Coates [blog | Twitter | LinkedIn]. We’ll be presenting our all-day session live and in-person in Seattle on Tuesday, November 15, 2022.
What’s the Session?
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Adopting Power BI in Your Organization
What’s the Session About?
The Power BI Adoption Roadmap is a collection of best practices and suggestions for getting more value from your data and your investment in Power BI. The Power BI Adoption Roadmap is freely available to everyone — but not everyone is really ready to start their journey without a guide. Melissa and I will be your guides…while you’re hitchhiking…on the road…to reach the right destination…using the roadmap. (You get it now, right?!?)
We’ll do an end-to-end tour of the Power BI Adoption Roadmap. During the session we’ll certainly talk about all of the key areas (like data culture, executive sponsorship, content ownership and management, content delivery scope, center of excellence, mentoring and user enablement, community of practice, user support, data governance, and system oversight).
Smart Power BI architecture decisions are important – but there’s so much more to a successful Power BI implementation than just the tools and technology. It’s the non-technical barriers, related to people and processes, that are often the most challenging. Self-service BI also presents constant challenges related to balancing control and oversight with freedom and flexibility. Implementing Power BI is a journey, and it takes time. Our goal is to give you plenty of ideas for how you can get more value from your data by using Power BI in the best ways.
We promise this won’t be a boring day merely regurgitating what you can read online. We’ll share lessons learned from customers, what works, what to watch out for, and why. There will be ample opportunity for Q&A, so you can get your questions answered and hear what challenges that other organizations are facing. This will be a highly informative and enjoyable day for you to attend either in-person or virtually.
Who is the Target Audience?
To get the most from this pre-conference session: You need to be familiar with the Power BI Adoption Roadmap and the Power BI Implementation Planning guidance. You should have professional experience working with Power BI (or other modern self-service BI tools), preferably at a scope larger than a specific team. Although deep technical knowledge about Power BI itself isn’t required, but the more you know about Power BI and its use, the more you’ll walk away with from this session.
She wrote it and emailed it to me and I shamelessly[1] stole it, which may be why there haven’t been any footnotes[2]. I even stole the banner image[3].
[1] With her permission, of course. [2] Until these ones. [3] Yes, Jeff. Stealing from Melissa is a Principal-level behavior.
In less than two months I’ll be making my first work trip in over two years, flying to London to present, meet with customers, and learn exciting things at the 2022 SQLBits conference. If you can, you should register today and join me.
Here’s what I expect my week to look like:
Wednesday March 9, 09:00 to 17:00: I’ll be back on stage for The Day After Dashboard in a Day pre-conference learning day, co-presenting with Patrick LeBlanc, Alex Powers, and Lars Andersen.
Thursday March 10, 14:10 to 15:00: I’ll be joining SQLBits organizer and MVP Simon Sabin for the Maximising everyone’s super powers panel discussion on mental health.
Thursday March 10, 18:15 to 19:05: Prathy K from the London Power BI User Group has organized an evening “ask me anything” open Q&A session with a bunch of folks from the Power BI CAT team, which sounds like a perfect way to end the day. You can register for this evening meetup here.
Friday March 11, 13:40 to 14:00: I finally get to present on Roche’s Maxim of Data Transformation for a live, in-person audience, and I get 20 minutes to do it!
Friday March 11, 14:10 to 15:00: The BI Power Hour returns after a two-year pandemic hiatus, guaranteeing laughs and excitement[1] in a demo- and joke-filled exploration of how not to use Microsoft data technologies in the workplace. I’ll be joined by an international star-studded cast from the Power BI CAT team and the Microsoft data community, and I expect this session to be the can’t miss event of the decade.[2]
Saturday March 12, 08:00 to 08:50: I kick off the final day of the conference with Unleashing your personal superpower, an honest and sometimes-painful look at how to succeed in tech, despite your brain’s best efforts to stop you. I’m very excited to have this important session scheduled on the free-to-the-public day of the conference.
When I’m not on stage, I’m hoping to spend as much time as possible at the Microsoft product booth and the community zone. Conferences like SQLBits are an opportunity to have interesting conversations that can be an awkward fit for virtual channels, and I plan to get the most from my week as possible.
Update February 10: I’m planning to be in the community zone on Thursday afternoon immediately following the mental health panel discussion so we can keep that conversation going. I’m also planning to be back on Friday morning at 10:10 to talk about non-traditional career paths. If either of these conversations sounds interesting to you, you should plan on joining me.
Update February 12: My Saturday session has been moved from the end of the day to the beginning of the day. With this change, I can now have more time to hang out in the community zone on Saturday to continue the discussion.
If you’re in the London area – or if you can get there – and if attending an in-person event matches your personal risk profile, I hope you’ll register today and come say hi during the event. I’ll be the purple-haired guy with the mask on.
If you can’t come to London, I hope you’ll still register and attend. Most sessions are hybrid with virtual attendees welcome and included.
[1] Not guaranteeing that you will laugh or be excited. I’m just thinking about me here.
[2] Thinking back on the decade in question, this isn’t as high a bar as it might otherwise seem.
The recording for my “Unleashing Your Personal Superpower” session is now online:
I hope you’ll watch the recording[1], but here’s a summary just in case:
Growth often results from challenge
Mental health issues like anxiety and depression present real challenges that can produce “superpowers” – skills that most people don’t have, and which can grow from the day-to-day experience of living with constant challenge
Recognizing and using these “superpowers” isn’t always easy – you need to be honest with yourself and the people around you, which in turn depends on being in a place of trust and safety to do so
In the presentation I mainly use an X-Men metaphor, and suggest that my personal superpowers are:
Fear: Most social interactions[2] are deeply stressful for me, so to compensate I over-prepare and take effective notes for things I need to remember or actions I need to take
Confusion: I don’t really understand how other people’s brains work, or the relationship between my actions and their reactions – to compensate I have developed techniques for effective written and verbal communication to eliminate ambiguity and drive clarity
Chaos: My mind is made of chaos[3], which causes all sorts of challenges – to compensate I have developed a “process reflex” to understand complex problems and implement processes to address or mitigate them
I wrap up the session with a quick mention of the little-known years before Superman joined the Justice League, which he spent as a Kryptonite delivery guy, and absolutely hated his life. Once he found a team where he could use his strengths and not need to always fight to overcome his weaknesses, he was much happier and effective.
In related news, if I could only get these Swedes to return my calls, I’m thinking of forming a new superhero team…
The first two “peek into the future” sessions are all about the Power BI roadmap – how Power BI has grown, and how it will continue to grow in the months ahead.
The final “announcement” session… we’re not talking about yet. The session page says “We have a new feature launching that we can’t wait to tell you about” but we are going to have to wait until we get approval to publicly discuss this important new capability. I shouldn’t say any more, but this feels like A Big Deal™.
The next reason I’m so excited is because of the 12 or so “Real-world stories with Power BI” sessions you’ll find in the full Power BI session list. These sessions are led by my amazing teammate Lauren, who is working with Power BI customer organizations around the world to help showcase their successes, and the awesome work their teams have done using Power BI, Azure, and Microsoft 365.
Even though the “big news from Microsoft” sessions get most of the excitement at Microsoft conferences, these “what real customers are doing in the real world” sessions are the hidden gems of MBAS.
These sessions are an amazing opportunity to look behind the scenes of other organizations to see how they’re solving problems – what tools they use, how they use them, how they structure their teams, how they scope and deliver and evolve their solutions. This type of “strategic story” can be incredibly valuable for decision makers, architects, and other senior technical stakeholders, and represent the type of insights that are often difficult to obtain unless you have personal connections with peers inside those other organizations.
No matter what excites you the most, please register for MBAS today, and please spread the word!
[1] Please pause for a moment to appreciate the effort I’ve taken to keep this post free of Star Wars references. You’re welcome.
Today I am excited to announce that I will be presenting on “Unleashing your personal superpower” on Friday May 7th:
Building a successful career in tech is hard. Every day is a battle, and sometimes the barriers placed in your way seem insurmountable. Wouldn’t it all be easier if you had a superpower?
Maybe you do.
Greta Thunberg famously described her Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis as being a superpower: “I’m sometimes a bit different from the norm. And – given the right circumstances- being different is a superpower.” We can all learn something from Greta.
In this informal session, Microsoft program manager Matthew Roche will share his personal story – including the hard, painful parts he doesn’t usually talk about. Matthew will share his struggles with mental health, how he found his own superpower, how he tries to use it to make the world a better place… and how you might be able to do the same.
Please join the session, and join the conversation, because talking about mental health is important, and because the first step to finding your superpower is knowing where to look.
You can learn more about the event here, and you can sign up here.
I hope you’ll join me!
[1] Of course it’s more than just the damned pandemic, but when I first typed “this year” I realized this year has been going on for decades now, and I figured I would just roll with it because finding the perfect phrase wasn’t really important to the webcast announcement and anyway I expect things will probably suck indefinitely and isn’t this what run-on sentences in footnotes are for, anyway?
BI Polar 