Search results matching tag 'Conference Communities'

Discount for PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013 #passbac #ssas #sqlpass

sqlbi — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:02:00 GMT

One month ago I wrote about my sessions at PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013, in Chicago, IL on April 10-12, 2013. If you still have not registered, you can save $200 by using the code BAC228BL and you should hurry up, because there is another discount if you register within March 15, 2013.

If you are too lazy to click on the previous post, I will speech in two sessions:

Modern Data Warehousing Strategy
Self-Service Data Modeling

And now that Data Explorer Preview has been made public I can disclose that Data Explorer will be covered in my Self-Service Data Modeling session! I thought about writing an article about Data Explorer, but there is already a good coverage and I suggest you to read these blogs:

Introduction to Data Explorer Preview for Excel by Jason Thomas
Several posts by Chris Webb
Announcement on Data Explorer Team blog

SQLBits XI in May 2013 – many reasons to attend! #sqlbits #dax #tabular

sqlbi — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:33:00 GMT

I and Alberto Ferrari will speak at SQLBits XI (Nottingham, UK – May 2-4, 2013) and there are many good reasons to join us there, especially if you are interested to DAX!

Here are our sessions:

Thursday, 02 May 2013 – Training Day - From 0 to DAX

The entire day is dedicated to learning DAX, starting from the syntax and going forward with more complex syntaxes for both expressions and queries in DAX.
Technical level: the goal is to be introductive, explaining the important concepts in DAX (such as filter context, row context, context transitions) and covering the usage of the most common DAX functions.
Target audience: Information Workers interested in exploiting the many interesting features of PowerPivot for Excel 2013 and BI developers who want to learn the DAX language.
In practice: if you started using DAX two years ago and created several projects in Tabular and/or PowerPivot with complex calculations, this is not the workshop for you (read about an Advanced DAX Workshop later in this post). But if you just started your first Tabular or PowerPivot projects and you are still wondering what CALCULATE is all about, then this is definitely the right training for you!

Friday, 03 May 2013 – 10:50am – Modern Data Warehousing Strategy

How to design a Data Warehouse in 2013? Should we change something considering the introduction of in-memory technologies such as xVelocity? Is Self-Service BI affecting the way we design and implement a Corporate Data Warehouse?
This is not a session about a specific feature of a product, but features and products have their effects on the data warehouse design. We’ll stop one hour trying to understand what changes in the big picture, affecting also our day-by-day job.

Friday, 03 May 2013 – 2:40pm – Inside xVelocity InMemory Engine (VertiPaq)

Do you use PowerPivot and/or Analysis Services Tabular? They use the same engine (xVelocity/VertiPaq) and you should know how it works.
This session will show how xVelocity/VertiPaq works, how it compresses and stores data and why it is so fast answering to your queries.
Why this is important? Because it is geeky! And because this knowledge will help you optimizing storage and DAX queries.

Saturday, 04 May 2013 – 10:50am – DAX Query Engine Internals

DAX is amazingly fast. But some query might be not fast enough.
Do you want to know how to optimize your DAX query? This session is for you.
Knowing the internals of xVelocity InMemory engine is just the first step (see Friday’s session). Then you need to apply this knowledge to DAX and understand why different DAX syntaxes for the same result might have different performance.
Understanding cross-filtering is a key to master DAX optimization. The more you know DAX, the more you will appreciate this session!

As I said before, the training day is an introductive course. If you already know DAX and want to improve your skills, there is a 3-day Advanced DAX Workshop I will teach in London on May 13-15, 2013. It could be also a good reason to visit London if you come from other countries!

Now that we are almost done with the PowerPivot for Excel 2013 book, we will write more articles – stay tuned!

First spring conference: PASS Business Analytics Conference and SQL Bits #passbac #sqlbits #sqlpass

sqlbi — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 15:50:00 GMT

Spring is a conferences’ season and the upcoming one is no exception. I will be speaking at PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013, which will be the first event this year, so I’d like to spend a few words about my sessions.

PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013
April 10-12, 2013 | Chicago, IL – United States

This conference is targeted to Business Analytics professionals. Thus, I expect to meet both BI Developers, Excel Advanced Users, Data Analyst and, of course, the new Data Scientist role (if you have a business card with such a definition, please drop me one, so I can demonstrate to skeptic people that this figure actually exists!). I have two sessions:

Modern Data Warehousing Strategy

April 11th, 2013 – 1:30 pm – Chicago Ballroom VIII
Track: Strategy and Architecture
The recent introduction of new technologies such as PowerPivot, the BI Semantic Model, and columnstore indexes in SQL Server and advances in self-service business intelligence and big data might be considered threats to the classic data warehouse ecosystem. In reality, a good data warehouse is still the best starting point for any kind of analysis, but we do need to update our strategy for data warehouse implementation to fit the requirements of this new era. This session will start the conversation about what a modern strategy for data warehousing can and should be. What type of data modeling should we use for the data warehouse? What is the role of data marts? Does the use of technologies such as PowerPivot or Analysis Services Tabular affect the way we should model our data? Do columnstore indexes remove the need for an analytical server like Analysis Services? We will discuss these and other questions, offering an updated approach to the data warehouse modeling methodology.

Self-Service Data Modeling

April 12th, 2013 – 1:30 pm – Sheraton Ballroom I & II
Track: Data Analytics and Visualization
Self-service business intelligence looks promising, empowering information workers to grab amazing insights from data. But are Excel 2013 and DAX language knowledge enough to analyze data? The answer in most cases is no – information workers will also need an ability to properly model their data and the skill to use some new tools to reshape data in the correct way. In this session, we will analyze some common problem scenarios where data analysis is difficult due to the shape of the model and see how to solve them.

In theory, I expect two different audiences at the two sessions, but I know that there will be people attending both, especially who provides tools to end users. I’d like to receive feedback about what you would expect to see in such sessions (regardless you will attend or not!), so that I check if I defined the correct expectations for the audience.

If you want to attend, register before March 15 in order to get a discounted price. You can also save $200 by using the code BAC228BL. See you in Chicago!

After #SQLBits ready for #SQLPASS

sqlbi — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 05:50:00 GMT

I just returned from my second SQLBits, this time in Liverpool, and I have to say it is a really great conference. Everything can be improved, but I have to say that it’s hard to find a conference where you can have more networking opportunities than SQLBits. It has a very good mix of technical sessions, parties, friendly environment and number of attendees, sponsors and speakers. It is neither too small nor too large.

Now it is time to prepare for the biggest annual conference about SQL Server: the PASS Summit 2011 will be in Seattle next week, and I’ll be around all the week. I have a session on Friday, Vertipaq vs OLAP: Change Your Data Modeling Approach and the same day, at lunch, I and Alberto will be at the Birds of a Feather lunch talking about DAX, Vertipaq And BISM.

I look forward to meet you – feel free to send me a message or an email in case you would like to say Hello and cannot attend one of these two “programmed events” inside the conference.

Approaching events #mstc11 #ppws #sqlbits

sqlbi — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 10:15:28 GMT

The spring season is always full of events and I’m just preparing for a number of them.

First of all, we are getting very good interest for the PowerPivot Workshop in Copenhagen on 21-22 March 2011. Tomorrow (Friday March 4) will be the last day to take advantage of the Early Bird rate for this date. We will also participate to an evening meeting of local user groups on March 21 in Copenhagen, more news about this in the next few days.
Other scheduled dates are in Dublin (28-29 March 2011) and in Zurich (4-5 April 2011).

Alberto will present some session at the Microsoft BI Conference 2011 in Lisbon on 25 March 2011 (I will be in an Italian event the same days – .NET Campus in Rome).

Then there is the SQLBits in Brighton (7-9 April, 2011) – the training day about SQLBI Methodology is going very well and I know that registrations to the overall event is going very well. Moreover, there is a new event inside the conference that is SQLBits Insight: it is for CIOs, architects and other senior technical decision makers. Attendees get to meet Steve Wozniak as well as Mark Souza (head of the SQLCat team), Ross Mistry, and Richard Tkachuk of the PDW team.

Finally, just for Italian-speaking people, there will be the Microsoft SQL Server & Business Intelligence Conference 2011 in Milan, on 19-21 April 2011. This conference is part of a larger event called Microsoft Technical Conferences 2011 that also includes the Microsoft SharePoint & Office Conference 2011 and the Microsoft Unified Communications & Collaboration Conference 2011. This is going to be a large event for Italian market and we have several session in English – I hope in the next edition it will be possible to create whole tracks in English and give a chance to register to a wider audience.

Well, there will be something in May, too… but there will be time to discuss them.

Inside DAX session at PASS

sqlbi — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:04:00 GMT

I will be a speaker this year at PASS Summit 2010 in Seattle, and I will present two sessions. The one I’d like to talk about in this post is the Inside DAX one.

I chose to do this session (instead of another one that was initially planned) because when I looked at PASS agenda I found that a session about DAX foundation was missing, and this wasn’t good. In fact, you might be able to write a DAX expression (and, most important, to control it!) only after you really understood how evaluation context works in DAX. The evaluation context is formed by two parts: row context and filter context. Writing the book, I learnt them the hard way, by making all the possible mistakes that you might be able to do, and probably more. For this reason, I tried to describe these concepts in the way I would have loved to learn the first time. I dedicated a whole chapter to it and it is challenging trying to transfer the same concepts in one hour. But I know that it does worth the effort, because the need for this knowledge will increase approaching to the next version of Analysis Services.

Well, see you at PASS or at the PowerPivot Workshop if you are based in Europe!

PowerPivot book in stock!

sqlbi — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 15:28:00 GMT

My Microsoft® PowerPivot for Excel® 2010: Give Your Data Meaning book has been printed and is now in stock on many bookstores!

This is another good news of the past week, who have been dense of good news. I and Alberto have been interviewed by Vidas Matelis about the book and we’ve received several subscriptions for our first PowerPivot Workshop in Europe in December.

Our book is also present in the AppStore for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. I tried it and maybe pictures are too small for an iPhone screen, but text looks very good and you can search through the book in an easy way.

Meanwhile, I’ve been working on several proof of concepts for new modeling techniques using the PowerPivot engine, which are very promising looking at the next version of Analysis Services. But I can’t say much of that. We have to wait another month to get more news at the next PASS Summit in Seattle. I will further describe in another post the two sessions I will present there later this week.

Now, I look forward to getting feedback from actual readers of the book!

SQLBits 2009

sqlbi — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:51:00 GMT

This the second time in a row I will not able to attend to SQLBits - but don't lose this event if you can go to Manchester on March 28th, 2009. The conference is free, but registration is required. A training day (with a reasonable fee) is also scheduled the day before. I hope to attend the next one...

The reason I cannot go is mainly because a few days later there is the Microsoft SQL Server & Business Intelligence Conference 2009 in Milan and I'm involved in the organization of that conference - but be careful, all the sessions are in Italian, so it is good only if you already know that language! Otherwise, Manchester would be a better option for you!

Self-Service Business Intelligence

sqlbi — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:31:00 GMT

The next Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference is coming and I just looked at sessions to include in my agenda. Every time I do this work, I find something in sessions descriptions that anticipates something that is coming out as news announcement in some of the keynote. But this time, session titles are enough to see that big news are coming.

CL211 New Horizons for Microsoft Business Intelligence with Self-Service Analysis Technologies
presented by Donald Farmer and Amir Netz

PL308 New Horizons for Microsoft Business Intelligence with Self-Service Reporting
presented by Lukasz Pawlowski, Carolyn Chau, Sean Boon, Roger Sanborn, Chris Baldwin, Thierry D'hers

I don't know if there are new products or new releases of existing products involved in these announcements. However, the keyword here is "self-service BI". Other vendors already used this term in the past, now it's the Microsoft turn. I hope to see real products and not only buzzwords.

BTW: I will attend the conference in Seattle - drop me a line if you will be there and you'd like to discuss the SQLBI Methodology with us (Alberto is coming too). You can find post about it using the Methodology tag.