Power BI Learning Opportunity at SQLBits

February 24, 2022 ~ sqlswimmer ~ Leave a comment

If you’ve been thinking about learning Power BI, I have a wonderful opportunity for you. I will be presenting, along with my friend and colleague Michael Johnson (Blog | Twitter), a full day of training at SQLBits on 8-March-2022. Our Training Day session is called Zero to Dashboard.

Our session assumes you have no knowledge of Power BI, so if this is your first encounter with Power BI, no worries, we’ve got you covered. We will cover the Power BI ecosystem, talk about the importance of data cleansing and data modeling, introduce visualization best practices, and review governance considerations. We reinforce all these concepts through hands on labs that we go through as a group. By the end of the day, you will be able to create a dashboard. If you are one of those folks who need to do things multiple times before they “stick” (like me), you will walk away with the lab manual used in class so you can go through the labs again to help solidify what you have learned.

SQLBits is a hybrid event this year, so if you cannot attend in person, no worries, you can attend virtually as well. If you are interested in attending, there are still registration slots available, but seats are limited, so don’t wait to long to register.

Michael and I hope to see you there.

Bits Buddies

February 22, 2022 ~ sqlswimmer ~ Leave a comment

SQLBits is fast approaching, in fact, Training Days start 2 weeks from today, on March 8, 2022.

I’ve attended SQLBits before, as well as other large conferences, but I still remember the first conference I attended. I was attending on my own and didn’t know anyone at the conference. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I felt a bit ill at ease. Just seeing one friendly face would have made a world of difference.

With this in mind, the good folks at SQLBits have created a program called Bits Buddies. It’s a program where first timers or those thinking about attending but aren’t quite sure yet, can reach out to a few folks who are not affiliated with SQLBits to provide insight into what SQLBits is about. It also gives you an opportunity to meet someone BEFORE you attend, so once you arrive, you will see at least one friendly face (actually we are all very friendly, but this is someone you will know!).

I have volunteered to be part of the Bits Buddies program and would love to be that one friendly face for those that may be ill at ease. We are holding a few virtual drop-in sessions and would love to chat with you, so stop by and meet some friendly faces.

I hope to see you there.

Cheers.

Speaking at SQLBits

January 4, 2019 ~ sqlswimmer ~ Leave a comment

I got an early Christmas present this year, I found out I had been selected to speak at SQLBits! That’s what I call a gift that keeps on giving.

I have always wanted to attend SQLBits so I decided that 2019 would be the year I would finally attend. Since I had decided to attend, I thought, “what the heck, why not submit session? I’m going to be there anyway.” But never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to be selected. I will be presenting my Profiling Your Data session.

It’s been twenty years since I was in England and I am super excited to be going back. I have family ties to England so I added a few extra days for sight seeing. Last time I was there I visited Malvern Link, home of the Morgan Motor Car Company, my dad’s favorite auto manufacturer. This time I am planning a quick trip over to Liverpool so I can see where my Dad’s favorite band (and one of mine) was started, you may have heard of them, they’re called The Beatles Winking smile