19th Power BI UG Netherlands (November 2018)

I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for some time now, but I never got to finish it. A little bit late, but here it is!


On November 29, the 19th Power BI User Group was held at our office in Den Bosch. Yes, that’s where the delicious “Bossche bollen” come from. This UG was officially called the Dutch Data Dude farewell tour, because @JeroenterHeerdt has moved to America to join Microsoft in Seattle, as you can read here.

After some delicious sandwiches, snacks and “worstenbroodjes”, Jeroen Schalken and I kicked off the evening with an introduction to data management and the introduction of Power BI at Van Lanschot Kempen.


Michiel Rozema and Henk Vlootman (Quanto) explained how to make financial reports with Power BI. A lot of organizations are used to financial reports in Excel. Readable for the accountant, but less accessible for management. How do you use the strengths of visualization of Power BI to create strategic as well as operational information?

Jeroen ter Heerdt closed the evening and took us on a ride through his world of data visualizations: from pie charts (do NOT use them) to the three roles he thinks are needed for data management:

• Data Engineer
• Data Scientist
• Data Artist.

Making a good data visualization can be difficult. Jeroen showed us the do’s and don’ts to make even better visualizations.

We had a wonderful evening with some great conversations amongst the attendees. Thanks @PBIG_NL for the chance to host this evening!

@NickyvV

Bits of BI – June 29

In accordance with Thomas LaRock I decided to also start my round-up of news from around the block of SQL Server, Technology or anything vaguely related to BI. And I might include some other things as well if I feel like it.
My plan is to do a weekly round-up, let’s see how that works out.
My latest post was 2 weeks ago, but here’s a new one! As we’re starting to go into summer and holidays, I might skip one edition in August also.

But for now, here’s the next edition of Bits of BI!

• SSMS 17.8 is now available by Pam Lahoud (sqlgoddess)
  Download SSMS 17.8 or review the Release Notes to get started.
• Does It Matter Which Field Goes First in an Index? by Brent Ozar (@BrentO)
  Some index 101 knowledge, but thoroughly explained. And as Brent says: index field order matters a LOT.
• Biml Express 2018 is here!
  It includes support for VS 2017, SSIS package import and many other things. Cathrine (@Cathrine) and Andy (@AndyLeonard) also blogged about it. Go download Biml Express 2018 or check the change log for all updates.
• Announcing the GroupBy September Lineup by Brent Ozar (@BrentO)
  The next (online and free) GroupBy conference is on Friday September 7, and will contain mainly SQL sessions this time.
• Stairway to Azure DataBricks by Leila Etaati (@leila_etaati)
  Leila already started with Part 1 and Part 2, Part 3 will follow later. She starts with adding a Databricks environment with a Workspace and a Cluster. In Part 2 she goes more in-depth with uploading data to Azure Data Lake Store, clean the data with Scala and use R to visualize it and do predictive analytics. In Part 3 Leila will show the result in Power BI.

That concludes this edition of Bits of BI, feel free to share it with others!
@NickyvV

Bits of BI – June 15

In accordance with Thomas LaRock I decided to also start my round-up of news from around the block of SQL Server, Technology or anything vaguely related to BI. And I might include some other things as well if I feel like it.
My plan is to do a weekly round-up, let’s see how that works out.
My latest post was 2 weeks ago, but here’s a new one! As we’re starting to go into summer and holidays, I might skip one edition in August also.

So here’s the second edition of Bits of BI!

• 24 Hours of PASS: Summit Preview 2018 was held on June 12 and 13.
  24 1-hour sessions on Performance Tuning, Azure Data Lake, Digital Storytelling, Advanced R, Power BI and more. The recordings will be posted on the Learning Center.
• New Stack Overflow Public Database Available (2018-06) by Brent Ozar (@BrentO)
  There is a new (and bigger) version of the Stack Overflow database available for export which you can use to play with, tune queries or do demo’s on.
• Use Outlook Shortcuts to organize your favorite Power BI Reports and Dashboards by Chris Finlan (@cmfinlan)
• Advice from a tech Mom on getting teens to learn to code by Jen Stirrup (@jenstirrup)

That concludes this edition of Bits of BI, feel free to share it with others!
@NickyvV

Bits of BI – June 6

In accordance with Thomas LaRock I decided to also start my round-up of news from around the block of SQL Server, Technology or anything vaguely related to BI. And I might include some other things as well if I feel like it.

My plan is to do a weekly round-up, let’s see how that works out.

So here’s the first edition of Bits of BI!

• Query Folding in Power BI
• Power BI Desktop June Feature Summary
• Subscribe others to email subscriptions in Power BI
• Microsoft + Github = Empowering Developers
• Announcing: The SQL Server Execution Plan Reference

I hope you found this edition of Bits of BI useful, feel free to share it with others!

@NickyvV