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Presenting at SQL Saturday Atlanta 2023

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I’m presenting at SQL Saturday Atlanta 2023 – BI & Data Analytics Edition on February 25th at 9 AM (the very first slot in the very first room for very first early birds). I’ll do a Power BI Dashboard in an Hour this time to revisit the basics. I hope to see some of you there.

Targeting novice Power BI users, this hands-on, no-slide session covers important Power BI fundamentals and best practices. If you’re already a Power BI user, you’ll probably learn a new trick or two. And if you like a challenge, bring your laptop and try to keep up through the steps to create a Power BI dashboard! Join us and learn how to:

•    Design your BI model

•    Acquire and transform data

•    Turning data into valuable and interactive insights

•    Sharing your visualizations with others

Download the session files from here.

Presenting at SQL Saturday BI Atlanta

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Come and join me on Saturday, January 9 th at the first SQL Saturday BI edition in Atlanta. You’ll learn about the exiting new BI changes coming to SQL Server 2016 and the Microsoft on-premises roadmap!

Atlanta MS BI Group 5th Anniversary

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Our next Atlanta MS BI Group meeting will be on August 31st. This happens to be our 5th anniversary! Thanks for everybody who contributed to the group success! We’ve come a long way since our first meeting with a dozen people to the attendance we enjoy today of 60-70+. Come and join the festivities and learn about sentiment analysis with Big Data & Machine Learning.

 

Presentation:

Tone/Sentiment analysis with Big Data & Machine Learning

  

Level: Intermediate

Date:

Monday, August 31th, 2015

Time

6:30 – 8:30 PM ET

Place:

South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)

115 Perimeter Center Place

Atlanta, GA 30346

Overview:

People’s sentiments and opinions are written in social networks. There are tweets, Facebook posts, book reviews, forum discussions, and more. These attitudes and feelings are communicated using text, with format depending on the social network. Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters and use hash-tags and Facebook messages can be longer.

 

This session reviews the different Natural Language Processing, text mining, and data mining techniques you can use for sentiment and tone analysis. Organizations can use the extracted knowledge for brand reputation, market predictions, and automatic learning. We’ll look at, Hadoop, data mining, Microsoft Big Data Hadoop distribution HDInsight and Azure Machine Learning.

Speaker:

Paco Gonzalez, a SolidQ Mentor, is the PASS Big Data Virtual Chapter Leader, SQL Saturday Barcelona Organizer and assistant at the PASS Atlanta BI User Group. He is finishing his PhD thesis about: “Analyzing Social Data with Machine Learning.” He is an MCT and MCP on BizTalk Server and SQL Server. He is coauthor of Microsoft Training Kit 441. Paco is a frequent speaker at large and small conferences. SQL Saturdays, TechEds, PASS BA, PASS Summit, DevWeek London, and PAW Chicago and London.

Sponsor:

TEKSYSTEMS is a subsidiary of Allegis Group, the largest private talent management firm in the world. Our longstanding history and industry-leading position speak to our success in providing the IT staffing solutions, IT services and talent management insight required for you to actualize ROI and sustain a truly competitive advantage in a fast-changing market.

 

 

Atlanta BI Group Meeting on July 27th 2015

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Come and join us for our next information-packed meeting on Monday, July 27th. Stacey Jones from UPS will present “Big Data as part of your Data Strategy” and Patrick LeBlanc from Microsoft will do a quick demo of Power BI Desktop now that Power BI has gone officially live. Our sponsor will be Prestige Staffing.

Presentation:

Big Data as part of your Data Strategy

  

Level: Intermediate

Date:

Monday, July 27th, 2015

Time

6:30 – 8:30 PM ET

Place:

South Terraces Building (Auditorium Room)

115 Perimeter Center Place

Atlanta, GA 30346

Overview:

New data technologies are evolving at an unprecedented pace. The traditional RDBMS is no longer the only choice for storing your data. Big data technologies such as Hadoop and other data technologies such as Data Virtualization, NoSQL, In-memory databases, Columnar Databases, and Graph databases offer new capabilities, but hold the potential to simply distract or disrupt business. Do relational databases still play a role? Using the wrong technology for the problem at hand can be expensive, time consuming, and counter-productive. I will discuss the importance of developing a data strategy for your company and how to determine the correct technologies. Takeaways:

 
 

•    Understand your data consumption needs

•    Document your data ecosystem

•    Develop your data strategy to apply the best data technology

Speaker:

Stacey Jones is a Data Architect filling the role of the UPS Chief Business Intelligence Evangelist. Stacey spends his time researching and promoting the use of modern BI- related technologies such as Big Data, Self-Service, Data Virtualization, Polyglot Persistence, In-Memory Databases and Predictive/Prescriptive Analytics. Stacey recently transitioned UPS from reporting to Self-Service Business Intelligence and architected the largest cube ever built at UPS. He is passionate about the art of writing and optimizing the performance of SQL queries, database design, database code, and all things BI. You can reach him at staceyjones@ups.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/pub/stacey-jones/24/891/59

Prototypes with Pizza

Power BI Desktop with Patrick LeBlanc, Microsoft

Sponsor:

Prestige Staffing is an award-winning, nationally recognized leader staff augmentation. We specialize in providing elite candidates to fulfill job openings in the IT, Telecommunications, Healthcare and Accounting/Finance industries. Our clients include both Fortune 500 companies and small, local businesses. Our mission is to provide employers with only the most skilled applicants, while simultaneously helping qualified professionals improve their careers by placing them in the most ideal work situations.

SQLSaturday Atlanta

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SQL Saturday Atlanta is around the corner. I’m presenting “Increase your BI productivity with community tools” scheduled in the first time slot at 8:15 AM.

“Microsoft has always provided a comprehensive toolset for BI developers but functionality gaps remain. In attempt to fill in some of these gaps, MVPs and community have implemented outstanding tools. Join this session to learn how to increase your developer productivity and improve your BI solutions by using some of the most prominent community tools, including BIDS Helper, DAX Studio, DAX Editor, Query Capture, and OLAP Extensions. This session assumes developer experience in designing and implementing BI solutions with SSAS, SSRS, and SSIS.”

If this sounds interesting but you can’t attend, don’t worry as a repeat is in order for the Atlanta BI Group on Monday, May 18th.

Introducing the Reimagined Power BI Platform

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Come and join us for an information-packed meeting of the Atlanta Microsoft BI Group on February 23th. You will learn about Power BI vNext and Panorama Necto. Our sponsor will be Panorama.

  1. Introducing the Reimagined Power BI Platform by Jen Underwood, Microsoft
    You have seen glimpses of the new Power BI platform during the Public Preview reveal. Although it may not be apparent, Microsoft has totally reimagined the Power BI platform and user experience for BI professionals, developers and business users. In this new release, Microsoft has added Power BI Designer, developer APIs, custom templates/apps, hybrid direct connectivity to on-premise data sources without data copying, a native mobile BI app and other top secret enhancements that we can dive into by the time of this session. Please join me to further explore all these great changes and enjoy a fun demo-intensive session.
  2. Panorama Necto – Panorama Necto is advancing Business Intelligence 3.0 to the next level, bringing together the very best of Enterprise BI with Visual Data Discovery, providing enterprises with new ways to collaborate and create unique contextual connections.

Presenting at Atlanta.MDF

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I’m presenting at the Atlanta.MDF group on Monday, January 12th. I’ll be covering a wide range of tips and techniques for analyzing and improving performance of SQL Server-based data analytics solutions. Hope you can make it.

Title: Can Your Data Analytics Solution Scale?

Abstract: Does your ETL exceed its processing window? Do your users complain about the SSRS spinny? Can your SQL Server database design deliver the expected performance? Can the system scale to thousands of users? Join this session to learn best practices and tips for isolating bottlenecks and improving the performance of data analytics solutions. I’ll dissect the layers of a “classic” solution (relational database, ETL, data model, reports) and share solutions harvested from real-life projects to address common performance-related issues. 

SQL PASS Summit 2014 Links

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Don’t miss the gist of SQL Pass Summit 2014.

Keynote Day One: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2014/PASStv.aspx?watch=7Pum0vfYtSk

Keynote Day Two: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2014/PASStv.aspx?watch=g8DSwPjmLv4

All PASStv sessions can be found here: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2014/PASStv.aspx

Presenting at Dama-Georgia and Atlanta BI Group

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I’ll present at DAMA Georgia Chapter on November 12. The topic will be “Best Practices for Establishing a Solid BI Foundation”. For more details, please visit the event page.

Don’t know where to start with BI or if you’re on the right track? Just like everything else, a successful BI rollout is based on a solid foundation. Targeting BI managers, technology officers, and architects, this advisory and technical session presents proven best practices to implementing BI for mid-size and large organizations. I’ll present approaches and recommendations for the main layers of the BI architectural stack, ranging from staging databases, data marts and warehouses, semantic layers, and reporting tools. We’ll discuss self-service and organizational BI, Big Data, and emerging technologies, and how they complement each other. Some of the concepts will be accompanied by demos using the Microsoft BI stack.

Then, on December 15th, I’ll present “Microsoft BI 2014 Review” at the Atlanta BI Group.

In the spirit of the season, join us to reflect on the state of Microsoft BI Platform at the end of year 2014. I’ll revisit its most important tools and their role in a holistic and modern data analytics environment. Then, for each tool, I’ll discuss its indented use, as well as pros and cons. We’ll discuss self-service and organizational BI, on-premise and cloud, emerging technologies, and how they complement each other in the context of Microsoft BI.

If you are in Atlanta, I hope you can join me to talk data analytics.

Presenting at SharePoint Saturday Atlanta 2014

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I’ll be presenting “10 Ways to Maximize Your SharePoint BI Investment” at SharePoint Saturday Atlanta 2014 on June 21st.

“Join me to learn how to take the most out of your on-prem or cloud SharePoint investment to promote organizational and self-service BI. We’ll compare features of SharePoint editions and discuss options to visualize data from corporate databases and analytical models. Business users will learn how to share their self-service BI visualizations with teammates. We’ll discuss how Office 365 and Power BI can help you implement a cloud-based environment for ease of sharing, collaboration, and information access.”

I hope you can make it. You can register here.