1. How did you get started in the BI world?
I qualified as an accountant, Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA), early in life. I even recall using Lotus 1-2-3 and spent many years analyzing data in Excel creating monotonous tabular reports. I worked with various ERP packages and DBs like MS Access, eventually learning the MS BI SQL stack as a developer/analyst. Other experiences in IoT streaming real time data and Big Data along with continuously keeping up-to-date with technology now positions me to enjoy working with end-to-end solutions that integrate Cortana & front end Power BI and only this March 2017, I became an MVP Data Platform. 🙂
2. What would you say is the most common mistake when creating a dashboard?
Dashboarders have loads of data in their model and too often try to display most of it to prove to the end user that the KPIs are available often ending up with very busy dashboards. The best dashboarders have the ability to work with the business, understand their needs and consolidate all those KPIs into a few key strategic ones that tell the true business story at a glance. But most importantly, they KISS (Keep It Simple) with balanced dashboards using the few KPIs to facilitate clear interactive self-service BI. Websites have the three-click rule to action, I have the three-click rule for self-service BI answers.
3. What are the top three items attendees will learn in your session?
I will show how easy it is to connect to Twitter live data and display it in a clear interactive Power BI dashboard layout.
We will also learn how to use the ready-made Power BI Template Solutions that help developers quickly create professional Power BI end-to-end solutions.
Then, we will see how easy it can be to integrate text sentiment analysis without being a data scientist into your Power BI solutions.
4. What is one interesting fact people may not know about you?
On weekends, I enjoy walking with my two dogs across the Yorkshire Dales but when in the office, I chill out by taking short mental breaks literally juggling the stress balls.