BI Conference - SQL Bits VII

Today I want to inform you about an amazing conference that will take place from September 30th to Saturday October 2nd in York (UK). It will be the 7th edition and for sure is an event that you could not miss. I don’t know yet if I’ll attend, but I’ll try! I attended two times in the past… check here and here to read my experiences at SQL Bits II Birmingham and SQL Bits III London

"Just as a reminder, SQLBits 7 will take place over three days from Thursday September 30th to Saturday October 2nd in York. Day one will be a training day, featuring in-depth full day seminars by leading SQL Server professionals such as Chris Testa-O’Neill and Chris Webb; day two will be a deep-dive conference day with advanced sessions delivered by the best speakers from the SQL Server community; and day three will be the traditional SQLBits community conference day, with a wide range of sessions covered all aspects of SQL Server at all levels of ability. There will be a charge to attend days one and two, but day three, Saturday October 2nd, will as usual be completely free to attend allowing everyone to attend and experience a great day of training even if they have no training budget"

If you think to register let me know.

Pedro

BI Conference - SQL Bits & Tech-Ed Europe 2009

Just to let you all know that some interesting events are coming… and the dates for the two events that I’m currently writing are... next November 2009.

SQLBits (19-21 November 2009)

Thursday 19th Pre-conference Training Day

Friday 20th SQL 2008 & R2 Conference Day

Saturday 21st Free Community Conference

“This is the biggest event yet, with 3 days of top quality SQL Server content. It starts with the pre-conference training day on Thursday 19th, more details coming soon. We have had a lot of feedback about weekday versus weekend during previous events so this time we have added a paid conference day on the Friday 20th, with a SQL 2008 and R2 theme. Finally we have the free Saturday community day, with speakers from around the world covering all manner of SQL Server topics.” By SQLBits

Tech-Ed 2009 Europe/Berlin (9-13 November 2009)

Business Intelligence Track

“Now more than ever, your business needs a quick means of getting the right information to the right people so that they can make smarter, more informed decisions. Microsoft’s Business Intelligence solutions enable you to do just this. The Business Intelligence track offers sessions covering how to integrate, analyse, and report on all of your corporate data easily using the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform, end-user tools, and analytics applications. Learn how to build custom, robust Business Intelligence solutions using Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005 and 2008 (Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services), Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007 (Monitoring, Analysis, and Planning) and the 2007 Microsoft® Office system (Microsoft® Office Excel®, Excel Services, and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server technologies) and how to easily manage them” by Microsoft

I’ll try to be in the both events. If you are thinking to attend one of these events, let me know to organize the trip or to meet you there!

BI Conference - SQL Bits IV and Rafal Lukawiecki

SQL Bits IV

SQL Bits IV is coming… and this time it will be in Manchester, 28 of March…Unfortunately, I will not go to Manchester because I will have to expose my master BI dissertation on the day before (27th of March), but I will attend to it on-line!

My friend Tomislav Piasevoli will be responsible for the session “Universal calculated measures in MDX queries”… I will try to purpose one session in the next event... maybe about my master BI dissertation.

Rafal Lukawiecki

Microsoft are hosting a one-day seminar presented by Rafal Lukawiecki for IT Managers and BI practitioners wanting to improve decision making and getting the valuable business insight by using Microsoft solutions at the Microsoft Offices in London and Lisbon. As I told before in this blog, Rafal is the best communicator of the world, if you are near Lisbon or London, you cannot miss it.

In Lisbon (Portugal), March 24th

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032402504&Culture=pt-PT

In London (UK), March 26th

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032403569&Culture=en-GB

Regards,

Pedro

BI Conference - SQL Bits III

Once again I went to the SQLBIts conference as I promised. You can refresh the previous event following this link http://pedrocgd.blogspot.com/2008/03/tmp.html

I started to write this post in the University room booked to attend the SQLBits III event. Almost persons that attended to the event already returned to their homes, and unfortunately I had flight only Sunday morning at 8 am. I'm joined with my friends Bruno Ferreira (Portuguese like me that came from Irland), Alex Whittles (that came from London with his boss) and Tomislav Piasevoli (that came from Zagreb, Croacia). The event was significantly more interesting with these 3 excelent guys! I attached to this post several photos only to refresh the memory of people that was there and allow others to imagine how the event was.I have several things to write about this weekend in London, which was extremely good in some points and a litle dispappoint in others.

The University of Hertfordshire
This is the University where the conference toke place. Is a nice place but too quite for a person that goes alone from another country… Bruno was also there but he went to Irland on Saturday after the conference…

Last SQL Bits, in Birmingham (UK), the location of conference was better because it was near the city centre and because I went with my girlfriend, she could went to shopping while I was attending the event



The Training Day (Friday)
SQL Bits III organization included an extra day for intensive training that cost between 150£ and 200£ depending on the selected subjects. For those persons that never saw MSFT BI Tools and Business Intelligence approachs from Kimball an Inmon, I think that was good, but for others was extremely basic. But was my fault, because Chris Webb advised me… but I’m disappointed because I didn’t see the same organization and the same environment in training day (on Friday) than the free conference day (on Saturday) … and for those (like me and Bruno) who payed for the training day we make a question for ourselves… for which day we payed 150£?! Why we make the question? The reason is simple… the free conference had several partners (Microsoft, Quest, Xlcubed and others), extra events like dinner with beers and pizzas, more than 400 persons, a party and some other interesting stuff. We also thought the training day would be an intensive training using the laptop and making some advanced labs mainly in MDX and Data Mining.

The Conference Day (Saturday)
Some photos of conference environment and a photo of Bruno picking some pizza and beer! Bruno is the guy with black t-shirt! You can also see the taller guy… He’s Alex Whittles that I referenced before and he’s a cool and friendly guy!




The Conference Day Sessions
I’ll describe a a little resume of each session that I attended, maybe I will go into detail in a next post, but for now, I’ll do a short briefing.

Alan Mitchell session
Getting more value from your data through data mining
After seeing the Rafal Webcasts, it’s difficult to find a better session about Data Mining, but Allan was really great and focus on excel 2007 add-In for Data Mining. Allan showed how the business user can apply a Data Mining algorithm without statistical and developing skills. Don’t need to know formulas, don’t need to know programming, it’s all there!!!


The hard task will be the ETL that is the most important step in a Data Mining project. If the dataset is not well created, even the top statistical expert of the world cannot identify real patterns and trends

Gary Crawford session
Data Vizualisation - Make your reports useful to business - No more "Speed Dials"
Maybe some people didn’t saw anything new, but I loved this session. Gary gave some very good tips that must be taken when you create a report or dashboard. He started from default charts generated by excel wizard and gave some design tips to create more friendly and understandble charts for business reports

He also showed some gauges, thermometers and traffic lights usually used in some business reports. He explain some best pratiques that should be followed in order to avoid confused and unperceptable reports

And as he told… running a business is not driving a car. Cars are real time, need real time response. Business reports don’t move as you read them. He finished giving some tips for a good and more usefull report or dashboard


Andrew Sadler session
Microsoft's integrated end-to-end BI offering
I never heard about Andrew Sadler before, and was really a very good surprise for me. He was fast, precisely and efficiency, in the way he explained the integration that could be done with Sharepoint, Performance Point Server and ProClarity

In the demo prepared for the session, he used the Sharepoint portal as the main interface/front office and behind the scenes he created several different types of reports and charts in Performance Point Server (including proClarity) showed inside normal webparts of Sharepoint portal

Andrew also show some tips using MDX that could be applied on filtering the reports and charts created in the previous steps

Andrew Wiles session

Does your cube support your users reporting needs?

As Andrew Sadler, Andrew Wiles was also a very good surprise for me and for almost persons that was attending the session. He focused in user reporting needs as Gary in a previous session, not in design but in funcionalities… for example how a simple indicator YearToDate could be available to the business user? You will respond that I can create a calculated member or allow user to do that using the MDX functon YTD… but Andrew showed a new approach that is abstracting all this stuff using reporting dimensions… for budget reports I believe that could be helpfull… I’m still tring to understand all the the stuff and how could apply in the real world…. I’m ansious to see the material that Andrew promised to share with us…

This session was really the more original and harder! Check Alex post for further details http://www.purplefrogsystems.com/blog/?p=18

Colin Hardie session

Choices, Choices - Loading and Modelling SCD in SQL 2008 Suite

Colin Hardie work for the IMGroup (the main Microsoft partner) and showed the approach about Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD) from Kimball and the capabilities of SCD transform of SQL Integration Services.

Nothing new, only the different alternatives to deal with Slowly Changing Dimensions, but Colin is very comunicative and also fast and precisely!

In the final, Simon Sabin, invited the attendences to eat some pizza, drink some beers and singing a song in auditorium!

Thanks to the organanizers, that although some little disappointing points, I'm sure that they did everything they could to do a fantastic event as it was in SQLBits III. Thanks to Simon, Chris Webb, Allan Mitchell, Tony, Darren Green and Jamie.

See you guys in next SQLBits!

BI Conferences - SQLBits and SSWUG

You may already felt that I’m very fanatic for learn, mainly if we are talking about Business Intelligence and Microsoft tools. For this reason, I’m writing today about two big conferences that will take place next September. One is the SQLBits, organized by www.sqlbits.com that I already refered in a previous post http://pedrocgd.blogspot.com/2008/07/sql-bits-iii-uk-event.html and the second is a very innovative virtual conference with the top speakers of the world organized by www.sswug.org. Almost the authors of my preferred books from wrox and wiley, will be in SQL Bits or in the SSWUG conferences.

SQLBits

For this reason I already have my flight and hotel booked for the next SQLBits (www.sqlbits.com) trainingday (150£) and conference (Free) in London next 12/13 September 2008.
Some topics could be basic for me, but it’s important to follow the new BI improvements and mainly the details that in most cases make the difference! And is good to train my English and meet some people to dinner and spend some time sharing experiences. For now I have the confirmation of my friend Bruno Ferreira that is working on Ireland, Alex from UK (http://www.purplefrogsystems.com), some friends from ExpertsExchange, and other people from BI comuninity

Sessions
http://www.sqlbits.com/information/MainAgenda.aspx

SSWUG

If you cannot be on the SQLBits, dont be ungry... you can follow other events like SSWUG conferences from home. There will be four conferences for a simbolic price of $100 (in Euros is less than 100€) and all the conferences are for 3 days and I’m sure it will be fantastic. It’s not difficult to imagine that my preferred conference will be the Business Intelligence conference on September 24-26... but I’m confess that I dont know If I will attend or not... it’s not the same thing a conference from a laptop or a conference on site as I will do in UK on SQL Bits... but I’ will try to attend!!!

Business Intelligence : September 24-26

SQL Server: 01-03

SharePoint Technologies : October 15-17

.NET Developer : October 28-30

Sessions
http://www.vconferenceonline.com/business-intelligence/sessions.asp?offset=-1

If you are thinking to attend one of the conferences, please tell me and join me on that!
Regards!

SQL Bits III - UK Event

Dear Friends,
Do you remember SQL Bits last march?! No? If not check my post here:
http://pedrocgd.blogspot.com/2008/03/tmp.html

Yes it’s true... SQL Bits will take place next September 2008 and I hope to be there!
SQL Bits is an event organized by UK SQL Server Community and if you attend the event, could be your opportunity to learn and share knowledge with the main gurus of SQL Server. I was in the last SQL Bits, and believe me... it’s a very important and very organized event that you must attend... Behind the SQL Bits you can see persons like Simon Sabin, Chris Webb, Tony Rogerson, Martin Bell, Darren Green and Allan Mitchell that has publish several books and has a lot of knowledge to share with us.

The SQL Bits III will be focus on four main areas:
1. Business Intelligence
2. Database Administration
3. Development
4. SQL Katmai version

And you can register on the sessions you prefer. And in the next event was introduced a new feature that could be very interesting... the Training Day... In this new feature you pay a simbolic price of 150£ to receive one intensive day training from SQL Bits organizers on one of the four main areas of the event.

What are you waiting for?! Check all the available sessions and register right now!!
http://www.sqlbits.com/information/Registration.aspx

Attention to Amin (Iran), Bruno Ferreira (Ireland), Ella Maschiach (Israel), Subhash Subramanyam (India) and other BI fanatics... this could be a good oportunity to meet you and take a good time!
Cheers!!

BI Conference - SQLBits - Birmingham (UK) - After

Dear Friends,
I’m just arriving from Birmingham (UK) and I only have one Word to describe the experience: FANTASTIC! I have several things to write but if you weren’t there you missed a fantastic day!
As you already know, I’m currently living in Portugal but last Friday I pick my girlfriend and went to Birmingham (UK) to attend the SQLBits conference and back to the city where I’ve finished my degree some years ago. Microsoft Portugal is not investing too much in SQL BI tools, and in the last summer it had only one person specialized in these tools… To prove it, the next TechDays 2008 in Portugal there will be just a few sessions in SQL BI tools and probably too basic… The possibility to hear some “gurus” and the authors of my preferred books from Wrox and Wiley, it was an opportunity that I couldn’t missed!
I will describe in general how it was this journey to Birmingham and I will detail my preferred sessions on detail in a next post.

The Conference
There was several sessions in this conference, and I attended the sessions related with Business Intelligence MS SQL tools. Darren Green, Allan Mitchell and Chris Webb didn’t disappointed me in their sessions, and the money expended in this journey was a very good investment on my career and a good opportunity to “open my eyes” more and more to the world.

Allan Mitchell Session
Allan spoke about the new features of SSIS 2008 and compares it with the SSIS 2005. He shows some details that usually some developers don’t pay much attention, the performance… he show some details behind the scene, and in my opinion he done it good!
MultiCast
Pipeline Limiter
LookUp Component (Cache Options)
Data Profiling Task
Change Data Capture

Chris Webb Session
This session was very interesting… I expecting to see something about new features and good advantages of SSRS, and what I saw was the opposite and I’m totally in agree with him and this session prove that this type of events are not to sell products but is a place where we can receive very good and sincerely tips and tricks from developers to developers. And Microsoft was one of the sponsors…

Darren Green Session
Darren session was very cool and he spoke about a subject that I normally in SSIS avoid but after the session I will take more attention… and the subject is custom data components. I bought the WROX book that Darren wrote and refer this subject but I didn’t read those chapters… But is really interesting , not only to understand better the pipeline engine but also to develop more specific and complex transformations.

The City and BullRing
As I told you before, I finished my degree in Birmingham some years ago. There are several improvements in the city but it still beauty! A very good improvement was the BullRing Center that is a big shopping place with an area equivalent to 26 football stadiums!!!





The Hotel
Normally, hotels in England are not comfortable or modern, but this Hotel is very modern and I knew a Portuguese man that works there!



The NightLife
The night bars and discos are incredible on pressure of safety guards…

So... in resume, was a fantastic journey!! I will try to detail more about the conference in a next post!

Cheers!!