Benni De Jagere
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Zoersel, Belgium
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Benni is a Principal Program Manager in the Fabric Customer Advisory Team (Fabric CAT) at Microsoft. Aspiring to be top notch in his field, through continuous personal development, on both technical and soft skills. He strives for maximum results in his tasks using team play, communication, thinking outside of the box, and (endless) motivation. Benni is always ready to tackle the unknown, or pick up fresh ideas to broaden his range. Building on past experiences, he continuously tries to find new, more efficient ways of obtaining results, and improving the process along the way.
Loving (almost) every day of it, he’s fascinated by the value of data, sometimes flabbergasted by the lack of awareness, and intrigued by the endless possibilities whilst discovering new ways of looking at data. He thrives on unfolding new insights for customers whilst using an open and transparent communication.
On a daily basis he turns (large amounts of) coffee into insights for customers, and references witty British comedy, lame dad jokes, and obscure facts way too often. Overly enthusiastic about anything data related, he’s trying hard to keep up with all things new and shiny.
When not working, blogging or reading, you’ll likely find him out and about being his weird self. Rumour has it that he’s also involved with a ragtag band of data enthusiasts, enjoying themselves whilst organising cool community things.
They go by the name of .. dataMinds!
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Ask me Anything
AMA session where Microsoft Product Group and friends open's the floor to any questions from the audience.
*FFS*: Five Fierce Speeches
In an age where attention spans are dwindling, and the pace of information exchange is faster than ever, the traditional conference format often struggles to captivate and engage. To address this challenge, we introduce a dynamic and invigorating session titled "FFS: Five Fierce Speeches." This session breaks away from the conventional mold, offering a platform for a range of passionate presenters to deliver impactful five-minute rants in favor of diverse, thought-provoking topics.
"FFS" aims to provide a rapid-fire series of compelling arguments, each designed to ignite curiosity, provoke thought, and inspire action among attendees. Each speaker will have exactly five minutes to passionately advocate for their chosen topic, ensuring that every moment is charged with energy and conviction. This format encourages brevity, clarity, and intensity, making it an unmissable highlight of the conference.
The session will feature a diverse lineup of presenters, each an expert or advocate in their field. Topics will span a wide array of subjects, ensuring a broad appeal and a rich tapestry of ideas. Whether advocating for technological innovation, social justice, environmental sustainability, or cultural transformation, each presenter will bring their unique perspective and fervor to the stage.
By the end of the "FFS: Five Fierce Speeches" session, attendees will have experienced a whirlwind of ideas and emotions. They will leave with a newfound appreciation for the power of concise, passionate advocacy and be inspired to bring the same energy to their own professional and personal endeavors.
Join us for a session that promises to be as exhilarating as it is enlightening. "FFS: Five Fierce Speeches" is not just a session; it’s a call to action for all who believe in the power of a well-spoken word.
Star Schema ALL the things! But why?
Perhaps you've seen "Star Schema ALL the things!", "Never use Calculated Columns", or "Bi-Directional relationships suck" before when thinking about design considerations for your data model, but you've never really stopped to think about the specifics behind them and why exactly they could benefit or hurt your model. Who knows, maybe that specific advice doesn't even work out for the scenario at hand and you might not be aware because you've skipped a few steps in the process.
Come along in this journey from source to model to report using a practical mindset, thinking about the design decisions and ramifications along the way. At the core of the session lies the message to think about best practices, with the added step to test, assess, and benchmark what exactly they do for you.
Whether it be the decision of where your transformations need to be done, how exactly the data and tables need to be modelled or what you allow the end users to do with your model these are all important steps to take, preferably without shortcuts. We'll take the steps on a moderately complex data model, and measure as we move along.
Meaning, at the end of the session we'll have discussed why Star Schema's can help you, and how you can assess for yourselves if they are beneficial for your use case.
Using Lakehouse Data at scale with Power BI, featuring Direct Lake mode
Many companies have invested heavily in building data lakes to store large volumes of structured and unstructured data from various sources into Delta Parquet files. These Delta Parquet files can be used for a wide range of Analytics and Business Intelligence applications. Most of these organizations struggle to derive insights from their investments due to the complexity of accessing and querying the data, and how to let self-service users connect to this data in the lake using Power BI.
With the introduction of Microsoft Fabric, an all-in-one analytics solution for enterprises, we now have a better approach for this. In this session, we will explore how to use Lakehouse data at scale with Power BI, using the new Direct Lake connectivity mode. Power BI Direct Lake combines the best of both worlds from Import and DirectQuery mode, and gives us the option for great performance over data in the lake, without introducing additional latency for dataset refreshes.
We will start by discussing the benefits of the Lakehouse architecture and how it can improve data management and analytics. We will then move on to explore how to connect to Lakehouse data using Power BI by combining both of these architecture components and using each of them to their strengths.
We will also cover best practices for optimizing performance when working with large volumes of data, including using data partitioning and query optimization techniques. We will demonstrate how to use Power BI to analyze Lakehouse data in real-time and how to build reports that provide actionable insights for decision-making.
By the end of the session, attendees will have a solid understanding of how to leverage Lakehouse data at scale with Power BI and how to build powerful analytics solutions that can handle massive amounts of data. Whether you are a data analyst, data scientist, or BI professional, this session will provide you with valuable insights into the world of Lakehouse data and Power BI, featuring the new Direct Lake connectivity mode.
Asking questions to get meaningful answers
Have you ever asked a question, only to get a vague answer? Tired of hearing 'It Depends'? Or maybe you've even been frustrated that you're not getting the answer you were hoping for.
Asking questions is a very powerful tool, but can be bothersome to wield. By making sure we're supplying the other party with the compact information they need, and making sure we're "forcing" them to give a decent answer, there's a lot more information we can receive. By getting the information we need, we'll be able to proceed quicker, and getting to results faster.
It can be a tricky process, but with a few basic things to keep in mind, we can continually improve ourselves, for a better understanding.
How to write a Session Abstract, to get chosen to speak
When submitting a session abstract to a conference or user group, you've probably thought: "Ehhhh, I'll put some more details in that later". But then time goes by, and other things will have happened.
Writing an abstract is hard, especially for a session you'll probably only be presenting a few months down the road. But have you considered consciously on the words you're writing in there, and what kind of expectations they set to other parties?
Based on experience as a conference organiser, speaker and attendee, we'll dive into the key segments that should be included in your session abstract, to increase your chances of being selected. After all, if the selection committee understands what you'll be explaining, this can only be a good thing. Right?
Having a balanced abstract will also help attendees make the choice if your session is the right one for them and set the expectations correctly before they attend. And of course, you'll help yourself by clearly outlining the content you'll be discussing up front.
** These are based on personal experiences, and hence subjective. Attendees are free to use their own will and creativity to create their own set of handles.
Troubleshooting Power BI Reports
So you've built a Power BI report with all the shinies? Good!
After some usage, users have reacted that it's a bit sluggish in usage, and they're not keen on using it anymore.
Starting off with the new Performance Analyzer Pane, we'll demonstrate how you can pinpoint bottlenecks in your report, and take actions on these insights.
With the myriad of root causes that are out there, an elimination approach might suit us very well.
Some of the main causes will be explained, and we'll get you going on how you can fix it for yourselves.
This talk will place emphasis on leveraging external free community tools to assess the state of the data model, and go further on fixing the groundworks of your solution.
Attendees should note that is not a DAX Deep Dive class, before wandering in :-)
Understanding Fabric Capacities
You've heard about Microsoft Fabric, and you're ready to take it for a spin? Excellent, let's get us started off in those few advertised minutes! But hold on .. you need a capacity to actually use something, and might not be completely clear on what it actually entails? You're not alone with these questions, and it is perfectly fine to stop and think about it for a while. In fact, it's a good thing you want to understand the single most core concept of Fabric as that will hopefully allow you to make better decisions down the road.
The introduction of Fabric Capacities sparked a lot of questions with Data Architects, Engineers, and Analysts coming from an IaaS or Paas (Infrastructure or Platform as a Service) way of working. Microsoft Fabric is presented as an all-in-one Analytics SaaS (Software as a Service) solution, with a unified measure for Compute and Storage. Great, promising to make the cost and performance predictability a lot simpler. Great! But what exactly does that mean, and what will it actually cost the company?
To understand Fabric Capacities, we need to briefly look at the architecture and what exactly those unified measures look like, including how they are similar, yet different from the existing Power BI Premium Capacities. Understanding the different types and sizes of capacities will help us make the right decisions for our Data Platform solutions in the organization.
But then, how do you manage those capacities and assess if they are in a healthy state? What are some of the options to follow the demands and needs of your business users to allocate the right resources to them? Most importantly, what options do I have to automate the majority of these tasks?
Walking out of the session, you should understand the key concept of Fabric Capacities and how they are at the core of everything you'll do in Microsoft Fabric, be able to choose the one that is right for you, periodically assess if the choice was right, and act where needed.
Setting yourself up for success when submitting to present
You've decided to take the plunge, and create a brand new session you want to share with the world? Maybe you've tried a few times already, and didn't manage to find a place to present? These days more than ever, a lot of people have picked up the interested in public speaking making it harder to "stand out". Having a stellar abstract alone won't be enough in many occasions, so we have to do the work to skew those odds a little in our favour.
Whether you're just wanting to burst onto the scene as a new presenter, you've had your first couple of gigs under your belt, or you're practically part of the furniture, it's always hard to get selected to present at an event, conference or user group. The key thing to understand is that rejection is a part of it, and it's how you choose to deal with it that will determine your future attempts.
During this session we'll cover or how you find those elusive opportunities in the first place and how you can make the most of it with just a few simple things to keep in mind. Most importantly, what can you do to help understand organizers or selection committees why exactly your session would be a good fit for them, and why you think it would be a good fit for their audience.
This session does not cover the elements of writing session abstracts, or determining the right audience for those sessions. Attendees should understand that these are subjective points of view, and will not guarantee success.
Low friction data transformation and data movement using Fabric Dataflows
Microsoft Fabric introduced the concept of Dataflows (Gen 2) to the general public. Fabric Dataflows enable users to access and leverage data from different environments and sources in a low/no code way within Fabric. Sounds awesome, right? How can we get started?
Using the familiar Power Query authoring experience, we can extract, transform, and load data into different places within Fabric, depending on our use cases. We will explain the basic architectural components to give you a solid foundation, and then we will explore some actual use cases within the solutions you might be building. We will also highlight some potential pitfalls that might affect your experience.
Fabric Dataflows have an audience of business users in mind who want to work with their data in a seamless way, though they also offer some interesting capabilities for more experienced Data Engineers. We will show how business users can play a vital role in helping to build out those elusive Enterprise Data Platforms and Models in a co-creating method.
Finally, we'll discuss how you can integrate these Dataflows into your overall structure for refreshing the data, to make sure they are processed at the right time, to the right place.
Copilot in Fabric - Explained for the Administrator!
Copilot in Microsoft Fabric opens up a world of possibilities for business users, data analysts, and data engineers, making it no surprise that interest is surging within your organization. As an administrator, it’s crucial to grasp what Copilot can do, its limitations, and the implications for your existing governance framework.
In this session, we will tackle essential questions that empower you to support your colleagues in maximizing their use of Copilot in Fabric. Key topics include:
Access Control: Explore the options for granting or restricting usage, ensuring that the right individuals have the appropriate access.
Data Residency: Understand the pathways of data movement and which data points are sent where, helping you maintain compliance with regional regulations.
Data Security: Learn how Copilot upholds data security measures and respects your organization's policies throughout its processes.
Capacity Consumption: Discover how to monitor and manage capacity consumption effectively, enabling you to optimize resource allocation.
Audit Logs: Gain insights into tracking user activity and identifying usage patterns within your tenant through comprehensive audit logs.
By the end of this session, you will have a deeper technical understanding of Copilot in Fabric, equipping you to effectively oversee its implementation and ensure robust governance in your organization. Join us to enhance your administrative expertise and support your team’s success!
Fabric Capacities, beyond the obvious
You’re familiar with Fabric Capacities and how some of the core concepts like Bursting, Smoothing, and Throttling are different from what you’ve seen in other products and solutions? Great! Yet with the knowledge of these concepts, things sometimes still spiral out of control? Uh Oh ..
While the core concepts of Fabric Capacities bring a lot of benefits, they do pose some risks that need to be kept in check when figuring out the appropriate Capacity Planning and Management Strategy for your environment. During this session, we’ll walk through some of the key strategies that we’ve seen out there in the wild with some of the largest and complex customers using Power BI and Microsoft Fabric.
Making sure your plan is solid is an excellent first step, but after that execution is key. What are some of the best practices out there to stay on top of your capacity health and usage, and how do you respond when push comes to shove?
Pausing or scaling the capacities, or moving things around are great, but it requires a bit of thought to get it right. Or maybe it's even worth looking into options to offload the consumption of certain workload types elsewhere?
Walking out of this session you’ll have picked up a few new things on Capacity Management and Monitoring strategies, making you feel more confident to put it out to the masses in your organization. Go forth, and Fabricate!
NOTE: This session is intended as a deep-dive, and has an assumption that you understand the core concepts of bursting, smoothing, and throttling in Fabric Capacities.
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Benni De Jagere
No coffee? No insights!
Zoersel, Belgium
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