Valerie Junk
Data Analytics, Visualization & Storytelling | Microsoft Data Platform MVP | Wortell
Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Hi there. I am Valerie Junk.
I am passionate about creating insights from data and designing dashboards using Power BI. With my expertise in data analytics and visualization, I support companies in developing effective data-driven strategies that yield results and take the business to the next level.
Microsoft Data Platform MVP
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Topics
Power BI Tables and Matrix Visuals: The Next Step
Let’s face it: Many Power BI reports include at least one table or matrix visual, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. While they are familiar, flexible, and likely the easiest way for report creators to display detailed data, they often represent a lack of trust in the data, which leads to the wish to see all the details. This means they’re just Excel tables in disguise: packed with data but doing little to support decision-making.
This session is about taking tables and matrix visuals to the next step. We will look at transforming these visuals into something that works with your users rather than against them. Think cleaner layouts, smarter use of space, and formatting that highlights what matters without needing to scroll through hundreds of rows. You will see examples of how to upgrade a basic table or matrix visual into something that adds value for the end user and at the same time increases trust in the report data itself. From subtle design tweaks to DAX tricks for dynamic elements, this session aims to provide you with ideas you can implement right away.
We will also address typical challenges, such as how to respond when the end-user requests “just the raw data” or “a copy of my Excel report in Power BI” and determining when it may be more effective to skip the matrix entirely.
What we’ll cover:
• Conditional formatting that adds meaning, not just color.
• Layout tricks to reduce clutter and improve usability.
• DAX techniques for showing the right context at the right time.
• How to avoid endless scrolling (and what to do instead)?
• When not to use a table or matrix and what are the better options?
This session is intended for report creators ready to move beyond basic matrix and table visuals and create visuals that improve clarity, user engagement, and action.
Key Learning Objectives:
• Learn to use formatting, layout, and DAX to support better decisions.
• Discover small tweaks that make a big difference in usability.
• Walk away with practical ideas you can apply in your next report.
A Structured Report Creation Approach - Using a Framework
Creating effective reports is not just about aesthetics; it’s about creating reports that serve user needs and support decision-making. In this, we’ll explore a structured approach to report design using a practical framework. You’ll gain insights into:
- Breaking down the report creation process into manageable steps. These involve, for example, getting to know the end user, understanding the goal of the dashboard, and identifying the actions that could result from it. This also includes defining the general message of the report, considering possible designs, and incorporating evaluation and testing. Finally, it addresses how to implement an effective way of working.
- Applying the framework to align your reports with user goals.
- Using the framework as documentation, ensuring clarity and alignment with end users.
- Enhancing communication so everyone knows what to expect.
- Establishing a consistent way of working within your organization.
Whether you are new to creating reports or seeking to enhance your skills, this session provides practical tips and techniques to improve your reports and make your designs more impactful.
Data Literacy: Navigating Your Way to Data-Driven Success!
Data literacy is for everyone—from data enthusiasts to business leaders. It’s about ensuring everyone understands data and has access to the information they need. When everyone’s on board, the whole company benefits from diverse insights and better decisions.
Join us to explore:
- What data literacy really means and why it’s crucial.
- How to make it work for your organization.
- Engaging all skill levels in the data journey.
- Key reasons why data literacy is essential.
This session will be interactive with Menti meter polls and plenty of Q&A. Come ready to participate and learn together!
Are you in our target audience? Absolutely! Will there be stroopwafels? You bet!
Session may include stroopwafels.
Elevating Power BI Visualizations: Combining Design Strategies and DAX
Are you interested in learning how to take your Power BI reports to the next level? This session will explore various design strategies to help you create visually stunning and engaging reports. From infographics to dark mode, this session covers different design options and provides insights into choosing the right design for your specific audience.
We will discuss effective color choices, design best practices, and strategies for implementing new design approaches at your company or for your customers.
But that’s not all! We’ll also dive into using DAX to improve custom Power BI visuals. You’ll learn how to create dynamic titles, implement color conditional formatting, adjust labels on the fly, and fine-tune visuals for a cleaner, more focused presentation.
By the end of the day, you’ll have a deep understanding of why diverse designs are key to success and how getting to know your audience can take you a long way. Also, you’ll learn how to use DAX to make your visuals stand out and take your reports to a new level. So get excited, and let’s get started!
This is a hands-on session where you can learn how to use different design types and DAX in everyday report building to enhance your visuals.
From data to action: Driving decision-making with Power BI
Let's face it; there are probably not many people designing dashboards and reports just to have something pretty to look at. Companies asking for dashboards want to get insights and eventually take action with these insights.
Many Power BI dashboards companies use do not fully fulfill this need. Often there is data, which is good, but taking action and taking the next step with the insights needs many additional steps... When we take a step back, the dashboards were intended to lessen the workload and not add to the workload.
In this session, "From Data to Action," I will show how you can visualize the data in a way that helps companies to take the next step. Often, this is not complicated, and you don't need to buy additional tools. Just some visual tweaks will go a long way!
Also, this session will focus on asking the right questions and tailoring the design to your audience. So it's a mix of visuals, examples, and theory about choosing the right design to answer the (actual) question.
Whether you are a business analyst, a data enthusiast, or a decision maker, this session will help you to bring your dashboards to the next level. It will also help you to communicate more clearly to the team what you are looking for, even if you don't know everything about Power BI and dashboard design.
Visualizing Data for Non-Data Experts: Making Reports Accessible to All
Creating reports that effectively communicate data insights to non-data experts can be tough! While you as a developer know all ins and outs of Power BI and the data in the report, your audience maybe just got started or are less familiar with interpreting data.
The charts, graphs and tables you provide with the intention to inform, engage and trigger the audience may even have a complete different effect: they confuse and overwhelm your audience.
In this session, we'll explore how to visualize data in a way that is accessible to everyone, regardless of their level of expertise. The sessions attendees will learn how to identify their audience's needs, select the appropriate visualizations for their data, and present their findings in a clear and concise manner.
The session starts with discussing the importance of storytelling and how it can be used to create engaging reports that resonate with the target audience. Then it covers the key principles of effective data visualization, including:
* Choosing the right chart or graph for the data
* Simplifying complex data to make it easily digestible
* Incorporating visual cues to highlight important information
* Designing for accessibility, including colorblindness and other disabilities
Throughout the session, I provide practical examples and demonstrations of how to create effective data visualizations using Power BI.
The audience of the session will leave the session with a solid understanding of how to create reports that are accessible, engaging, and informative for everyone in their organization.
Storytelling & Power BI - Creating Power BI reports that connect with different audiences
Designing a report that will be viewed and used by different audiences can be challenging. You want to present information in an actionable, informative, and visually appealing way. However, users across an organization may have various requirements and Power BI experience levels. While some users need detailed information presented in different dimensions with possibilities to filter and drill through, others may only look for key performance indicators. Some users like to click through a dashboard to see specific information, while others want to print it or have a quick look on the phone to see the most relevant information.
This session covers steps you can take to understand the needs of different audiences. Topics covered are:
- Techniques and questions you can ask to understand your audience and to gather the report requirements.
- Examples of different visualizations (and ways to format them) to communicate with different audiences and get your message across
- Providing a consistent look and feel (with templates and color schemes) to reduce the cognitive load when looking at a report
- Best practices & tips to design actionable, informative, and easy-to-understand reports.
By the end of the session, attendees will understand better how to create a Power BI report that connects with different audiences across an organization.
Dashboard Design - The icing on the cake
Level: Beginning & Intermediate
This session uses a baking competition analogy to guide the audience through 5 steps for creating visually appealing and easy-to-read reports.
Just like anyone can bake a cake, anyone can build a report. But the best ones turn heads! Learn simple tricks to make your reports visually appealing, easy to understand, and leave a lasting impression. No prior design experience needed!
In this session, you will:
• Master the basics: Get a clear understanding of design principles that make reports pop in Power BI.
• Craft clear visuals: Discover easy-to-use techniques for creating visuals that make an impact on your audience (the end-user).
• Boost readability: Learn how to format your reports for clarity and impact.
• Design with Confidence: By the end of this session, you'll have the skills to create reports you're proud of and feel confident presenting them to any audience.
Get Creative with Power BI: Make these core visuals shine!
Creating reports with Power BI may seem easy at first. However, many people eventually discover that their reports are not being viewed, end-users are confused about navigation, and the whole development process is more complicated than anticipated. This session will address these challenges and provide you with the skills to create visually appealing and actionable data visualizations that serve a clear purpose and effectively guide end-users to take action.
In this session, I will show how to create data visualizations that are visually appealing, intuitive, and actionable, only using Power BI core visuals. Since many of us are creating reports for others who eventually need to maintain them themselves, I think it is important not to involve too many external tools and additional code and instead focussing on keeping it simple and insightful.
The techniques you will learn are practical and can be immediately applied to your work. You will learn how to:
- Ask the right questions to get to know your audience.
- Use DAX to Enhance Visuals: Learn how to modify your visuals using DAX, such as changing colors and highlighting important information, to make critical insights stand out.
- Focus on Key Information: Learn techniques to refine your visuals so they display the most critical data, making sure users can quickly see what matters most.
Join me as we explore how to create insightful, user-friendly visualizations using only Power BI's core visuals, no SVGs or external tools required.
Fabric February 2026 Sessionize Event Upcoming
Power Conference 2025 Sessionize Event Upcoming
Budapest BI Forum 2025 Sessionize Event Upcoming
dataMinds Connect 2025 Sessionize Event
Data Saturday & Fabric Friday Holland 2025 Sessionize Event
PASS Summit On Tour The Netherlands
Pre-Conference: Get Creative with Power BI: Make these core visuals shine!
DATA BASH '25 Sessionize Event
Power BI Next Step Sessionize Event
DATA:Scotland 2025 Sessionize Event
Data Saturday Oslo 2025 Sessionize Event
SQLBits 2025 - General Sessions Sessionize Event
Data Saturday Croatia 2025 Sessionize Event
New Stars of Data #9 Sessionize Event
ColorCloud Hamburg 2025 Sessionize Event
Power BI Gebruikersdag 2025 Sessionize Event
Power BI & Fabric User Group Lithuania Meetup User group Sessionize Event
#DataWeekender 7.0 Sessionize Event
Power BI & Fabric Summit 2025 Sessionize Event
SQL Konferenz 2025 Sessionize Event
Fabric February 2025 Sessionize Event
Cloud Technology Townhall Tallinn 2025 Sessionize Event
Data Community Day Austria 2025 Sessionize Event
Power Conference 2024 Sessionize Event
Budapest BI Forum 2024 Sessionize Event
DataPopkorn - a bite-sized knowledge! Sessionize Event
New Stars of Data #8 Sessionize Event
DATA BASH '24 Sessionize Event
Global Fabric VizDesign Hub Usergroup
Power BI: Design for Accessibility session
Data Saturday & Fabric Friday Holland 2024 Sessionize Event
SQL Konferenz 2024 Sessionize Event
DATA:Scotland 2024 Sessionize Event
Data Saturday Oslo 2024 Sessionize Event
European Power Platform Conference (EPPC24) Sessionize Event
Data Saturday Stockholm 2024 Sessionize Event
Design Donderdag
Design: Trends & Skills
DataGrillen 2024 Sessionize Event
Viz.fo
Precon (full day workshop): Dataviz and DAX (Elevate your visuals using DAX)
Power BI Gebruikersgroep
Power BI Meets Design: Creating Accessible, Intuitive, and Action-Driven Reports.
SQLBits 2024 - General Sessions Sessionize Event
Power BI & Fabric Summit 2024 Sessionize Event
Data Community Austria Day 2024 Sessionize Event
DATA BASH '23 Sessionize Event
Budapest BI Forum 2023 Sessionize Event
#DataWeekender 6.5 Sessionize Event
dataMinds Connect 2023 Sessionize Event
Data Moshpit 2023 Sessionize Event
SQL Konferenz 2023 Sessionize Event
Data Saturday Croatia 2023 Sessionize Event
Data Saturday Stockholm 2023 Sessionize Event
SQLBits 2023 - General Sessions Sessionize Event
Power BI Gebruikersdag 2023 Sessionize Event
Power BI Summit 2023 Sessionize Event
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