{"id":32,"date":"2016-03-28T16:33:30","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T16:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/?p=32"},"modified":"2016-03-28T16:45:32","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T16:45:32","slug":"microsoft-data-insights-summit-trip-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cat5sheetstorm.com\/?p=32","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Data Insights Summit: Trip Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finally returned home last night after a two week “walkabout” from Wisconsin to Seattle and back. \u00a0Visiting family along the way, camping on Puget Sound and in the mountains of Wyoming & Montana. \u00a0The excuse for the trip was the Microsoft Data Insights Summit in Bellevue on March 22-23<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"2016-03-28_0937\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This was the first year for this conference. \u00a0Excel is back into the spotlight\u00a0as a serious player in the enterprise — a platform for data analysis, integration, presentation.\u00a0The focus was PowerBI…and Excel. \u00a0But mostly PowerBI. \u00a0And most of the presenters were Microsoft employees.<\/p>\n

The keynote was\u00a0a whirlwind of new features. \u00a0PowerBI.com is constantly evolving. \u00a0I’m not sure whether its a smarter move to dive in now or wait for things to settle down. \u00a0Some of the whizbang stuff is cool, but we’ve got a lot of unsexy plumbing to rig up before we can implement the razzle dazzle of Sand Dance and Apple Watch dashboards. \u00a0Most Excel users, SQL DBAs and software developers won’t realize how\u00a0big this change is going to be until\u00a0Office 365 and PowerBI are more widely adopted.<\/p>\n