I am beyond delighted to announce that I will be presenting at PASS Summit 2014 in Seattle in November. I submitted a total of seven sessions (five regular sessions and two lightning talks). I ended up with one of each: one regular session and one lighting talk. This is a huge honor for me and a great step up from last year, for which I had one alternate session (which ended up getting promoted over the Summer, much to my joy).

Regular Session

Power Query: Data Chemistry for the Masses

ETL Developers have being doing chemistry with data for years in tools like SQL Server Integration Services. These tools require training, experience, and time that few business users have. But in the age of self-service BI, those business users need a way to shape data to support their analysis.

This session will show how Power Query can be easily used to take advantage of data’s properties to drive the change we need to support our goals.

We will discuss/demonstrate:
— The simple process of accessing a wide variety of data sources
— The ease with which simple transformations can be achieved using the Power Query Ribbon
— Power Query’s fantastic ability to travel through time to see every step taken with the data
— The foundations of the Power Query Formula Language, informally know as “M”
— Using “M” to take Power Query WAY beyond what the Ribbon has to offer.

Come learn about what may well be the most exciting member of the Power BI family.

Lightning Talk

Getting Started With SSAS Extended Events

With SQL Server Profiler on its way to retirement, our friends on the relational database side of the house have already been taking great advantage of the power of Extended Events (XE). There is a lot of great info out there for using XE against the database engine. For Analysis Services, there is a lot less.

This Lightning Talk will demonstrate how easy it is to get started very quickly with SSAS XE once you have some basic information.

We will demonstrate:
— Creating an SSAS Extended Events Trace which outputs to a .xel file
— Make sure your trace is running via the DISCOVER_TRACES rowset
— Importing the contents of that .xel file into a SQL Server db engine table for analysis
— Deleting the SSAS Extended Events trace

A Note To My Fellow Speakers

I wanted to take a moment to shout out to my fellow Summit Speakers, especially those for whom this will be your first time speaking at Summit. With the announcement today about speaker selection, there were quite a few Congrats going around the Twitterverse. That was good to see. As a speaker myself, I know how gratifying it is when people are excited for you at a time like this.

There was also a fair bit of negativity today. We in the SQL Community are a passionate bunch. We care deeply about what goes on and can be vocal when we think something isn’t the way we feel it should be. We are all humans as far as I am aware; humans are emotional creatures. So, sometimes, passions will get the best of us and we may not communicate it in the best way as a result. I think there was a fair amount of that today. There will always be people that are disappointed with certain choices made by PASS or any other organization. Sometimes that disappointment is justified in a real way, and not just via the perception of a few. Sometimes it is hard to see it as anything other than lashing out with disappointment. PASS, like any other organization, is not perfect. One thing we need to remember, though, is that while the process may be imperfect, there are a lot of people working very hard to do the best they can. I think some people forgot that today. Even if there are some legitimate concerns about the perception created by certain choices, I think we need to be careful not to jump too quickly into an accusatory posture. There are constructive ways to air concerns and there are destructive ways. Today, there was a little too much of the latter.

I beg you, fellow speakers, not to let that negativity dampen your excitement or pride over having a session accepted to such an incredible event as PASS Summit. I join with you in being just pumped about getting to speak again. Congratulations and I will see you in November!