When: Thursday 24th April 2025 Time: arrive for 5:45pm with talks starting from 6pm start prompt Location: Robert Walters, Number 1 Spinningfields, Manchester, M3 3HF Session will not be streamed over MS Teams Complimentary drinks & pizza provided by our hosts & sponsors Robert Walters

April's PBIMCR will feature ..... Speaker Details - Rishi Sapra

Storytelling With Data

Communicating through telling stories is an innate part of what it means to be human. It’s what allows us to share beliefs and build connections in a way that the brains of other animal species simply aren’t wired to do. We’re used to telling stories through essays and creative writing, but when it comes to using data to tell these stories, people are often hesitant to adopt a stance and use data to argue it. If I’m a BI developer, how do I have the skills (or even the permission) to tell a data story for another part of the business? How can I tell a story over data that frequently changes?

But these are just excuses we make for not building the best data visualizations we know we can! By understanding the specific user personas who the report is for, we can make them the central characters of our data stories and highlight the “tension” (resolved through the storyboard!) that every good story needs.

But these are just excuses we make for not building the best data visualizations we know we can! By understanding the specific user personas who the report is for, we can make them the central characters of our data stories and highlight the “tension” (resolved through the storyboard!) that every good story needs.

In this session, Rishi will:

Walk through the core structure of a gripping story, showing how this translates into Power BI using techniques like pre-attentive attributes, presenting data as arguments (rather than just statements), and providing a “so what” conclusion to the story.

Showcase examples of visualizations he’s built for the community and highlight the data stories he was communicating with them.

Attendees will walk away with an understanding of how to communicate with data in a way that their audience enjoys consuming reports and is able to take action based on the contextualized data arguments presented.

This session is aimed at anyone who wants to understand the impact of data visualizations and how they can be used to effectively communicate what the data is really telling you, framed within the context that the author (report creator) injects into the narrative.

Speaker Details - Craig Porteous -Associate Head of Data Engineering at Advancing Analytics Topic:

Zero to Lakehouse in Microsoft Fabric

Fabric is Microsoft's unified software as a service data platform built around the Data Lakehouse architecture but do you create a Lakehouse, or a Warehouse, or both? How does it all fit together and how can you get the most out of it?

In this session I'll explain what all the components of Microsoft Fabric are, a few architecture patterns you can follow to get what you need, and demonstrate how you can bring them together to build a full data Lakehouse platform without ever touching an Azure resource. You will leave this session with a good understanding of Fabric, it's capabilities, and how you can use it.

About Craig: Data Platform MVP \| Associate Head of Engineering @ Advancing Analytics\| DATA:Scotland event founder \| He/Him. Glasgow, United Kingdom I'm a lifelong learner with a passion for creative problem-solving. I share my expertise and insights with the data community through talks, video content, and bringing people together with the DATA:Scotland event.