PASS BA Virtual Chapter Presents: “ Insider's Introduction to Microsoft Azure Machine Learning (AzureML)” September 18,

PASS Business Analytics Updates Chapter Leader – Dan English Dan is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP, author, on the leadership team for the MN Microsoft BI User Group, and is the Business Intelligence Practice Manager at Superior Consulting Services in MN. Chapter Co-Lead – Paras Doshi Paras is a consultant at SolidQ, Microsoft Community Contributor awardee and Blogger. He is passionate about helping businesses extract valuable insights from data. PASS Business Analytics Virtual Chapter Twitter YouTube Channel

Sept 18 – Insider's Introduction to Microsoft Azure Machine Learning (AzureML) Abstract Microsoft has introduced a new technology for developing analytics applications in the cloud. The presenter has an insider's perspective, having actively provided feedback to the Microsoft team which has been developing this technology over the past 2 years. This session will 1) provide an introduction to the Azure technology including licensing, 2) provide demos of using R version 3 with AzureML, and 3) provide best practices for developing applications with Azure Machine Learning. Presenter – Mark Tabladillo Mark Tabladillo is a Microsoft MVP and SAS expert. He helps teams become more confident in making actionable business decisions through the use of data mining and analytics. Mark provides training and consulting for companies in the US and around the world. He also teaches part-time with the University of Phoenix. He and blogs at

October 16 - How to incorporate “Big Data” in Analysis Services cubes? Abstract Free form text is estimated to make up 70% to 80% of a company’s data assets and is considered significantly underutilized from an analytical perspective. There are numerous sources for this growing pool of unstructured data such as customer , call center notes, chat logs, satisfaction surveys or claim forms to name a few. Is your company leveraging all of its data assets? Historically, it has been very difficult to analyze text records for trends or patterns due to the free-form nature of this data. Recent advances in text mining have helped to distill and expose their content. The key to realizing the business value of text mining isn’t found in the sophistication of the clustering algorithms, but rather in the way those clusters are combined with structured data and then presented to the business analyst. Text clustering involves the logical grouping of text records based on the similarity of important terms in the documents. While some insights will likely surface through the examination of the text clusters themselves, the most significant value will occur when the text clusters are analyzed in combination with related structured data. Important facts reflected in thousands or millions of documents can be analyze along with structured data elements such as time, location or products to turn new business insights into a sustainable competitive advantage. Presenter – Reid Karabush Reid Karabush is President of Decision Systems Inc., based in Northbrook, IL. His expertise includes over twenty years specializing in the field of business performance management and analytics, and is recognized nationwide as an expert in these field.

November 13 - The 13 Excel features that Database developers should know about Abstract In the beginning, SQL Developers viewed Excel as the enemy – vowing to take every data entry spreadsheet and turn it into a beautiful relational database application with validations. But times have changed, and Excel has come back around, but in a different light. Business users rely on Excel for analytics out of the data we provide them (and even for data where we can’t give them a clean version). Even if developers don’t use Excel themselves, they owe it to themselves and their companies/clients to be aware of the many Excel features for “slicing and dicing” data. In this presentation, I’ll show 13 different features in Excel where knowledge will help developers to speak the same language as their users – everything from PowerPivot, PowerView, PowerQuery and PowerMap features to advanced Excel formulas and Excel “what-if” functionality. And who knows – maybe a few developers will walk away with some ideas for using Excel for some of their personal development projects! Presenter – Kevin S. Goff ( Kevin is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP and database architect, developer, speaker, author on.NET, SQL Server, and Business Intelligence topics. Frequent speaker at community events in the Mid-Atlantic region and regular speaker for the SQL Live!360 Conference Brand.

6 Join Us in Seattle, WA November 4-7, 2014

Planning on attending PASS Summit 2014? Start saving today! The world’s largest gathering of SQL Server & BI professionals Take your SQL Server skills to the next level by learning from the world’s SQL Server experts, in 190+ technical sessions Over 5000 attendees, representing 2000 companies, from 52 countries, ready to network & learn $2,095 UNTIL OCTOBER 31, 2014 Use chapter code VCSUM04 to save $150 off registration! Use chapter code VCSUM04 to save $150 off registration! Use chapter code VCSUM04 to save $150 off registration! Use chapter code VCSUM04 to save $150 off registration!

PASS Virtual Chapters Listing Check out the sqlpass.org for more information on all the Virtual Chapters: Application Development Azure Big Data Book Readers Business Analytics Business Intelligence Data Architecture Database Administration DBA Fundamentals Excel BI* Healthcare High Availability and Disaster Recovery InMemory Master Data\Data Quality * New Virtual Chapters Oracle SQL Performance Powershell Professional Development Security Virtualization Women in Technology Global Chinese Global Hebrew Global Italian* Global Portuguese Global Russian Global Spanish

Virtual Chapter Meetings VIRTUAL CHAPTERMEETINGTOPIC Excel Business Intelligence Sep 10 10:00-11:00 (GMT-12:00)MDX for Excel PowerPivot by Chris Webb Global SpanishSep 10 12:00-12:30 (GMT-05:00)Indices Columnares en SQL Server 2014 by Jose L. Rivera Global HebrewSep 14 17:30-18:30 (GMT +02:00)From Reports to Dashboards – Intro to Power BI by Idan Cohen DBA FundamentalsSep 16 11:00-12:00 (GMT -06:00)Roadmap to Better Performance: Reading Query Plans by Erin Stellato Global SpanishSep 17 12:00-12:30 (GMT -05:00)Aprendamos DAX by Ahias Portillo Business IntelligenceSep 17 13:00-14:00 (GMT -08:00)Absolute beginners presentation for Power BI for Office 365 by Kevin Goff Business AnalyticsSep 18 12:00-13:00 (GMT -05:00)Insider’s Introduction to Microsoft Azure Machine Learning (AzureML) by Mark Tabladillo Business IntelligenceSep 25 07:00-08:00 (GMT -08:00)Using Power BI for Managing Personal Fitness by Matthew Roche

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