PASS BA Virtual Chapter Presents: “The Art of Prototyping Analytics” May 28,

PASS Business Analytics Virtual Chapter 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

May 28 – The Art of Prototyping Analytics Abstract Have you been underwhelmed by the promised enterprise data warehouse and business intelligence implementation? Do you find yourself stuck attempting to grow the use of analytics within your organization? Is your company culture still stuck in doing it the “long and hard way”? Does IT still hold the keys to implementing deep analytics? With the introduction of Power BI and a growing set of cloud-based analytics capabilities, Microsoft has opened the door to agile analytics and enterprise reporting capabilities. Like never before, leaders are able to develop and deliver the value of analytics “early and often”, and use this as a springboard to change the culture of analytics throughout the organization. Power BI can be a critical component of a corporate analytics strategy, and by empowering business users to do what they do best (analyze the business), IT and business leaders can finally begin to change the culture of analytics. In this session, you will learn: To identify the barriers to changing your organization’s data culture To find ways to create a bridge between IT and business leaders to gain access to critical resources and people The importance of ROI on your analytics projects To use Excel and Power BI as an effective tool to develop prototypes and production-ready analytic solutions. How to empower key business leaders and analysts to further the data culture change throughout the organization. Presenter – Ken Raetz a technology professional who has spent the past 15 years as a business intelligence and data warehouse architect, as well as a technical team manager for solutions across multiple BI platforms, including Cognos, Business Objects, Microsoft SQL Server and Power BI. In 2014, Ken stepped into the brave, new world of entrepreneurship, co-founding Think Data Insights, a company focused on helping companies of all sizes effect data culture change throughout their organizations.Think Data Insights

June 11 – Tools for initial exploratory data analysis Abstract We do exploratory data analysis (EDA) when we take a first look at the source data we will use in our analytics project. EDA helps us to get a good idea of the usefulness, relevance, completeness and quality of the data for our purposes and to explore patterns in the data to give us some insight. WIn this session we’ll explore a public dataset - the Titanic passenger list. Most people know the of the tragic events. The RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton on 10th April 1912, hit an iceberg in the Atlantic 4 days later and sank. Of the 2000 people on board, only 700 survived. We'll build some rough and ready visualisations and crunch some basic statistics on this dataset using 4 different tools Excel and Power Query as our benchmark, R with the ggplot2 graphics and dplyr data manipulation packages, Azure Machine Learning and the free starter edition of RapidMiner The purpose of the session is to introduce you to some tools that you may not be familiar with so that you can decide which tools you prefer for exploring and analysis data. Or you may decide to use all these tools at different times for different tasks. Presenter – Mark Wilcock is an independent consultant specialising in the analysis, reporting and visualisation of financial data. Over the last 20 years, he has worked on many systems to measure and monitor financial performance and manage market risks that arise from banking and trading activities. He is the organiser of the London Business Analytics Group ( a popular community group that holds monthly talks on topics ranging from Predictive Analytics to Power Query to Personalised Medicine. He blogs intermittently at

Don’t miss your chance to vote in the 2015 PASS elections-update your myPASS profile by June 1! In order to vote for the 2015 PASS Nomination Committee & the Board of Directors, you need to complete all mandatory fields in your myPASS profile by 11:59 PM PDT June 1, PASS members will be reminded to review & complete their profiles Members will receive instructions for updating profiles and deleting duplicate profiles Eligible voters will receive information about key election dates and the voting process after June 1 Head to sqlpass.org/myPASS today! For more info on elections, visit to sqlpass.org/elections 5

Planning on attending PASS Summit 2015? 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 top SQL Server experts, in over 190 technical sessions Over 5000 registrations, representing 2000 companies, from 52 countries, ready to network & learn Save $150 right now using discount code VC15BKR3 $1795 until July 12 th, 2015

Whatever your data passion – there’s a Virtual Chapter for you! 7

Excel BI Virtual Chapter – today after our meeting!

BI Virtual Chapter – 12 EDT

Upcoming SQLSaturdays North AmericaInternational May 2 Dallas (BI Edition) May 9 Baltimore May 9Jacksonville May 9 Puerto Rico May 16 Redmond May 16Atlanta May 16Rochester May 30Iowa City May 30New York City May 9 Shanghai May 16Lisbon May 22Buenos Aires May 23 Yaounde May 23Torino May 23Curaçao May 23Kiev May 30Varna Visit to register for a event near you!

11 Volunteering Opportunities PASS would not exist without passionate, dedicated, and hardworking volunteers from around the globe. Volunteer today!! For local opportunities please visit volunteer.sqlpass.org For PASS HQ related activities, please update the “MyVolunteering” section of your MyPASS profile.

Stay Involved! Sign up for a free membership today at sqlpass.org Linked In: Facebook: #sqlpass PASS: