My PASS Summit 2013 Presentations

I had the honor to speak for the first time at this past PASS Summit 2013 in Charlotte, NC. It was a great opportunity for me as this is one of the most prestigious nationwide conferences on SQL Server. I delivered 3 different sessions on Business Intelligence related topics. Attendance to my sessions exceeded my expectations and my overall experience as a first-time speaker was very positive. I also need to add that the God’s of the live demos were on my side.

My session titled PowerPivot + Power View = Self-service BI Revolution was full and had about 5 to 8 people standing in the back. Everybody got excited when I did a demo of the nice interactivity in Power View and 3D geographical capabilities of PowerMap.

The Lightning Talk room was packed and people had to be turned away. This room should be bigger next time as these Lightning Talks are very popular. Everybody accepted and agreed with my postulation on the need for Conformed Stored Procedures in addition to Conformed Dimensions and Facts. After the Lightning Talks were over, several attendees came forward to discuss further how Conformed Stored Procedures should be implemented. One attendee in particular, mentioned that he had been thinking about proposing a similar approach to his team and this talk helped him get re-assurance of this approach.

My last session on SSAS Hierarhcies Tips & Tricks was a half-day session on the last day of the summit between 2:00pm and 5:00pm. It was half-full for the first half of the session, and ended up about 1/4 full.  This drop-off is expected towards the end of the Summit as many people fly back home on Friday and usually leave around 4:00pm.

I’m very pleased with the turnout and feedback received. The audience in all of my sessions was very engaged and had a lot of great questions. I definitely look forward to speak at PASS Summit 2014 in Seattle, WA and at PASS BA Conference 2014 in San Jose, CA.

To download my presentations slides click on the links below:

1. Regular Session (75 minutes): 4798 PowerPivot + Power View = Self-Service BI Revolution
2. Lightning Talk Session (10 minutes): Slides: 5511 Conformed Stored Procedures Script: ConformedStoredProcs_SQLScript
3. Half-Day Session (3 hours): 4803 Fast Performing SSAS Hierarchies Tips and Tricks

Thanks to all the attendees and PASS team for this great opportunity. I hope I met or exceeded everyone’s expectations.

If you attended one of my presentations, please leave your comments and feedback!

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IT Pro Camp Tampa 2013

This year I was honored to sponsor and speak at IT Pro Camp Tampa 2013. Like always, it is a great pleasure to give back to the community and get to know people from different technical backgrounds. The event was very well-organized and the venue was great.

This year the entire Agile Bay team spoke at IT Pro Camp delivering 4 sessions in total for Track 2: Business Intelligence & Big Data (SQL Server, Hadoop, etc.). You can download the PowerPoint presentations by clicking on the session links below:

1. Wes Springob | Introduction To Reporting Services
2. Jose Chinchilla & Jon Bloom | Introduction to Big Data
3. Jonathan Bloom | Introduction to T-SQL
4. Jose Chinchilla |  Introduction to Microsoft BI
   

Wes Springob deliverin Introduction to SSRS

IT Pro Camp Tampa 2013 Attendees

Presenting 2 sessions at SQLPASS

I’m truly honored to be chosen to speak at PASS Summit 2013. The honor is compounded as I have been chosen to deliver two sessions:

• Fast Performing SSAS Hierarchies: Tips and Tricks (3 hours)
  Track: BI Platform Architecture, Development & Administration
  Session Abstract: Depending on how they’re implemented, SQL Server Analysis Services hierarchies can be the source for a very high performing OLAP cube or the culprits of long running analysis. Are you implementing SSAS hierarchies correctly?This half-day session will walk you through how to implement SSAS hierarchies the right way and show you some tips and tricks to make them perform faster. You’ll also learn how to query and navigate SSAS hierarchies using common MDX functions.

• PowerPivot + Power View = Self-Service BI Revolution(75 minutes)
  Track: BI Information Delivery
  Session Abstract: The status quo has changed. IT is no longer required for business intelligence. End users can do their own BI within the comforts of Excel and SharePoint. Sound threatening? Maybe freeing? In this session, get to know what your role is and could be in this new self-service delivery model. You’ll also learn how PowerPivot and Power View work, how to leverage them, and how to make them fit into your enterprise data warehouse.

I feel very fortunate to be chosen as a speaker and to be able to give back to the community at a much bigger scale. I hope to instill my passion for the community and to be a relevant source of learning at PASS Summit 2013 to all who attend my sessions.

I encourage you to join me and attend PASS Summit 2013 in Charlotte, N.C. from Oct. 15th to 18th. There are more than 190 sessions to attend. We will also host  12 full-day pre-conference sessions on Oct. 14th and 15th with top SQL Server gurus.

For more information visit: http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2013/

In addition to speaking at PASS Summit 2013, I am planning to speak and attend the SQL Saturday #237 Charlotte, N.C. BI Edition which will be hosted Saturday Oct. 19th following PASS Summit 2013 week.

For more information about SQL Saturday #237 Charlotte, N.C. BI visit: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/237/eventhome.aspx

I hope to see you there!

I have been appointed as PASS Regional Mentor for the Greater Southeast

I have been appointed as PASS Regional Mentor for the Greater Southeast by PASS (http://www.sqlpass.org). I am truly honored to volunteer for this position to help improve our PASS community. These are BIG shoes to fill.

I will be joining my good friend Tim Radney (Twitter | Blog) oversee 28 chapters across 6 US states (AL, FL, GA, MS, NC, and SC) as well as the Netherlands Antilles. The complete list of chapters that make up the Greater Southeast can be found at: http://www.sqlpass.org/PASSChapters/USGreaterSoutheast.aspx.

What is a Regional Mentor? What do Regional Mentors do?

In Karla Landrum’s (Twitter | Blog) own words:

In general, a PASS Regional Mentor can be defined as the following:

Passionate community volunteer

• Dedicated to PASS and the SQL Server community
• Understands the value of giving his/her time and talents to helping others increase their knowledge and skills and improving the overall community

PASS ambassador

• Understands PASS and its mission and represents the best of PASS to Chapters in his/her area
• Works to keep PASS accountable, on track, and meeting the needs of its members

Primary point of contact for Chapters

• RM facilitates 2-way communications: resources, benefits, and news from PASS to Chapters and Chapter needs and feedback back to PASS
• RM knows who to contact at PASS, at the local/regional Microsoft office, area sponsors, etc. if Chapters need something or have questions

The full blog post of Karla Landrum on “What is a Regional Mentor” can be found at: http://karlalandrum.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/what-is-a-pass-regional-mentor/

What does being a Regional Mentor means to me?

My personal view is that  a Regional Mentor is a facilitator and nothing else. This position is not a bureaucratic layer on top of PASS Chapters. I’m not a Regional Mentor to supervise, police, decide, or interfere with day-to-day activities of PASS Chapters. It is meant to be the first level of contact, but it does not mean Chapters can’t talk directly to PASS staff and leadership.

Regional Mentors can help PASS Chapters acquire swag, books and even speakers for their Chapter meetings. Regional Mentors can also open doors from personal contacts, contacts established by PASS or even contacts that other Chapters have already established.

Regional Mentors can also help by providing best practices and guidelines on how to run a succesful Chapter or event from past personal experiences as well as experiences from other Chapter leaders and PASS management.

Regional Mentors can also help Chapters leverage as a group on common challenges and issues, for example: incorporating as a non-for profit, learning how to deal with taxes, managing finances, structuring the chapter leadership, obtaining legal representation, obtaining special discounts, sharing of event materials and equipment, coordinating events and speakers, etc. These are just examples of some of the ideas and initiatives for the Southeast Chapters, so be in the lookout for some discussions around them.

What do I have to offer?

As President for the past 3+ years of the Tampa Bay Business Intelligence PASS Chapter (http://tampabaybi.sqlpass.org), organizer/co-organizer of  3 SQL Saturdays, and speaker at more than 35 events like SQLSaturdays,  I understand the challenges and time committment of PASS Chapter leaders. 

Throughout my community involvement, I have created a good network of SQL Server and Business Intelligence professionals, Chapter leaders and community rockstars. In addition, I have established great relationships with “blue badges” (Microsoft employees), PASS leadership and staff and have direct points of contact at many companies that offer products and services related to SQL Server and other Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies.

It is my desire to help Chapters that need from my past experience, network, ideas and initiatives, and role as a facilitator . It is my intention to let Chapter leaders continue to keep doing their invaluable jobs and not interfere or serve as a barrier to their activities.

I’m here to facilitate!

Top 3 Reasons Why Evernote is worth $1 billion to me

Everyone heard about Facebook’s recent purchase of Instagram for $1 billion dollars. No one can imagine how they came with such price tag for a bunch (a big bunch) of pictures with special filters added. I never used Instagram and I don’t think I will ever. I’m happy with my regular’ol Flickr, Twitpic and Picasa.

One free application that is really worth $1 billion is Evernote. Why? Well, it’s way more than just another online organizer to me. And it’s even better than the Trapper Keeper I carry around.

Reason #1: No more emailing back and forth
One of the best reasons why Evernote is so valuable is the fact that I can write notes or take pictures of a whiteboard with my smartphone and they will auto-magically synchronize with my laptop and iPad or vice-versa. No more emailing back and forth so that I can download them. The notes and pictures go right into my user-defined notebooks I saved the notes under and show up wherever I have Evernote configured.

Reason #2: No more wallet full of receipts.
As a consultant I travel a lot and taming my receipts monster for my T&E reports is not an easy task. At the end of a week-long trip my wallet looks somewhat like a juicy double-decker burger. With Evernote, I can take a picture of the receipt with my smartphone, tag it and upload it to my expenses notebook. I can do it right there at the restaurant when the waiter or waitress brings the check and add notes related to the expense.

Reason #3: Share & Grab
Another reason why Evernote is so valuable is the fact that I can share my notebooks and notes with other people. Imagine how cool it is to brainstorm and whiteboard and be able to share those notes, pictures, videos, links, etc with your teammates. Awesome, right! Well, it doesn’t stop there, you can even use third-party extensions and applications like ifttt.com to save content to an Evernote notebook from Tweeter, Facebook, email and other channels based on the criteria that you define. Make sure to check-out the Evernote Trunk section for a complete list of apps.

Just wanted to share this as I find it very useful and believe that applications such as Evernote should be the next billion dollar company. Please comment with other ways you use Evernote for: Recipes? CRM? Reminder? Your own private Facebook? sa password vault?

The affordable self-service BI revolution has started.

I am officially announcing that I have now become an independent consultant and business owner. Becoming independent has always been my dream and I have now decided to follow that dream. I believe it is the right time to do it for my family and myself. It’s time to soar!

Why did I leave Pragmatic Works?

Simple. I wanted to follow my career goals and carve my own path. It was a hard decision to leave Pragmatic Works as I really enjoyed the work environment and had great relationship with the top brass Brian Knight, Adam Jorgensen, and Sam Washburn as well as my co-workers. The folks at Pragmatic Works gave me a lot of opportunities to learn and grow for which I am forever grateful. It is a great company to work for and highly recommend working for them. I would return to work for them in a heartbeat.

What are my plans?

First of all, I have created a corporation, called Agile Bay, Inc. (http://www.agilebay.com) through which I will be providing Business Intelligence consulting services, Software Development, Training and Staffing services. I will also be doing contract work and hiring BI and Software developers to take on some of these jobs.

My plan is to focus on self-service Business Intelligence solutions using the Microsoft toolset, including:

• SQL Server Database Services
• Analysis Services
• Reporting Services
• Master Data Services
• Data Quality Services
• SharePoint
• Performance Point
• PowerPivot
• PowerView
• & more…

I will continue leading, volunteering and sharing my knowledge in the SQL Server and Business Intelligence community and in PASS.

Enter the affordable self-service BI revolution

The new release of SQL Server 2012 will bring a lot to offer in the BI space. I truly believe it will be a game changer and many companies will embark in new Data Warehouse, Business Intelligence and Master Data Management projects. Some of these projects may have been put on hold due to licensing and development costs. This is where SQL Server 2012 will shine as it introduces lower BI licensing costs with the new SQL Server Business Intelligence Edition. Organizations will no longer require Enterprise Edition to do all the cool things Microsoft has to offer with their BI suite.

Additionally, the shift to the BI Semantic Model and the focus on self-service BI will open a lot of doors to consulting firms with lower overhead like mine. Enter the affordable self-service BI revolution!

Hitting the ground running

I am very grateful to the fact that the word has spread out among my immediate professional network and have already been booked for projects and contract work several months ahead.

I have tried not to market myself or my company too much during this initial phase as I want to manage my growth more organically. I am in the process of hiring BI developers at all levels, so if you are interested feel free to contact me via http://www.agilebay.com/#!contact.

 Mission

My mission is to empower individuals and organizations through the Microsoft Business Intelligence Toolset.

Vision

My vision is to be the catalyst and leader of the affordable self-service Business Intelligence revolution.

Value proposition

There are many alternatives available when chosing a consulting firm to help you achieve a succesful Business Intelligence, Data Warehouse and Master Data Management implementation.  My value proposition is to achieve this same success at an affordable budget and by providing you with the knowledge transfer and mentoring needed to continue your own development efforts.

The sales pitch

 You need an experienced and expert professional to help you with your design and development efforts.  I have experience and expertise. Let’s talk.

You may contact me through my company’s website at http://www.agilebay.com/#!contact or through email: info@agilebay.com. 

I’m also available for any quick help through email at jchinchilla@sqljoe.com. Make sure to check out my blog at http://www.sqljoe.com as well.

Afterthoughts: IT Pro Camp Orlando 2012

This past Saturday January 21, 2012 I had the opportunity to speak at my first IT Pro Camp in Orlando, FL. This event was put together by Blain Barton ( Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter ), Microsoft Senior IT Pro Evangelist and Chad Miller ( Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter ), Microsfot MVP and Senior Manager of Database Administration at Raymond James Financial.

Event

The event went very smooth and had a good turnaout. Food was amazing. They reallly outdid themselves with good old southern BBQ.

Presentation

I presented a session titled Introduction to Microsoft Business Intelligence (Slides), focusing on the basic concepts of BI and Datawarehousing, the Microsoft toolset and my Top 5 Rules of Wisdom for succesful BI. I had a great turnaout, about 25 attendees. All of the attendees were very engaged and asked excellent questions. I enjoyed presenting to the Orlando crowd.

Picture credits: Russel Faustino. See more pictures of the event here.

Other IT Pro Camps are being added. Check the IT Pro Camp website here to keep up to date.

Click on the picture below to download my Intorduction to Business Intelligence powerpoint presentation.

 

 

Codeplex: SSIS Community Tasks and Components

I recently bumped into this very exhaustive list of SSIS tasks, components and samples in CodePlex http://ssisctc.codeplex.com. The list is maintained by SQL Server MVP (Blog|Twitter) and  grouped in the following sections:

• Tools
• Connection Managers
•  Log Providers
• Tasks (for Control Flow)
• Foreach Enumerators
• Script Task
• Script Samples
• Components (for Data Flow)
• Script Component Samples
•  Sources
• Transforms
• Destinations

I hope this list keeps being updated and more people contribute. Very useful.

SQL Saturday 86 BI Edition Tampa 2011: Afterthoughts

Wow! Just Wow! That’s all I can say to describe how great SQL Saturday 86 was on November 5th in Tampa, FL . I got so much positive feedback from every attendee, speaker and sponsor. Food was great, sessions were amazing, speakers were first class!  I have to say thanks to everyone for attending, speaking, sponsoring and helping out with these great event put together by the Tampa Bay Business Intelligence User Group officers and volunteers.

Organizing Committee & Volunteers

I cannot take personal credit for this event. It was truly a team effort. Somewhere I read that in order to be successful you need to surround yourself with talented & driven individuals that are committed to your same goals. Maybe I’m paraphrasing or simply making that up, but this has proven to work with running our local Tampa Bay Business Intelligence User Group and the SQL Saturday #86 BI Edition event.

The organizing committee was made up by:

• Jose Chinchilla, President (Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog)
• Andrew Brittain, Vice-President (Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog)
• David Liebman, Treasurer (Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog)
• Sanjeev Jha, Project Manager (Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog)
• Stephen Murphy, Event Coordinator
• Jeff Steffel, Event Coordinator (Twitter | LinkedIn)

The volunteers that participated in our event included:

• Randy Borys
• Gloria Salcedo
• Chris Richardson
• William Sanders
• Pam Shaw
• Richard Pyra
• Wes Helton
• Tom Totten
• Denis Desault
• David Greim
• Lena Pavlyuk
• Lyn Taylor

Speakers

Our speakers were world class speakers to say the least. The speaker roster included Microsoft MVPs, field engineers and evangelists and other professionals that committed their time and paid for their own travel to support our event. We had just a few speakers that cancelled for personal, health or work-related conflicts. We still want to express our appreciation to them for willing to support our event as well. Thankfully, we managed to secure alternate speakers who did a great job even though it was last minute. Thank your SQL Saturday #86 Speakers!

Sponsors

Our sponsors made our event a quality and epic event by sponsoring with cash, items and swag to giveaway. Thanks to them we were able to sponsor great Cuban food from LATAM restaurant, coffee and donuts throughout the day, swag and raffle prizes and provide our speakers with a thank you dinner.

• KForce provided their facilities for our event.
• Convergence Consulting Group (Twitter | Website) did an amazing job with our speaker and event organizers’ shirts.
• Quest Software (Twitter | Website) raffled an iPad and a $100 Amazon gift card.
• Redgate Software (Twitter | Website) offered a great variety of books to give away.
• Pragmatic Works offered a free training voucher for any of their online classes.
• LaSalle Computer Learning School offered a training voucher for any of their in-person SQL Server certification classes.
• Fusion-IO raffled an iPad.
• Idera raffled one their SQL Serve monitoring software suites and gift cards.
• Soaring Eagle, ElSavier and Wrox each provided SQL Server and Business Intelligence books to raffle.

To all our sponsors thank you for supporting our SQL Server and Business Intelligence Community!

Panel of Experts

In this event I decided to put together a panel of experts to discuss several topics relating to SQL Server and Business Intelligence as well as a discussion of what’s new in the upcoming release of SQL Server 2012. The Panel of Experts took place at LATAM restaurant right after lunch. Our panel of experts included:

• Adam Jorgensen, Pragmatic Works (Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog)
• Brian Mitchell, Microsoft (Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog)
• Sanjay Soni, Microsoft (Twitter | LinkedIn| Blog)
• Michael Antonovich, Orange County School District (Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog)
• Mark Tabladillo, SolidQ (Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog)

We invited our sponsors to briefly talk about their products and services and prizes they were giving away during the event. Following our sponsors I decided to recognize Andy Warren, MVP and PASS (Website) Board of Directors, for his contributions to the SQL Server community, SQL Saturday creation and 100 SQL Saturday milestone.

BI BootCamp pre-conference

Along with our free SQL Saturday #86 event we hosted a paid pre-conference titled “BI BootCamp” presented by SQL Server MVP and SSAS Maestro Instructor Adam Jorgensen. We exceeded our goal with 33 attendees paid attendees, all of which gave very positive feedback of Adam’s presentation. I did a star appearance, helping Adam present a section on SSRS Reports using OLAP cubes as a source.

Thanks to Mike Wells for (Twitter | LinkedIn | Blog) for taking pictures throughout the event. You can see more event pictures at:

https://picasaweb.google.com/116314811362928917852/SQLSat86

GiveCamp Tampa 2011

This past weekend I participated at GiveCamp Tampa 2011 (http://www.givecamptampabay.org/) as part as the Worldwide GiveCamp (http://www.givecamp.org) weekend sponsored by Microsoft and other partners. Per GiveCamp’s website:

GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where technology professionals from designers, developers and database administrators to marketers and web strategists donate their time to provide solutions for non-profit organizations. Since its inception in 2007, the GiveCamp program has provided benefits to hundreds of charities, worth millions of dollars of developer and designer time in services!

At GiveCamp Tampa 2011 we chose two non-profits to be the recipients of our development efforts. David Liebman and a group of developers, implemented a content management site for a school. I architected and developed a Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence solution along with 3 other developers for the Florida Children Services Counsel (FCSC) (http://www.floridacsc.org).

About Florida Children Services Council (FCSC)

The Florida Children’s Services Council (Florida CSC) is a non-profit association that represents children’s services councils in counties throughout the state. Florida CSC employs the collective strengths of these public organizations to improve young lives by making strategic investments in the well being of Florida’s children. Its mission is to promote policies that build effective primary prevention and early intervention systems for young children and their families

The GiveCamp Tampa 2011 Business Intelligence Team
(From left to right: Pam Shaw, Terry Brennan, Paul Drumm, Wes Helton, Jose Chinchilla)

Florida CSC Business Intelligence Solution

The scope of our work included the following tasks:

1. Installation and Configuration of SharePoint 2010 and Performance Point
2. Installation and Configuration of SQL Server 2008R2
3. Architecture and Development of a Relational Data Warehouse
4. Design and Development of ETL framework using SSIS Packages
5. Design and Development of SSAs OLAP cubes
6. Design and Development of SSRS Reports and Performance Point Dashboards

The dataset in scope for the FCSC BI solution included Budget Allocation and Participant Demographic data for the 8 different counties participating in the SAMIS Collaborative including Pinellas, Broward, Martin, Duval, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, Hillsborough and St. Lucie.

Sample Performance Point dashboard developed:

Afterthoughts

It was overall a great experience being able to dedicate my time to the Florida CSC knowing that the BI solution delivered will serve as starting point to derive insightful analysis to solve the needs of children and families in the State of Florida. More than 90 hours of combined development time was dedicated to this solution. All the team members rocked!

I really enjoyed working with the GiveCamp Tampa 2011 team and look forward to the next GiveCamp event!