Matt Clark

In an interesting discussion on Skills and Role Frameworks recently, we got into a debate as to how we create a data driven workforce. We all know that we want to get more from our data, but don't believe this is achieved by building big data functions! Instead we need to look at how we enable everyone across our workforce to have simple and easy access to data, the skills to leverage that data to answer the important questions and the accountability to ensure our data is created and captured to the highest quality standards. Traditional data career paths are changing, technology is constantly moving and the roles of today are unlikely to be the roles of tomorrow, to stay ahead, a whole company view of how we get the most from our most valuable asset will be key. #DataFabric #DataSkills #Data

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With the date for the next UK General Election having been announced yesterday, I thought I'd have a look at what it would take to create an election results map using Power BI and the forthcoming Icon Map Pro. Well it turns out it's super easy! Here's a short six minute video showing the whole process end to end from downloading the results data, importing it into Power BI, downloading the parliamentary constituency boundaries, and creating a thematic map using Icon Map Pro. https://lnkd.in/eknbjzQr If you're interested in finding out more about Icon Map Pro, you can register on https://iconmappro.com and we'll have more details announced really soon! #PowerBI #MicrosoftFabric #IconMap #IconMapPro #SpatialAnalytics

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So where does the money go? As I said in my earlier post the annual budget of Angela Rayner's new Department which covers Levelling Up Communities and Housing is some £33 billion per annum. But where does it go and more importantly how can Solo Micros working in conjunction with the Third Sector and their local councils throughout the UK get a slice of that £33 billion cake or at least a few crumbs to support the Grassroots projects like Anthony's Stand Up Speak Out podcast; Nicola's Public Support UK App or the thousands of good locally run projects that can provide tangible good to their local communities without costing the Earth? Well a few years ago someone I was badgering shared with me the attached App which shows real time Government Funding opportunities to stop me pestering him. I thought I would share it when the moment is right and with the Newbie New Labour government in place thought that moment is now when as Nicola said in her SUSO podcast "knowledge is power". One of the advantages of this website (apart from the fact that it is completely up to date) and accessible by anyone is that it does show you from where grant or other monies are available. So you will see that back in May DLUHC ( sort of rolls off the tongue better than DHCLU or DCHLU but from now on I'm going to refer to it as the Dept of Lucky because hopefully it can make someone's day) advertised some applications for community funding and recently advertised some Grenfill related funding. By all means tap into whichever Government Funding pot you like but realistically with the Newbie News in such a strong position in Parliament it does seem to me that its best to miss out the middle men and women and go direct to the Deputy PM if you are looking for support for the good works you are doing. Hope that this helps...by all means share any experiences you have with this App. As they say its money that makes the world go around. We know that Chancellor Reeves is going to have limited room to manoeuvre if she is not to spook the markets with her spending plans so it really it seems to me is vitally important that we ensure that as I said earlier we get a "grossed up" 80% of value for money of the Dept of Lucky's £33 billion 20% cost otherwise the enthusiasm for Newbie New Labour is going to evaporate pretty quickly. Use of Tech is vital to maximise opps in the Property Transport infrastructure sector.. so go ahead and have a play:- https://lnkd.in/eTfFTVcC

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Nice to see Microsoft have rebranded and improved the learning content delivery of their popular Dashboard in a Day (DIAD) course. You can now complete the course as self-paced modules via Microsoft Learn. In the past it was only available as PDFs. The DIAD is a good start for those who want to venture into the world of Power BI as a newbie. Links Workshop details - https://lnkd.in/gu8X3fhZ Microsoft Learn - https://lnkd.in/gDa8kJQ6 #PowerBI #MicrosoftLearn

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Everyone, For those of you working in Power BI and embedding Power Automate flows in your reports, Microsoft has recently updated this feature so that different Power Platform environments can now be selected. This is an absolutely fantastic improvement. Previously any Power Automate flows used in your Power BI report had to be stored only in the "default" environment which is not a good practice. This also made working with other items, such as Power Platform solutions impractical (or if your teams had separate environments for development, production, etc). If you haven't integrated Power Automate flows in your reports yet, I'll be showcasing some use cases of this next Wednesday at the San Francisco Microsoft Fabric Meetup at 10 pm EST (I'll put a link in the comments for this). #powerbi https://lnkd.in/eN3nMWjF

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Bespoke #PowerBI Day 1 of 2 training delivered at Panth****, FS. For the day 1, we went through: 👉 Getting data from 12 data sources both on prems and cloud sources. 👉 Different techniques to clean and transform data in the PQ. 👉 Understand and Manage Snowflake and Star Schema Relationships. 👉 Understand the importance of Primary and Foreign Keys in Dimension and Fact Tables. 👉 Understand and knowing when to use DAX Calculated Columns and DAX Measures. 👉Create Fiscal Period-based calendar dimension table using DAX Calculated Columns including chronological ordering of Month, Weekday and Fiscal Period. 👉 Author tons of explicit DAX Measures including Time Intelligence calculations to track KPI's. 👉 Data modelling best practices. Day 2 continues with lots of interesting topics. #PowerBI

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Data provocation. I like that term. Although it has multiple meanings, in the context of my work and my beliefs, we should be reacting strongly to the clear provocation by many, many organisations out there with poor data practices, knowledge, data respect and with no plans to address or contemplate the ethical issues surrounding the data usage. We had some fantastic presentations at Privacy Space yesterday... all highlighting that we have the skills and knowledge to be provacteurs.... we (the data protection people) have to provoke the revulsion at the way data is collated and used, we have to provoke sufficient anger in consumers so that they help drive the way data is used towards a transparent and trustworthy manner. Now I get that many companies are not aiming to provoke and try and do things with good intent... but ignorance is itself a provocation..... Data provocation. It's time. 🙏👊 Have a great weekend peeps. More on this next week. I'll leave you with what someone has termed... my James Bond pose. She clearly needs a rest this weekend 😊 #DataProvocation #CustomerTrust #EthicalDataUse #DoTheRightThing

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𝗠𝘆 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗧𝘂𝗯𝗲 That's right, Power BI & Fabric Manchester UG have given me a platform, so I'm going to shout about it. If you're interested in: - Incremental Refresh - The XMLA Endpoint - TMSL Scripts - Power BI's Advanced Partitioning capabilities Or, if you just want to find out how me and my thick Bristolian accent got on the first time I spoke in front of a crowd 𝗜 𝘀𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗼𝘄. https://lnkd.in/eRTcxpkc * 𝘉𝘰𝘯𝘶𝘴 𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘯𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘐 𝘴𝘢𝘺 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘳 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨. ** 𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘯, 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘧𝘭𝘺.

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"The most unstable C-suite job may be the Chief Data Officer, or CDO. Tenures are short, turnover is high!" - Harvard Business Review Having read this recently and it gave pause to think. The article suggested that the CDO position was on a similar journey to the role of the CIO, which also had notably short tenures of 24 to 30 months from it's inception. But this got us thinking about how longevity may be achieved and the types of CDO personas people are currently asked to take... It may be that longevity is not the goal? It may be that we need to change personas to achieve success? Or it may be that we need to learn how to transition between them? So to provoke discussion, can I introduce the "Caretaker", the "Arsonist", the "Phoenix" and the "Scapegoat"... Do we recognise them? #ChiefDataOfficer #CDO #DataRoles #Data

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1 in 5 UK businesses halt up to 50 AI projects over trust, regulation, and governance concerns.   This is what we found from our latest research at Qlik. Being able to progress more AI projects that are stuck in planning, or getting scrapped, will be vital for UK organisations to see a return on the investment made into the technology, and to better support customers.   Our research confirms that UK businesses know the value of AI, but barriers still exist to widescale successful deployment of the technology.   How do we bridge that gap? Understanding the value of sharing the benefits of AI across the business and senior management team, will help to limit the number of AI projects getting stuck in planning or being forced to cancel.   Qlik Answers, our plug-and-play knowledge assistant, is a good place to start for any team looking to understand AI better.   Find more on our research here: https://lnkd.in/dQKvguUr

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Keeping Things Simple ... ... is the way I like to do things. Don't over-complicate - very 'Occams Razor'. It's one of the reasons I joined Data Cubed as we align in terms of making sure systems, processes & solutions are the simplest version that ensures the desired outcome. Sometimes that's really tough. So many of the clients we work with want to be able to get reliable management information simply and quickly, but their current data infrastructure consists of a variety of disparate and disconnected sources making their process complicated and protracted. Something that can (should be) live and instantaneous can often take multiple days of effort. Does this resonate with you? ... having to spend an unreasonable amount of time every month producing management & board reports from various programmes, platforms & spreadsheets? I KNOW the majority of businesses find themselves in this boat - but don't know which way to row; how long it might take to reach land; how much effort it's going to take ir how much it's going to cost. Knowledge is power and developing an understanding of what it will take to be able to effectively and simply utilize the phenomenal amounts of data you have HAS to be worth it, right? No pressure, no commitment just give us a shout - we want to help. https://data-cubed.co.uk/ Franco de la Croix-Vaubois James Mahy Gideon⋅ Barker Jonathan Gaunt Jonathan Atkinson DipFA Financial Planner

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It becomes much easier for businesses to understand the benefits once the technology has been demonstrated through a ‘proof of concept’. Our Head of Data and Analytics, Andy McLean, recently shed some light on this approach and the value it delivered to Vimto. #DataConsultancy #DataManagement #PowerBI

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An interesting read for people that may have to migrate their solution (again). With all the tools that come an go and change/disrupt the game, both data modelling and SQL are still thriving and surviving as an important skill. https://lnkd.in/erf-F9FQ

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If you're going to sell data, #Price is one aspect you need to nail from the outset. In my experience, the most important thing to understand is what value the data drives for various use-cases alongside & in conjunction with other inputs. In other words, don't be pricing your data like it's the flour in the bread recipe when it's really just the pinch of salt.

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As we focus on empowering businesses to harness the full potential of their data, Trust emerges as a fundamental element for success. Empowering teams with enhanced tools, technology, data, access, and governance is crucial. Yet, ultimately, trust is pivotal. It's essential that every member of our organizations embraces their responsibility in grasping data and processes to meet business objectives. As data leaders, we must not operate in isolation. Data is a collaborative effort, akin to a team sport. While we can strategize, train, and plan, true success comes when everyone actively participates. #DataStrategy #Teamwork #BusinessEmpowerment #Trust #DataLeadership

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Unlock the power of your Spanner data with BigQuery 🚀 Now in public preview, easily query Spanner tables directly from BigQuery. No more complex ETL! Start exploring today! https://google.smh.re/4Sy5

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