Pre-Conference Sessions

Get Started Early On Your Learning!

Join us on Monday, May 2, 2016, to enhance your learning experience and maximize your networking opportunities by attending one of our in-depth, training pre-conference sessions. 

Don't wait! Register soon as space is limited.


Daniel Fylstra

Daniel Fylstra | CEO, Frontline Systems

Advanced Analytics for Excel Users: Learn How to Do It Yourself

Data is the starting point, predictive analytics is the next step, but prescriptive analytics for decisions is the "top of the analytics food chain." This is where the biggest business payoffs, but also the biggest shortage of skilled analysts, are usually found. Attend this hands-on lab precon to get a thorough understanding of the advanced analytics and what-if modeling capabilities available in Excel.

We'll start the morning with the core ideas of data science, including an overview of statistics and machine learning, and focus on your key role in visualization and feature selection. By lunchtime, we'll move into a deeper understanding of data and predictions.

In the afternoon, we'll examine data-driven what-if models, and how to maximise decision trees, Monte Carlo simulations, and/or optimization to find the best choices, for business plans and processes with many future scenarios, and individual decisions.

Format: Full-Day Lab

Mico Yuk

Mico Yuk | CEO, BI Brainz

Visual Storytelling - How to Tell a “Compelling” Data Story That Matters to Your Users

This non-technical, hands-on session will provide the foundation necessary to make your data visualizations more intelligent, actionable, and useful! Whether you are a beginner or a data visualization veteran, this session will guide you on telling more compelling stories with your data, from storyboarding fundamentals to more advanced techniques such as how to add smart context and visual cues. Attendees will learn:

• how to create a simple four-part visual storyboard on paper in minutes, not weeks
• why visual storytelling is more effective than traditional reporting
• the one element 98% of data visualizations are missing and how it is negatively affecting user adoption

Format: Half-Day Classroom (Afternoon)

Rob Collie & Avi Singh | CEO & Principal Consultant, PowerPivotPro.com

Dueling Dashboards With Power BI and Power Pivot – Practical Patterns for Your Business

Microsoft’s evolving strategy in BI and analytics has taken some very exciting turns over the past twelve months. What we used to call the Microsoft BI “platform” could now more appropriately be called an “ecosystem”: a suite of products that truly interoperate, are built upon the same core engines, and revolve around the same core languages.

In this full-day session, Rob Collie and Avi Singh of PowerPivotPro put that ecosystem through its paces for your benefit. Better yet, they have selected 10 real-world examples from their many years of experience, and will cover these patterns in their entirety so you can return to work and apply them immediately. All attendees will be provided with these examples in electronic format, complete with inline explanations and tips on adapting these patterns to your own needs, including:

• variance from target/budget
• outlier detection
• multi-level performance improvement
• Opportunity Gap Analysis
• accumulation trending
• geo targeting
• customer retention
• inventory burndown
• multi-channel customer satisfaction
• entity summaries

Rob and Avi will treat this as a friendly competition as to who will provide you with the clearest real-world impact. Attendees will also receive a full-color copy of Rob and Avi’s new book, “Power Pivot and Power BI, 2nd Edn.”, as well as eight laminated reference cards.

Format: Full-Day Classroom

Register


Note: Additional registration fee is required for the pre-conference sessions. To add a pre-conference session
to your existing registration, please call Shannon Cunningham at 888.714.5544 or via email.


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