Description

We are pleased to announce the Microsoft Power BI User Group meeting on August 26, 2019, at Microsoft Corporation, 3601 76th St W, Suite 600, Edina, MN 55435 from 1:00 pm to 4:30 pm.

12:30 - 1:00          Check In / Pizza

1:00 - 1:20            Kick-off & Updates

1:20 - 1:40            What’s New in Power BI

1:40 – 2:40            Presentation: Data Visualization Best Practices – Mike Carlo, Concurrency

                                See description & bio below

2:40 – 3:00            Break: Evaluation & Giveaways

3:00 - 4:00            Presentation: Journey to Self-Service Analytics - Garth Grawburg and Laura Stotts-Gorans, Cargill Risk Management

                                See description below

4:00 - 4:30            Closing / Giveaways / Networking

Microsoft Power BI: Data Visualization Best Practices

In Power BI Data visualization best practices Mike will demonstrate best practices and the top tips and tricks from the Power BI. website. Mike pulls from the latest grab bag of materials and tools. The theme for this session is: Generator, Layouts, and some new tools and will showcase interesting and fun demos that you won’t want to miss. Skill level required ranges from beginner to advanced users.

Speaker: Mike Carlo, Technical Architect with Concurrency

I'm very passionate about data and analytics. I've spent a massive amount of time learning Power BI. Driven to help companies "Compete on Analytics" through modern BI tools such as Power BI and Azure cloud products. The acquisition of data is becoming cheaper and easier to obtain but using that data in a meaningful way can be difficult. Using my technical background in engineering and natural curiosity I am supporting companies to utilize data to make effect change. Through my learning process I felt that others may also be interested. Please visit my website to find a repository for all things Power BI https://powerbi.tips/about/. This site is uniquely set up for people to read and learn about data modeling and visualizations within Power BI.

My specialties are: Power BI Desktop, Power BI, Data Modeling through M language, Microsoft VBA, R scripts, Solidworks, Microsoft Office Suite.

Cargill Risk Management Journey to Self-Service Analytics

Cargill Risk Management (CRM) is a provider of customized commodity price risk solutions for customers around the world, including producers and consumers of commodities in more than 60 countries, as well as institutional investors seeking exposure to these markets.  At CRM we started a journey into self-service analytics (SSA) in conjunction with the build and release of a new sales and trading platform, all in support of digitalization and analytics.  With the help of our enterprise SSA and Data teams, we were able to begin to build a solid data foundation leveraging Cargill’s Data Lake, then layer Power BI on as our choice for end-user access, analysis and visualization.  We would like to share our approach to CRM’s self-service analytics journey and give real-world details on building this business-unit level capability leveraging an enterprise-level model and resources.

Speakers: Garth Grawburg & Laura Stotts-Gorans with Cargill Risk Management

Garth Grawburg is a Sr. Consultant in the Data & Analytics practice at Daugherty Business Solutions.  His areas of focus include data solutions & strategy, data science, and data visualization.  He is passionate about bringing data to life within organizations and empowering business users to leverage data to make better decisions.  Garth holds an MA in Economics from Wayne State University. 

Laura Stotts Gorans is a Product Owner of Self Service Analytics (SSA) who enables business user reporting and analytics at Cargill Risk Management (CRM).  With over 10 years at CRM she has held Finance, IT and PMO positions, leading to a multi-faceted understanding of data concerns and solutions. Laura believes that every business user has the ability to take data into their own hands, explore and better understand their business.  She now leads a CRM SSA team with a goal of enabling self-service reporting and analytics within the business unit and partnering with Cargill’s Enterprise SSA resources.  Her team has built a successful SSA model from data foundation and products to end-user engagement and training.  Laura holds a M.S. in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University.