This weekend was one of my favorite Data Saturday events, Data Saturday Columbus! If you’re in the area, I highly recommend it. Always some great speakers, amazing lunch, and super engaged folks hungry to learn. Thank you to everyone who came out for an 8:30 AM session on Decoding Fabric Licensing, the questions were great and I really loved all the conversations after the session! Also, hope you all enjoyed the peanut butter cookies
Event link: https://datasaturdays.com/Event/20250816-datasaturday0071
My presentation: https://github.com/Anytsirk12/DataOnWheels/tree/main/2025%20Presentations/2025%20Data%20Saturday%20Columbus
Power BI Directory: Enhancing Data Navigation and User Experience by Miranda Grant
Pretty awesome solution for a directory app that leverages Power Automate to manage requests for access and show folks what they have access to inside a Power BI environment.
The built in access request is insufficient. Using power automate, it can pick up this email as a trigger then send a custom request to folks to direct them to instructions and details on how to get access to apps/reports plus see what they have access to already.
Fun tip – workspace descriptions have no character limit but app descriptions only have 200 characters allowed.
Build for your users who hate computers. The goal is to give them as many ways to navigate/understand as possible.
Effortless Data Transformation with Microsoft Fabric by Chris Schmidt
I really enjoyed this session on Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric. What stood out to me was how simple it can be to transform and analyze data as it comes in without having to build out complicated pipelines or deal with fragile orchestration. Instead, Fabric can handle those transformations automatically, which feels like a big time-saver.
We also spent some time diving into KQL (Kusto Query Language). I had heard of it before, but this gave me a much clearer picture of how powerful it can be for real-time analytics. Seeing the practical examples and use cases across different industries helped me connect the dots and inspired me with some new ideas for my session for PASS about RTI!
Side Quest – Origami with Tabitha Shore
There were a few sessions late in the day I had planned to attend, but instead had an awesome side quest in what we call the “Hallway Track” with Tabitha, Peter Shore’s daughter. We’ve gotten to know each other over the past couple of years as she volunteers at Data Saturday Columbus annually. She was gracious enough to teach me how to make “little dudes”, the cutest animal that you can draw your own face on! We had a blast making mini ones and hiding them around the conference and I now have one in my office so I never forget how to make them 
Highly recommend learning something that’s not necessarily technical whenever possible, you never know who you may get to know! Always good to remember that while technology changes every day, having solid human connections and friends will never go out of style.
