Vidas Matelis Analysis Services Blog

For the last 2 years I attended the Microsoft BI conference which I enjoyed very much. This year I’ll be going to Seattle to attend the PASS Community Summit 2009 (Nov 3-5th, 2009).  Although the PASS Community Summit is not a BI specific conference, I am quite surprised that there will be so many BI sessions. In my event planner I added 3-4 sessions that I would love to attend for almost each time slot . The good news is that all of the sessions will be recorded and attendees have a choice – watch them for free later online, or just buy the DVD with recordings.

This year, I’ll be volunteering at some of the PASS Community Summit events.

On Tuesday, November 3rd during lunch (between 11:45am and 1:00pm) there will be a “Birds of a Feather” event. That is a topic-based luncheon where a number of tables will be marked and discussion facilitated by MVPs or Microsoft employees. I will be volunteering at this event and for my table I choose the topic: “Gemini’s impact on SSAS/Data Warehouse projects“. As you know, with the release of Gemini, power Excel users will be able load data from different sources and build very powerful pivot reports without any help from IT. 

At this table we will discuss:

• Can Gemini solutions be “Good enough”, so that companies will decide that there is no need to create proper data warehouse implementations? 
• Can Gemini implementations actually create more jobs for BI developers?
• Should BI developers learn Gemini and the new DAX language, or just leave it to the Power Excel users?
• Anything else related to Gemini and self service BI…

Please come by and join me for this discussion – we will be talking about our future!

Also, at the PASS Community Summit there will be an “Ask the Experts” table where Microsoft employees and MPVs will be answering your questions. This year I’ll be volunteering at one of these tables on November 3rd between 1:30pm and 4pm.

I hope to see you at the PASS Community Summit!