VANPASSBI - February 2010 Meeting

Title	Microsoft's Focus on the Business User
Speaker	Michael Tejedor Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Business Intelligence
Date/Time	Friday, February 12, 2010 8:30 - 11:30 AM
Location	Sierra Systems 25th Floor - 1177 West Hastings Street Vancouver BC
Live Meeting	Attend Virtually!
Download	Download link for materials will be posted here when available
Agenda	8:30 - 9:30 - Networking 9:30 - 10:00 - General Q&A session & Announcements 10:00 - 11:30 - Presentation 11:30 - 12:00 - Door prizes and clean up
Speaker Bio	Michael Tejedor is a Senior Product Manager on the Microsoft Business Intelligence team and responsible for the BI workload across Microsoft. Prior to Microsoft, Michael has help roles at both Crystal Decision and Business Objects with experience in program management, competitive intelligence, and marketing.
Presentation Abstract	Microsoft's creating a lot of buzz around its 2010 release for Business Intelligence with new capabilities aimed at the Business User community. Attendees will hear firsthand the Microsoft BI vision for Excel and SharePoint to better meet the needs of both business users and IT Professionals alike. The presentation will identify the capabilities coming in Excel and SharePoint 2010 that align with the Microsoft vision of pervasive BI, and provide prescriptive guidance on the use cases and how each component moves towards that vision. Items to be discussed include: Managed Self-Service: Native Excel and PowerPivot capabilities (high level overview from Donald farmer session in December) Overview of SharePoint BI capabilities and a discussion of the convergence of BI with Social technologies A look at Data Visualization

Happy New Year Vancouver BI PASS Chapter Members!

2010 brings significant change to this PASS chapter.

#1 – Donabel Santos (@sqlbelle on twitter) has agreed to help out with our Chapter. This is GREAT news because we need a solid DR Strategy, so a fail-over cluster is now in place. Ours is a multi instance cluster so If my active instance fails, sqlbelle spins up her instance to lend a helping hand, and if sqlbelle’s active instance fails, I spin up an instance to carry the load. I love teamwork!

Welcome Donabel!

#2 – Venues Change. Sierra Systems has once again stepped up to the plate and have increased their support of PASS by providing a venue for our BI Chapter. It already provides a venue for our evening DBA and Dev focused meetings, and now also supports the Friday morning BI meetings (aiming for 2^nd Friday of the Month at this point.

Thanks to Alison Oxton at Sierra Systems for making the request her peeps in the corner offices! 

#3 – We want more from YOU! – Yes YOU! We will be having Speaker Contests this year in addition we want to encourage more presentations by the local crowd. Yes, we will be having people come up from Redmond, but we’d really like to hear real world stories and solutions that YOU have worked on. If you need help/encouragement, don’t hesitate contacting me or Donabel.

#4 - We are going to be hosting a Study Group for MCTS Exam 70-448.  More details to come VERY shortly.  We hope to be starting in 2 weeks!

Cheers, 

Scott & Donabel

P.S. We are currently attempting to get a January speaker and are looking at booking the coming months. I look forward to seeing everyone in the coming months.