Wow, it has been a while since I last posted, with the holidays, and way too many other projects that I haven’t blogged about just yet because I haven’t found the time.

Last June, the SQL Saturday in Chattanooga and SQL Server User Group lost their venue, as well as the leader of the group. The leader of the group (our great friend Larry Ortega), decided when this happened that he was going to retire from running the event and group (something is sad for us, but hey, everyone gets there some day, and retirement doesn’t sound awful some days!). I really missed us having a group, so I prodded around a little bit, and found there were a set of people who were of the same mind.

The core group will be made up of Heather Durham, Srinivasan Kommini, Branden Schwartz and myself, (in no particular order other than myself last, though Branden has a lot more connections in this area than I ever have, and they all have more energy that I probably ever will!)

My personal goal was simply to get a regular monthly SQL Server meeting going, because I really like the format, other than the fact that you get one single topic that may not pertain to everyone. This single topic format has been great for me over the years, as I have learned a lot of stuff that I would not otherwise not have sought out, which was part of my impetus when I started prodding around for more work to do.

And, wow, our first meeting will be in just over a week, on Friday, February 22 at 12:00 Noon, in downtown Chattanooga at the The Edney Innovation Center (full details in Eventbrite) led by my good friend Ed Watson, who will be teaching us about Power BI:

Introduction to PowerBI

Are you new to Power BI? Do you want to learn what all the buzz is about and how to use it from a purely novice standpoint? Do you need to ramp up quickly to be able to build some great visualizations? This session is the session that you need! We will walk you through the basic architecture and nuances of Power BI all the while taking a fun adventure to building your first Power BI report. The attendee will leave the class ready to start using Power BI in the real world.

Speaker Bio:

Ed Watson is a Business Intelligence consultant for Improving Enterprises, a full-stack Microsoft consulting firm in Atlanta. Ed is also a Microsoft Data Platform MVP since 2014 and like most children, Ed was born at an early age. Although he started as a programmer, he later saw the light and began working in data as a DBA before finally making the jump to the Business Intelligence paradigm. He currently lives in Atlanta and is active with the Atlanta MDF and BI user groups.

Use this link to register/get more information if you are interested:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/february-spoc-meeting-introduction-to-power-bi-tickets-54939076256

And here is your reward for reading this far into the message: At this meeting, we will not only have Ed teach us a great lesson, but we will be doing two other things:

1. Trying to get a feel for when meetings would be best. Will lunchtime work? Nighttime, etc.
2. Announcing something pretty awesome that I am going to save for another post!

Be seeing you!