Microsoft Business Application Summit 2019: Pre-Day Session Hotlist

Are you attending Business Application Summit 2019? Softcrylic returns this year after a great experience last year in Seattle. We look forward to this year’s conference on our home turf in Atlanta – to fascinating sessions, to seeing old friends, and to meeting great new people.

The session catalog for Business Application Summit 2019 has finally dropped here. It’s looking great already – both brand new content and some updated standout sessions from last year.

Based on last years experience, the catalog will continue to expand as we get closer to the conference. But looking forward to 9-11 June, it’s worth taking a look at the Pre-Day Sessions sooner than later.

These all-day sessions are an optional $350 add-on to the main conference registration. And while the sessions for the main event are open seating and first-come, first served: the Pre-Day Sessions are by advance registration only. We ran into more than a few attendees last year who hadn’t realized this. Don’t make the same mistake they did.

The Pre-Day sessions offer a chance to explore a topic in depth, and take away real-world knowledge and techniques that will immediately increase your ability to solve the challenges you face on a daily basis. If there is one of these that appeals to you, you should register as soon as possible.

There are 16 sessions available across the entire Business Applications cloud, 6 of which are directly targeted for various emphases within the Power BI feature set. All are valuable, but these four seem especially interesting:

Dashboard in a day: Hands-on Microsoft Power BI session (Pre-Day Add On)

A great introductory overview if you are just getting started with Power BI, or if you want to sharpen your overall skills. Softcrylic attended this session last year, and we took away a couple of good tips that have served us well since. The presenters did a great job keeping it interesting and fun, and by the end we were hungry for more.

Data visualization with Power BI (Pre-Day Add On)

This intermediate session promises to be a deeper dive into the visualization capacities of Power BI, and sounds intriguing for anyone looking to deliver attention-grabbing and compelling reporting.

Microsoft Power BI: Developer in a day (Pre-Day Add On)

An advanced-level session expanding Power BI for developers for embedded applications and also custom visuals. Power BI delivers a robust platform for embedding data visualization within your applications, and if this is your focus, this is a great place to start. Or, if you are interested in building visuals for your own use or for consumption by community, this is where you should spend the day.

Modeling data with DAX in Power BI Desktop (Pre-Day Add On)

Data Modeling and DAX are the two most distinguishing facets of Power BI, when compared to the competition. Mastering these features is key to leveraging the most advanced capabilities of the platform. You will never regret spending time at the conference learning more about DAX. If this is what you came for, this Expert-level session promises to deliver!

Outside a strict Power BI focus, there are intriguing possibilities as well:

Flow in a Day: Hands-on with Microsoft Flow to build automation and business processes (Pre-Day Add On)

Flow is an incredibly powerful tool for business automation, and has substantial ability respond to and deliver Power-BI driven alerts, which will only expand with time. If automating manual processes is within your interest, this session has immediate tangible value.

App in a day for beginners: Hands-on with PowerApps, Microsoft Flow and the Common Data Service for Apps (Pre-Day Add On)

App in a day for intermediate and advanced makers: Hands-on with PowerApps canvas and model-driven apps (Pre-Day Add On)

Powerapps and Power BI work seamlessly together, enabling immediate action on insightful reporting within the same interface. These sessions at the Introductory and more Advanced levels promise to convey techniques for maximizing this capability. If PowerApps is what you came for, these sessions are definitely for you.

And finally, my choice for this year’s Pre-Day Session. Yes, I’ve already grabbed one of the spots:

AI and Machine Learning on Azure in a day (Pre-Day Add On)

Is anything more buzzworthy than AI and Machine Learning, these days? The fact that Microsoft is able to leverage the Azure platform to converge these technologies on the Power Platform and the BI space is already transformative, and will only become more so. This session offers a chance to get on top of what this converged capability will look like in the immediate future. I can’t wait for this session!

Which pre-day sessions are appealing to you most? Let us know what deep-dive(s) you are most looking forward to – we look forward to meeting you there!