Figuring Out Fabric: Learn Fabric in 30 minutes.

Santhana Lakshmi Ponnurasan and I worked together at Truviz a few years back, but this is our first real conversation since she became a two-time competitor in the Power BI DataViz World Championship and a recent Microsoft MVP. We talk about building reports people actually use versus passion projects, and why she crosses things off a requirements list instead of checking them off. Lakshmi walks through competing on stage at the DataViz Championship in Atlanta and what got her past the fear of speaking with an accent. We close on the Fabric community, her daily habit of scrolling and commenting, and her favorite and least favorite parts of Fabric right now.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/santhanalakshmip/
https://truviz.ai/
https://topmate.io/slakshmip

Kellyn Gorman is back for a reappraisal, this time on AI. We get into how you're the product, not the customer: what "help improve our models" actually means, plus real stories of companies dumping loan PII and entire product roadmaps into free ChatGPT. Kellyn walks through her research on the AI bubble and what your data is actually worth. We close on Fabric's data protection push, Flyway's new AI features, and why the boring skills, Git, DevOps, architecture, are the ones AI can't replace.

Links:
Kellyn's blog, DBAKevlar
Kellyn Gorman on LinkedIn
Redgate Flyway AI services
Kellyn's posts on the Redgate blog
The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter

In this episode Aleksi Partanen about certifications, learning Fabric, and community. We talk about the Fabric certs and how much value they do or do not provide. We talk about community and motivations for being involved and cultivating communities.

YouTube: Aleksi Partanen – Master Microsoft Fabric
Fabric Forge: skool.com/fabricforge
CertiAce: certiace.com
Subreddit mentioned in the episode: r/MicrosoftFabric

Fatima Jallow, a data consultant based in Stockholm, helps us understand data movement in Fabric and when to use pipelines and dataflows. We talk about how pipelines specialize in orchestration. She shares with us her journey from executive assistant to data architect. Finally she talks about some challenges building a metadata-driven pipeline in Fabric from scratch.
Resources
Feedly
Fatima Jallow on LinkedIn
Swedish Power BI & Fabric User Group
Data Saturday Stockholm

Simon Sabin talks about how SQL Bits picks sessions when the data world keeps splintering into more tools. We talk about the tension between Fabric and the older stack people still use at work, and why session selection has to cover both. We also talk about why discernment is the skill you need with AI, since the model is an "automated idiot" and you have to catch when it's wrong. Power Query's declarative engine comes up too, along with the pub quizzes and board game nights SQL Bits runs so introverts can actually meet people.
Resources
SQLBits
Feedly
Power BI MCP server
Ben Gribaudo's Power Query training
FabCon Vienna