The Great PowerPivot Survey: Results Preview

April 1, 2011

Hi folks, the survey is still open, please take the 3 mins (on average) to fill it out if you are using PowerPivot today.

Quick preview of the results so far:

A good mix of respondent types:

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And pretty healthy interest in the SharePoint version:

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Interest in SharePoint is actually pretty even between Tech folks and Users, 80% and 75%:

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More than 20% of the respondents use other self-service BI tools today:

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Filtering out the “No usage of self-service BI before PowerPivot,” that self-service use/eval breaks down like this:

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Clarification:  the last line in the fragment below, “Qlikview, Other” with 5.7% means 5.7% of the selected respondents evaluated Qlikview AND other self-service tools and decided not to adopt. 

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So in order to get the full total for Qlikview, you really need to add all the lines that include Qlikview.  This is a function of having survey questions of the format “select all that apply.”  It kinda makes analysis a bit tedious, but that’s a blog post of its own Smile

More results next week.  In the meantime, please take the survey if you have not already.

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Announcing the Great PowerPivot Survey

March 28, 2011

 
Click Here to Take The Great PowerPivot Survey

We don't want to THINK. We want to KNOW.

“We don’t want to THINK.  We want to KNOW.”

A few days ago, on the FAQ page, David Vella was asking some questions about PowerPivot, including PowerPivot adoption.  If you’d like to see his questions, and my answers, you can see the whole exchange here, but below I’ve excerpted a portion of my reply:

“Other than Pivotstream’s own heavy usage, I didn’t see signs of significant real-world deployments until roughly September of 2010. Adoption slowly crept up through the end of the year, and then really took off in January. Blog traffic is up about 30%, and more telling is that new clients reach out to us at about 5x the rate of last year.

The one place where I think adoption is slower than desired, ironically, is with Excel users. What I am seeing is a lot of enthusiastic top-down adoption, and very little bottom-up adoption. By the time PowerPivot reaches its entire target audience (millions upon millions of Excel power users), I expect to see blog traffic at about 100x (or more) of what I have today. So there is a long way to go with that crowd. But the top-down crowd is gaining steam in a big way.”

After I wrote that, it struck me that it would be useful (for all of us) to have more data on this beyond my own experience.

So, without further ado, here it is:

Click Here to Take The Great PowerPivot Survey

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It should take you 5 minutes or less.  I will summarize the results here on the blog when the survey closes.

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Speaking at Columbus OH User Group Tonight!

February 10, 2011

 
If you live in Central Ohio and want to see my talk from last week’s SQL Saturday, I will be speaking tonight (Thursday the 10th) at the Columbus SQL Server Users Group.  No need to register, just show up.  Free admission, and I am told there is free pizza Smile

Location:

Goodwill Columbus
1331 Edgehill Rd
Columbus, OH 43212
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=1331+Edgehill+RdColumbus,+OH+43212

Time:  6:30 PM to 8:00 PM

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Speaking at SQL Saturday 60 – Cleveland

January 4, 2011

Hey folks, if you are remotely near the so-called “Heartland” region of the US in February, you may consider dropping in on SQL Saturday 60.  It’s Saturday, February 5 in Cleveland OH.

I will be presenting a session titled PowerPivot: BI & Massive Data Analysis for Humans – catchy huh?

I love these community events.  It’s pretty crazy, when you think about it.  Speakers literally fly in from all over the country to present.  (Well, except for me, I’m gonna just drive down the road). 

And these are some amazing people who travel around to these things.  From Boston:  Tom LaRock, aka SQLRockstar, aka “I have the best name in the tech business,” is speaking.  From Toronto:  Karen Lopez, aka DataChick, is speaking.

Those are just two that I know about.  The official complete schedule is not yet released.

And it is free.  That’s right, no admission.  Just $10 for lunch, and I’m told repeatedly that “lunch is not pizza.”

If this is anywhere near as much fun as SharePoint Saturday was (scroll down that page past the pic of Jesse James), we’re in for a treat.

And apparently there are after parties and stuff.  (No, I am not making that up).  And yes, the parties are optional…  but I hear good things about SQL Karaoke…  (not making that up either).

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OK… PowerPivot Green After All

November 7, 2010

 
Well, OK, I took the plunge.  Decided not to do the whole head – this way I can more easily get it dyed back to dark brown after the conference.  Anyway, this should solve the whole recognition problem :)

PowerPivotPro at SQL PASS Summit

SQL Pros…  I will see you Tuesday in Seattle.  (I don’t get there until late Monday night.)

Reminder:  I am @powerpivotpro on Twitter.  Good way to link up.

(And if you are NOT attending, I’ll likely use Twitter to share exciting news as it happens, and the word is that there is a LOT of big news coming from the product team at the conference, so it may be worth following just for those updates).

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Psst… Sports League/Team… yeah, you…

November 5, 2010

If you work for a sports organization, drop us a note at info@pivotstream.com – I have something interesting to suggest.

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Going to PASS? Track me down!

November 5, 2010

 

“Um…  you know…  on second thought… he’s probably not that entertaining in person anyway…”

Next week, I will attend my first-ever PASS Summit in Seattle.  (Well, first ever as an attendee – I did visit PASS a couple times as an MS employee, but really just for private meetings).  From monitoring the attendee excitement on Twitter, it appears that this is the highlight of the year for SQL pros worldwide.

And it seems at least as SOCIAL as it is professional.  Witness, on Twitter, the following streams:  #passawesomeness, #sqlkaraoke, and, I am not making this up…  #sqlkilt.

The SQL community is a bit foreign to me.  My background, of course, is not SQL – I come more from the “front end” side of the equation (but I’m happy to say that I *can* explain the difference between Inner and Outer joins.  See?  I do know *some* things.)

But hey, there are a million technologies.  No one can know them all.  But the SQL community goes a bit beyond – there is something *different* about these folks.  They are just SO community focused.  At TechEd, I accosted Thomas LaRock, aka SQLRockstar, and asked him point-blank what’s up with the SQL Community.  He blogged his answer here (the comments at the end are also worth a look).  So I’m pretty jazzed to attend.

Where I Will Be

Assuming that you are the least bit interested in attending a conference about SQL and then talking to someone whose core expertise is not SQL, here is where I am going to be (click for larger version).

PowerPivotPro at SQL PASS

Basically, the green items are the ones I have chosen to attend, even though many in blue were VERY tough to pass up.  The two circled in orange are the two places I am guaranteed to be just sitting/standing around talking to people, but feel free to ambush me elsewhere.  I am quite friendly and would love to meet you :)

Spotting me in the crowd

I’m excited to meet people.  Everything is more fun that way, even just saying hi.  So I have been debating dying my hair PowerPivot green.  But I am told (by @samanthahhh ) that will destroy my hair and I will look like a freak for months – not good when I visit clients.

I’ve been told multiple times now that I look nothing like my profile picture.  Well, that pic is 3 years and 30 pounds ago, before the PowerPivot Diet.  In fact, one longtime online contact, the first time we met, exclaimed, “whoa, I thought you were going to a lot shorter and skinnier!”  Hmmm…  not sure what to think of that.

So here’s a decent picture of what I look like – me and Kasper at TechEd this year (me on the right – the taller and less skinny one).

I may even wind up wearing goofy clothes that id me, like these.  No promises though, depending on weather and mood :)

Hope to see you there!

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Added a Search Box

October 11, 2010

Hard to believe, but I’ve been doing this blog for nearly a year now and NEVER offered anyone a way to search it.  Me = not so bright sometimes.

Anyway, there it is now, on the right.  Give it a shot – there are over 180 posts in the archives, lots of topics covered that you may have missed.

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Congratulations Kasper!

October 7, 2010

 
You Do Not Talk About PowerPivot Club

 
“You wanna switch seats?”

OK, I’ve been slow to post about this with everything going on, but some of you have already heard that Kasper has some exciting news.

You know that job at MS that I vacated back in February?  Kasper is filling it.

 

When I met Kasper in person for the first time this summer, down at TechEd, I already knew how sharp and enthusiastic he was.  But in person, surrounded by all the hints of what MS BI and SharePoint were planning for the next versions, I saw something else:  Kasper has TONS of energy for building new software – passion for doing the sorts of things that you don’t get to do unless you work somewhere like MS.

You can’t teach someone to have that fire.  You either have it, or you don’t.  And Kasper definitely has it.  I remarked casually, mostly to myself, that it was a shame he lived in Holland, because he belonged at MS.

Kasper recognized that, too, because about a week after he got back to Holland, he told me privately that he was going to interview for my old spot :)

It’s funny how things work out.  The guy that co-authors this blog with me, from another continent, is coming over to work on PowerPivot and other BI stuff.  Sometimes life is cooler than anything you can make up.

Kasper, you are going to do an amazing job in your role.  And I am jealous of how many cool people you will be getting to interact with on a daily basis.  Looking forward to seeing you at PASS next month.  Hoops rematch?

Below is Kasper’s original post, from his personal blog:

By Kasper de Jonge, repost from PowerPivotblog.

I’m very proud and pleased to announce that I’ll be joining Microsoft as Program manager for the SSAS team as of November 1st. This means some big changes for me, first of all I’ll be moving from the Netherlands to Redmond to work at MS HQ.

In Redmond i’ll be joining the SSAS team to work on the next versions of PowerPivot and SSAS. I really love the concept of Self service BI and of course PowerPivot, this will give me the opportunity to help shape the future of Self Service BI. The funny thing is that I actually will fill the job opening that was created by Rob leaving the SSAS team.

What will this mean for my blogging?
Fortunately, nothing. This blog is a personal blog, paid for and maintained by me. I will try to stay very active not only on the current version but also in beta’s. We’ll see where I can find the time to blog. I love the sql/bi community so I want to keep that up while working for Microsoft, at what capacity we’ll have to find out.

What is a Program manager?
A program manager is a lot of functions combined in one, gathering information from partners, MVP’s and you guys, write functional specs, a project manager, working with the dev team, validating the product after the design and evangelize the product, and a bunch of other tasks, for more info see this blog post: How to be a program manager.

I’m looking forward to the exciting time ahead and be your voice on the product team!

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Posted by Kasper de Jonge

Contest Update

September 22, 2010

A few things I forgot to clarify yesterday:

  1. Cut a hole in a box

Wait, that’s a different list.  Here is the real list:

  1. Contest will remain open until Sunday October 3rd, 11:59 PM US Pacific time.
  2. Entries should be emailed to me:  rob@pivotstream.com
  3. Have fun!

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