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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Posted by powerpivotpro
“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
A few things I forgot to clarify yesterday:
Wait, that’s a different list. Here is the real list:
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Posted by powerpivotpro
“I don’t always use spreadsheets, but when I do, I prefer… PowerPivot.”
-P Kumar
OK, I’ve never met P Kumar. Most people haven’t. He is a mysterious man, preferring to go by his first initial only, much like the famous J Allard at Microsoft. P probably looks nothing like the picture above. But he is, quite simply…
The Most Tenacious Man in the World.
When I posted the Where’s Waldo PowerPivot Contest, I knew it was challenging. I half expected the winner would be someone who had already stumbled upon the answer, rather than someone who went looking for it. I mean, I had stumbled upon it myself just a few days prior.
But this did not deter P. Nor did the fact that he had never installed PowerPivot, client or server. Off he went.
I kinda get the impression that P barely slept for 48 hours, performing the equivalent of a depth-first-search traversal of every pixel in the product. You can get a play-by-play account of his efforts here in the comments thread.
Anyway, here’s the answer:
Yeah, it’s in the usage monitoring features of PowerPivot for SharePoint. Those dashboard views are rendered in Excel Services from workbooks created by the PowerPivot team, and they accidentally left in a chart from their own internal testing of the product.
You can even create your own workbooks as custom views, which I have been doing lately to filter Pivotstream employees out (so we just see the activity of our customers).
Congratulation to P, the most tenacious person I’ve encountered in a long time. He truly deserves the prize. Now P, I expect you to do wonderful things with that software ok? Please report back so we can track your exploits further
This reminds me of one of my favorite old jokes – “How do you hunt an elephant?” Each profession’s quirks are revealed by their approach. In particular, the approach of computer programmers seems relevant:
The full list can be found here.
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Posted by powerpivotpro
P Kumar has won in impressive fashion.
No one has sent in a correct answer yet. Two things I think are worth pointing out:
1) The logins are visible in the UI, and don’t require you to go digging through obscure files on the hard drive to find
2) They appear in PowerPivot for SharePoint, NOT in PowerPivot for Excel
Happy hunting.
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Posted by powerpivotpro
P Kumar has won in impressive fashion.
An Unusual MVPI recently was awarded the title of Microsoft MVP for SQL Server, as a result of my community work around PowerPivot. Good stuff – I get access to some newsgroups, a little advance info every now and then, get to attend the MVP Summit in February, etc… oh, and I get to put the neat little MVP symbol in my email signature, displayed here at the right.
A brave new world we live in, where a guy like me who knows hardly anything about databases lands in a SQL Server MVP program. PowerPivot is a bit of a black swan, straddling the fence between hardcore db’s and the world of information workers. Makes just as much sense for me to be in the Excel MVP program really, so hopefully I will still get plugged into those feedback loops as well.
Fabulous PrizesOK, that’s great for me and all, but how does it benefit you? Well, for starters, as part of the MVP packet, I got three MSDN subscription cards to give out!
These subscriptions must be activated within the next few months, and are good for a full year once activated.
I’m not an expert on all the particulars, but what it basically gives you is full access to the MS software catalog, for your own personal use and experimentation. Office, Windows, SQL, SharePoint, Exchange, Visual Studio, etc. – a Golden Ticket of sorts.
I recently discovered that some of the PowerPivot development team’s Windows Domain logon names were accidentally shipped in the product. Pretty funny.
To win the first MSDN card, all you have to do is find where that occurs, and email me: rob@pivotstream.com
Simple huh? Hee hee. Whoever finds this is indeed worthy.
If I receive multiple correct entries within the first 24 hours after this post goes live, I will randomly choose one of those entries as the winner. This will give everyone a fair chance, regardless of where you live.
After the first 24 hours, first correct entry wins.
If I have reason to believe that you already have access to MSDN, I doubt I will award you the card, so let’s leave this for people who don’t have it already ok?
I have not yet decided how to award the other two, but will figure it out soon. Also, I have a few other prizes that are a bit on the silly side – stuff from Microsoft with various logos on it that certify the wearer/user as nerd royalty – that I will also be giving away because my wife commands it
Watch this space for announcements.
14 Comments | Hello World / Administrivia | Tagged: PowerPivot Power Pivot Microsoft SharePoint BI Excel Business Intelligence Contests | Permalink
Posted by powerpivotpro
“Hey! Where’d you get that pic??”
-Kasper “The Killer Ghost” de Jonge
Over the past few months, Kasper has provided a number of excellent guest posts – the most prolific guest poster in this blog’s short history in fact.
I have to wait until next week to find out exactly how good Kasper is at hoops. But I already know he plays a mean game of PowerPivot. In fact he plays a mean game of… numbers in general.
Quite simply, he receives the PowerPivotPro “Zero Doubt” stamp of approval.
Pretty simple really. You get more good advice, examples, and tips. Kasper has a ton of great stuff to share, like the post above, and I thought it was time everyone saw more of it. We’re taking off the “guest post” flag for Kasper and giving him a set of keys to the car.
In all honesty, I learn at least as much from Kasper as he does from me. We have different backgrounds – he has more experience in traditional BI than I do, and I have more Excel experience. He and I chat all the time, swapping observations and techniques – via email, IM, Skype, and Twitter.
Yes, I have no plans to stop blogging. In fact you’ll be seeing even more of me going forward once I’m done launching our company’s PowerPivot-based product line.
Fact is, I want the name “PowerPivotPro” to not just be an alias for “Rob Collie.” I want it to mean something more than that. A community. A designation – where people say “I am a PowerPivotPro.” It’s a new style of professional that’s just getting off the ground, and in the future we will see PowerPivot skills and certification specifically targeted by recruiters, internally trained for within corporations, and listed on resumes in the same way someone would list C++ or T-SQL as their primary skill today.
Go back and read this post for a clearer idea of what I’m talking about. I absolutely believe we are headed for a world like that.
Kasper and I just happen to be early to the party. I suspect there aren’t many people in the world so far who have been paid specifically to provide PowerPivot expertise (which we both have).
But it’s ramping up faster than you might think. I just saw a job posting where the recruiter mentions PowerPivot specifically as a “must-have” or “must-learn." Cool huh? It hasn’t even been released for a month
So, welcome Kasper. The Bio Page has been updated to reflect his presence on the staff and certification as a trusted PowerPivotPro.
More may join us over time. Rest assured that the bar will remain high
And Kasper, I’m still gonna do my absolute best to crush you next week
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Posted by powerpivotpro
“My name is kasper de Jonge. I’m a BI specialist from the Netherlands. I play hoops all my life and I never lose. Soon I play PowerPivotPro, and the world will see his defeat.”
Yeah folks, you’ve probably all seen Kasper’s guest posts. But have you heard his voice? As I’ve said many times, he doesn’t exactly sound like a computer nerd – he sounds more like the creation of some Soviet lab, leftover from the Cold War.
And he plays basketball.
That’s right. It’s not enough for Kasper to jump right into PowerPivot and subvert that beautiful American creation for nefarious Continental purposes (ok, actually, the PowerPivot team is at least 50% international in its makeup, but please, let’s not let facts get in the way of trash talk).
No, he also has to try to take our basketball from us, too.
Well, I can’t let him do that. Someone has to take a stand.
I recently got word that Kasper will be attending TechEd / MS BI Conference in New Orleans next month. I issued a challenge. He accepted. A one on one basketball game to set the world on its proper course. Our representatives are busily negotiating the rules.
Kasper plays hoops all the time. Coaches a women’s team. Watches NBA games at odd hours via what can only be black market means. He is the modern basketball equivalent of Ivan Drago. He is a machine. He’s about 2-3 inches taller than me – imprecise because it’s so hard to get data from behind the Iron Curtain I guess.
So maybe it’s time for me to get in shape, huh? I haven’t played hoops in ten years. I’m about 30 pounds heavier than I’d like to be. And my hoops shoes… well, I bought those in 1996 and they still have tread on them.
So this weekend I began my training. I found the biggest dude I know, my friend Mike, and we played a series of one on one games. It was ugly – Mike’s taller than me, outweighs me by 60 pounds, and is all around just far more athletic. I was lucky to steal one game from him, while he annihilated me three times.
Afterwards, we still had enough breath in us to role-play The Ugly Americans:
7 Comments | Hello World / Administrivia, Uncategorized | Tagged: PowerPivot Power Pivot Microsoft SharePoint BI Excel Business Intelligence Basketball Teched Conference | Permalink
Posted by powerpivotpro
Check out what happens if you start to type “PowerPivot” into Google’s search box these days:
Very gratifying, for sure. Thanks folks, this feels good.
(I won’t comment on Bing, which clearly favors the blogs of current MS employees – cough cough PowerPivotGeek cough cough)
Maurice Prather and I have been heads-down this week getting PivotStream’s server farm up to date with SharePoint and PowerPivot RTM. Four servers working together as a unit. It feels like a phenomenal amount of power and capability, to be honest.
Here are some things on the agenda for the next week or two, in terms of the blog:
There are a few other things as well that I am sure I have forgotten. Can’t wait to share. May have to tell the folks at PivotStream that I’m going dark for a day or two to just pump out blog content
Any preference on where I start in the list above? Drop me a comment. I’m happy to tailor the sequence.
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Posted by powerpivotpro
Just discovered this morning that all of my links to the Great Football Project were broken. Ugh, that’s the best intro to PowerPivot since it’s where I started blogging back in the Fall.
Leave a Comment » | Hello World / Administrivia, The Great Football Project | Tagged: PowerPivot Power Pivot Microsoft SharePoint BI Excel Business Intelligence NFL Football | Permalink
Posted by powerpivotpro
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