Hi everyone. Welcome to figuring out fabric where I ask dumb questions and you get smart answers. And this week I'm very happy to have Lakshmi on. We're going to be talking about kind of a bunch of things, but data visualization, the community kind of finding your footing, all that kind of stuff. um Lakshmi has had quite the rise, I would say. um think, uh you know, before I done some work with her with Truviz a few years ago, I hadn't met her before. um But now she's been getting more involved with the community. She's been presenting quite frequently. She's a recent Microsoft MVP and she is a uh two time participant in the FabCon DataVis World Championships. um I think it's a little hard to compete with the Excel eSports grandeur. I have a friend who will send me like TikToks about it and say that I should compete, but I still think it's pretty cool. All this kind of stuff. So it's... I'm happy to have you on the show, Lakshmi. Thank you so much, Eugene. It's a honor. I've been a huge fan of the podcast and me being here made my day. That's awesome. No, that's very cool. I, I, it means a lot because, it feels like a niche within a niche. And so, you know, I see like the subscriber numbers slowly go up, you know, but it's like, you just wonder, this, is this worth all the effort? So that's awesome. Um, so, so how did you get involved with power behind? So yeah, to be honest, I've always loved art and design ever since I was a kid. And even when I was a kid, school and college, I used to play around a lot with Excel, keep a track of my expenses, keep a track of my marks. So I think some way I think I was meant to blend design and data together. And I'm so lucky that I get to do that professionally. So that's how I got into it. Yeah. Yeah. It's the, I think there's quite a diverse number of people who work with power BI and I'm always, uh, envious of the people who actually have any sort of innate design or artistic sort of talent. I think for me, I've had to just like memorize a bunch of rules of thumb and some of them, they do not feel very uh clever. So I answer like way too many questions on Reddit and people ask like, look for advice about their first dashboard and stuff. And I feel like I'm, my advice is very basic. Like it's, I'll pull out the accessibility uh tools for windows to see the contrast and then I'll tell people to like hold it on your phone or something at arm's length and see if you can actually see the detail. And then I'll tell them to like print it out and like have a marker and draw through and touch everything to see what the eye flow is. But I, I'm always envious of people who feels like their strategy is a little bit more coherent with this kind of stuff. Right. And I think, so like you said, an innate creativity, I think it's in my genes because imagine like I could do like I had to do a live report in front of so many people in 20 minutes. And I mean, it turned out really good. So I think, I mean, somehow I got into Power BI data visualization and purpose. No, that's awesome. mean, so like, did you decide that there was something that you needed to like specialize in? Or is it just that you've been like following kind of your interests and all that kind of stuff? To be honest, my first job was all about reporting and dashboarding, but then... It was using this clunky in-house tool that we had. then fast forward, like I moved to US and then I found out like Tableau versus Power BI was going on. And I chose Power BI because Microsoft and it just made it look easier. And then when I started experimenting with Power BI, all I heard was it's just drag and drop. You just do clicks and drags. You will get a beautiful report. But then when I started doing that, I realized that that's not the case. You really need to have an analytical mind. along with the creative flow so that you can tell a story out of data. I mean anyone can create visuals right but getting a story getting a flow out of data is where I thought that I should stand out and I kept working on it so it's not like I just watched random YouTube videos I've created I think more than 30 plus passion projects I mean on random data like Starbucks. I'm a huge Starbucks fan. So like Starbucks data. And then I wanted to learn more about Winter Olympics. So created a report on Winter Olympics. So I think that's how I decided that I need to specialize in Power BI, specifically storytelling in Power BI. Yeah. So I do have a question about that. So the stuff that I've seen some of the things you do, the storytelling makes less sense because like you said, it's kind of a fixed data set. And then you're trying to see what you can pull out. The thing that I always struggle with, and I think it can be done is what it like, where's the line for business data? Because the problem is like, let's say, you know, you take that Starbucks data, you can tell a story from a period of time, you can review it, you can make sure everything makes sense. But if you make a business report and you hand it off to someone, well, if sales change, that story's changed or power BI is very interactive. And so you don't have a lot of control over what they're going to like click and dig into. So for more dynamic data sets, like what, what stuff can you still do to help with great question so when I start creating reports I have two ways I do it the first is a very simple EDA like exploratory data analysis that can be done with your report, put in slicers, click stuff. You'll see everything interact with each other, cross highlight, cross filtering, drill throughs happening. And then when it comes to business purpose, the first thing is requirement gathering. I first kind of have a conversation to know why do you want this report? What are you trying to solve? Now say if they are trying to increase their sales and then I go into more data, are you looking on the marketing side or the production size? So my thought on this is it actually depends on the requirements you really need to dig deep into the data to see what type of data is available for you and then once you have your data you can get a story out of it like because of this this is happening and you know like there are the four pillars of analysis you have diagnostic prescriptive predictive so I mean just following that really helps you get it in the business side plus I always so whenever I work on projects I make sure I have page of EDA analysis as well because that helps both me and the end user understand what type of data I have in my report. Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think business intelligence is kind of interesting because I'm sure I've said a bunch of times on this show, but, um, it's one of the most iterative IT fields that I've seen or been involved in where like a lot of times you do basic requirements gathering for something like let's say a server to run something. And generally speaking, you may have some surprises, but the requirements match. kind of what you end up with a lot of the times. That has not been my experience with Power BI reporting or reporting in general. um It is a coin toss as to whether what they said that they wanted is going to be what they actually want once you put it in front of them. And so I think a lot of the work that we do is a lot, it is kind of more, we're kind of in the midpoint between sort of classic IT and say like a graphic designer or a web designer. Cause if you're one of those, kind of folks, then you actually have to plan in change orders. And you have to assume that like you have to figure out how to fail fast with the design and the requirements gathering because otherwise it's really easy to do all this building in a cave or a bunker somewhere and then come back and then it's not what they wanted at all, even though that's what they told you to build. That's right. And one thing I like to add is when I do requirement gathering, I don't create a checklist. actually go cross out things that they do not require. Like you said, instead of me telling them, this is what required. I just cross out that they don't need this. So I think that makes it a little easier for me to. Yeah, I've, I, when I do a scope of work, a lot of times I'll not only have assumptions, but like, things out of scope or things I'm assuming that's not the case, but also like a lot number of times you're, it's not just uh a greenfield sort of project, but they have something Excel or they have something crystal reports and you're trying to migrate it. And there's been plenty of times where you're going through the business logic and you're like, how is, you're asking them or talking to them, how is this calculated? And then you find out they, no one's looked at this number. Yes. Right. something like that. um So I agree, it is a challenging field to be in because we already talked about there's a certain amount of creativity and thought that needs to go into it. But then, um you know, sometimes I compare it to like therapists for people's data because we really do have to kind of like help them talk through what they actually want and sort of help them help themselves with this kind of stuff. Right. And like I think to find a balance between creativity and analytics data also is important because you cannot be very creative or you cannot be very data oriented. To find that balance is also somewhere like a little challenging for me. Yeah. So, um, so we kind of already mentioned, um you're, you're very involved with the community. got, uh, involved with the, the data visoral championship competition. What was that path kind of look like for you? How did you get involved and how did the community help you with all of that? Yes, so about the data with Championship, I actually just accidentally stumbled upon it when I was scrolling through the fabric community. Yeah, I saw Shannon posted on LinkedIn and I was like, why not? Let's just take a shot and trust me, it's changed my life completely. And also like quick things like about the fabric community is It has helped me both on the technical side as well as on a personal level. Like, know, in fabric community, go ask questions. So from asking questions to answering questions, and then they always have these small contests. Like you could create a sticker. You're creative. Just design a sticker and submit to it. And I actually won two of the sticker contest too. So I think like, I mean, even technically. I was able to contribute and even passion like I could follow my passion too and something that I do on a regular basis is I spend at least 15 minutes a day just scrolling through the fabric community. I just see what people have asked or answered sometimes just giving a quick kudo or giving a comment makes a difference to me as well as to the other person right so I think that's how I got involved into the fabric community and like I said it really made a huge difference. for me because when I was on stage competing like those 20 minutes were very difficult for me but when I saw that there are like lots of people cheering for me and I have a lot of support like you feel seen and I think that's something uh my heart was full so like when I was competing I was so happy I already felt like a winner Yeah, I was there for the first one. I couldn't make it for the second one because I was busy helping with the tabular editor booth, but, it was, I think it was a cool event all around. And I think it, it is something you should be really proud of yourself because if I remember correctly, there's multiple stages to kind of make it to the, to the finals and all of that. But also, um, you know, I, I don't think a ton of people put in a lot of the effort like you do with, with these report designs or their projects or that kind of stuff. I mean, again, if Reddit is any indication and it may be a skewed one, don't know, but there's a lot of the people who are posting and they're looking for feedback. kind of it's, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of time taken to kind of refine the work or think about how it's going to be used. A lot of people will add decorative elements, not necessarily ones that help with the visualization, but I'll see people like change the colors or change the backgrounds or all this kind of stuff. But I think, you know, I've seen some of the designs that you do and they feel very cohesive. They feel like you said that you're trying to think about a narrative. And I think, you can correct me if I'm wrong in this, but I think you kind of have to have like a patience and a willingness to pause and stop because again, and I'm guilty of this with like, report design, like I'm not a good designer. And generally, um, even if, even if I was doing something like, like more of a fun data set or something like that, I'm very much like, just focused on the problem in front of me and trying to make a list and all this kind of stuff and not thinking about how the pieces fit together or what the general flow is. And like, for me, like I said, I've had to come up with like all of these random rules of thumb to force myself to kind of slow down. So like what is the process for you or what does it feel like when you're working through a design? uh Yeah, to be honest, I spend more time understanding the data than actually creating the report because I think like my Power BI scales are solid, but I really need to gain the knowledge about the data and the semantic modeling. So I spend most of my time there. And then like you said, I have a story in mind. So I have a narrative. I know that the end user is looking for this. They want this question to be answered. And then I start with I do something called so what? So I see something, I see a number and I'm like, so what? And then it's okay. This is going to make this difference. And then so what, what is this going to do? So I mean, that's how I start thinking. And I think eventually what happens is once you keep making reports, like the very first report that I made had so much data crammed into it because I was a newbie and I was like, I need to put in all the all the charts that I know, funnel chart, pie chart, all the charts were there and then slowly with practice I understood, nope, no one cares if I have 10 charts on my dashboard. I need to have four and the four charts need to tell a story. So I think it comes with practice. I mean getting a balance between the design, getting a cohesive report, getting a story out of it. At the same time, showing an analysis. It all comes with practice. Plus I would like to add on to this thing where you just mentioned people ask for feedback, but do they go back and make sure they make those corrections? We don't know. So I think Power BI reporting is more of like a feedback oriented or like an iterative process, something that I like, you might not like something that I like, my client might not like. So I have to go back, come back, back and forth, back and forth. That happens a lot. Yeah, yeah, no, it will. And it's it's so funny. um Again, I bring up right at a lot just because that's I'm I'm on there the same way that you're on the community forums. And it's funny because every like three months I see someone who's really, really frustrated that they're being asked to do things that they don't think are of the best standard, the best quality, the best aesthetics. And I've had to explain to them our work a lot of times is like being like a car mechanic. And if someone asks for tinted windows and you think tinted windows are ugly, you can explain why maybe that's not a good choice. And as long as it's, uh, you know, not illegal at the end of the day, if the customer wants that, then that's what you do. And like for this recent project I'm on did some high level, um, reporting for a school board and you know, like very high level kind of folks. And they love their radio gauges. They love them to death. I know that the human eye is better at reading a pair of bar charts or whatever, but that's what they want. And that's what they get. Um, but yeah, I think I agree that thinking a lot about the, what is important? think, um, what can really help people? Like you said, that experience is trying to shadow people or asking people. Okay, here's your existing report. If this number is out of whack, what action do you take based off of that? um But yeah, you definitely have to learn certain pragmatism after a while for sure. Yes, and just to add, like I had a recent client who wanted me to have gradient colors in their reports and I was like, no, that's not accessible. But, you know, I had to do it because they wanted it and I had to do it even though I don't like it. Yeah. So um I've seen you. Why I don't think I've seen you speak, but I've seen you have a lot of presentations and that kind of stuff. How did you get involved with like speaking in the community and all that? Yes, so first I'll start so English is not my first language and When I moved to the US I was very scared people are going to judge me they're going to make fun of my accent and I mean there was a lot of hesitance, but once I started there is no stopping because the first very first time I delivered a speaking session was virtual and There were three to four people who connected with me on LinkedIn. They messaged me saying I did a great job. They loved my demos and they asked me when I'm presenting next. I think that one message uh encouraged me and motivated me. People do not care about my accent. It's okay if they do not understand, but they're able to see what I'm doing. And I think that that is a motivation that you need. And uh I think Kevin Chant was the one who gave me my first opportunity to talk at Data Weekender. and I think I was the only new speaker all of them were very renowned speakers and was like oops where did I get in and then I think like there has to be just one person who shows you the path and then you just keep going and even now like when I deliver a speech I am sure I stammer I sometimes forget English words because since English is not my first language I think in a different language and speak it out in English, right? But I've accepted the fact that I cannot be perfect, but for me, the main purpose of I... main purpose of doing the speaking sessions is to share what I know. If I can create a Power BI visual in 10 minutes, how do I do it? Let me share it with everyone so that they could do it too. I don't want to gatekeep it. So for me, that's how I got into the speaking. And when I see people appreciate it, people do not care about my accent. They don't care how I speak. It's more of what's the value I'm giving them. That's what matters. I think that's what encourages me. So whenever I start my speaking sessions, I do not think anymore about my accent or that English is not my first language, I just go for it. Yeah, and I think tech is uh compared to other certain fields in the US, like fairly multicultural. there's a, have a lot of people who've immigrated here and um work in this field. And I think that's definitely a reasonable concern. uh Maybe someday I'll be able to give a presentation in Spanish, uh but uh if I ever did, it still be very difficult. So I definitely admire that you're able to do that. um Yeah, I... got cornered at a SQL Saturday after party and was convinced to present my local user group. And I think for me too, it, kind of changed the trajectory of my career. Cause one, it forces whenever you make content or you communicate something, it forces you to learn on a much deeper kind of level. But also I, I've benefited so much from having these connections, um, and even in simple stuff. So, you know, whenever I do consulting, a lot of my hourly rate is not what's ever in my head, but how well I can get an answer. And so there's been plenty of times that I'll DM someone about, Hey, I have no idea what's going on with like this fabric warehouse thing, or you know, what's going on with this performance. Um, every once in a while I make a fool of myself. Uh, I had a, was, uh, emailing some folks about this issue with fabric warehouses and the execution plan said it thought it was going to be 200 billion rows and 72 terabytes of data. And someone told me to update the stats and I was taking a look at the stats. I'm like, well, no, this looks right. The stats are there. They're updated. But then it was doing a join between a uh 10 million row table and a 1 million row table. And there was only 88 unique values. So it actually was doing a lot of work. So we got that sorted out. But, um, but yeah, I think, I think it really can change your career. And unfortunately post pandemic, user groups aren't as There are some online ones, like you said, but the user groups tend to be a very low stakes sort of way um to get involved. people are very, very patient with that and it can, even if you're new, it can be really helpful to hear someone's story because you can forget about what the pain points are or something, or a lot of times see how someone else learns. um mean, I did, uh, I did a week long workshop a year or two ago and I learned some Power BI hotkeys that I didn't know about from the students, which was a little humbling. um So, but it's always, it's always good. So um that's awesome. Yeah, and even like when I was a beginner, the way I got into the community was I just started small, like hanging out in the community, like I said, like giving kudos to people, commenting on posts. And then once I felt comfortable, then I started dipping my toes in all these little challenges or the contest that take place. So I think that helps. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I'm trying to think, was there anything else? Oh, I think one other thing. So what was your proudest moment during the championship? yeah, so during the latest, the 2026 Atlanta Championship, so when I was, so I am a very anxious person. I panic very easily. So for me, the biggest challenge on stage was staying calm. I mean, I was sure that my power-buyer skills, I can do it, but for me, like handling the anxiety was a little tough. But when I was on stage, when I heard... people cheering for me that was incredible like I told you my heart was full I also didn't win the entire like the championship I walked off the stage feeling like a winner because for me it was like I have people who cheer for me and there was this funny moment where in those 20 minutes like I had a carefully planned narrative all of that just flew out of the window when I saw like a sea of people staring at me and something that saved me was I saw that I had my little cheer squad in the front row like the Power BI days, Washington user groups sitting for me in the first row just by looking at them and then I was back into my zone. So I think my proudest moment was to see that people recognize me, they've seen my work, they appreciate me for my efforts. That was really humbling, very happy after that. That's awesome. Cool. um So why don't we wrap up with a few questions. So what is your favorite or least favorite fabric or Power BI feature? Yes, so. My favorite thing about Microsoft Fabric is how it seamlessly works with Power BI now. Specifically now there are more, like there's an expanded data set connection options. And something that I've been recently experimenting with is the translitical task flows, although not, yeah, like just started playing around with it. Really like how it's easy for you to write back into Power, write back using Power BI and Fabric. And I think that that's something that I've been liking these days. And So coming to the challenging aspect right now for me is to keep up with how quickly the features are evolving in fabric. So being a totally power BI person getting into fabric, I'm a little overwhelmed. And like you say, like seeing people, the MVP is talk about all the fabric features. And I'm like, I do not know what this person is talking about. I have that. I feel that I think almost at least once a day, but then ah I think getting hands-on work with fabric would change my perspective but I'm still hoping for more clarity and consistency. Yeah, I, it is very hard, even as a Microsoft MVP to get a sense of where Fabric is going. Because like, sometimes I wish I had a crystal ball and I knew what Arun was thinking sometimes. Although I got to shake his hand at FabCon, so I felt very special there, because he came by all the booths and that kind of stuff. he... shook my hand as a tabula editor employee, not as Eugene Weidinger, but that's okay. Someday he'll know who I am. um No, I I wish I kind of knew the strategy because it's so hard to talk about fabric because it's like you're trying to talk about Home Depot or Lowe's or any home improvement store, right? If the goal is that you can build anything that you need and you have all these different options, it's hard to kind of present a cohesive story and they keep coming out with stuff. And it's like, okay, there's a fabric graph database, when do I want to use it? don't I don't know. I think a lot of people feel the same frustration. My honestly, I think it's okay to not keep up with fabric as bad as that sounds, especially if you're, you know, you've got regular work with power bi, I think what I found from my personal experience is The first year or so I tried to learn it. I really could not because it was so hard for me to ground the point of it into stuff that I cared about because the whole idea of a lake house, all this data lake stuff, historically has been about big data. And when you're working with power be a lot of times it's small data. You know, the model size is usually less than a gigabyte. You're pulling data from Excel, all that kind of stuff. And it wasn't until I had to do some training that includes some fabric stuff. And until last year I actually had, you know, my first fabric thing that a lot of this started to click. But for anyone out there who's in a similar boat, I would say like, learn about parquet files and the whole Delta Lake kind of thing. Understand what a lake house is and have a peripheral awareness of some of these pieces. But I think that'll help you the point that you decide to switch, maybe learn a little bit of Python. But if you look at the number of fabric items, there's five to eight times as many as there are power BI items in the thing of stuff you can create. So I think a lot of people are feeling a similar kind of overwhelmed. Right, right, right, right. Also, one quick thing I just wanted to add was, so initially, like... being an immigrant when I moved to the US, completely new to Power BI, new to Fabric, I believed in this whole like when one door closes another opens kind of vibe. And then after moving to the US, becoming an MVP, taking part in all these contests, something that I realized that doors will not open themselves, right? You got to push them. So if you want to be a part of the community, you have to dip your toes in. If you want to learn Fabric, you have to take that first step. what matters. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And I think fabric especially is something that ah it's like trying to learn how to ride a bike from just reading about in books, you really have to like just work with it because a lot of it's not going to be intuitive otherwise. um And, and like you said, there's a lot of different great community spots. the forums are full of people that want to help write is full of people that want to help. um We just had a whole conference with a bunch of people giving a bunch of presentations, but there's also a lot of smaller ones like, you know, there's the Atlanta SQL Saturday. Now it's gonna be called days of data, all that kind of stuff. So the last one or two questions is basically, you know, where can people find you? I know there's like 12 different social media networks and is there anything you wanna like pitch or promote or anything like that? uh Nothing much, people can follow me on LinkedIn. That's where I post most of my stuff. The speaking events, tips and tips. And I do a lot of mini series about Power BI. Like I have this thing called 31 days of KPIs in Power BI where I shared 31 different types of KPIs you could do just by using native Power BI visuals. And then something that I've been doing recently is Power BI this or that. So basically comparing two things like legends or series labels and also doing something called the visual breakdown. So I have a KPI in front of me breaking it down why it works, why it does not work. So I think LinkedIn is the place. Yeah, I do want to compliment you on, some of that because like the, the design for the this or that, and then for some of your, um, squared charts or whatever you, whatever they're called on LinkedIn, you have some basic animations in a way that's not annoying or superfluous, but helps the aesthetic overall, right? Like I'm, I'm so tired of people that just add animated like arrow diagrams that don't add any value, because it's an animation, like it ranks higher or something like that. But your stuff actually like it pops. And so I've sent multiple of your pieces of content to Gabby, my uh marketing assistant to be like, we should, we should do that. So very cool. Well, thank you for coming on. It's been a pleasure to have you Lakshmi. Thank you so much, Eugene. Okay.