A warm welcome to Tristan Malherbe MVP; Founder of the French Power BI User Group-Club Power BI, as he joins us for ‘Voices of the Azure Community’.
We hope you enjoy this insight into the work Tristan carries out to support the Azure Community
Please tell us about your own role.
I am the co-founder of Data Pulse, a Power BI consulting & training company based in France. I am also a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and the co-founder of the French Power BI User Group (Club Power BI).
Please outline your involvement with Club Power BI
Our user group started in February 2017 – we now have 2,500+ members, a very active forum (1,000+ messages), a Youtube channel where we broadcast & upload all our events and meetups (70+).
What are the greatest benefits of getting involved with the Group for attendees?
Attendees come to our meetups to learn, meet their peers and interact with experts.
Some of our members also contribute a lot to the forum and sometimes also share their knowledge during meetups too!
In your opinion what is the most exciting thing about working with Azure?
I am not an Azure Developer but I use regularly use the platform for my BI projects, trainings, demos and proof-of-concepts. It is quick and easy to setup; it works seamlessly with Power BI and it allows much more flexibility and power than on-premises architectures. In combination with Power BI, it allows me to work with big amounts of data very easily. I have recently built a demo where I analyze 300 million New-York taxi trips in Power BI. The visuals are interactive and recompute on-the-fly because I pre-compute data in Azure SQL DB.
What is your favorite Azure Product and why?
My favorite Azure product is probably Azure SQL Database because I use it a lot.
What are the key skills required to be a great Azure Professional?
Apart from the obvious technical skills required in this field, I would say curiosity is by far the most important skill if you want to work with Azure. The platform is changing very fast and there are lots of new products, features & possibilities every month.
What in your opinion has been the biggest advance in Azure in the past 18 months?
As a BI expert, I would say Azure Synapse Analytics is very promising. It is probably the future of Data Analytics in the Microsoft stack.
What are the biggest challenges you face working with Azure?
You may have different tools & options to solve the same problem and it is sometimes hard to pick the right one.
Some clients & industries are still afraid of the Cloud and can be reluctant to put their data & infrastructure on Azure.
How did you become an MVP? Do you have suggestions for other community members who hope to become MVP’s?
I became a Microsoft Data Platform MVP in October 2017 just after I turned 25 years old – mainly thanks to the creation of the French Power BI User Group but also with my participation to numerous international events. I’ve had the chance to speak and share my knowledge in many cool places over the last 4 years: London, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Dublin, Seattle, Porland, Orlando and Dubai!
My suggestion for people who wish to become MVPs is very simple: SHARE your knowledge and take initiatives (create a User Group, a Youtube Channel, write a book).
