Same Problems, More Zeroes:  Why the Spreadsheet (and PowerPivot) Will Dominate Big Data Usage

The early hype and messaging usually portray Big Data as a Big Project:  the next frontier for elite Business Intelligence professionals, or perhaps the domain of software engineering teams.  But what if Big Data’s future is actually much more…  mundane?  Minus the capital letters, data has always been “big” – even 100 rows of data usually exceeds the human capacity for digesting into insight; we have always employed tools to turn “big” into something concise.  For the past several decades, spreadsheets have been the overwhelmingly dominant tool of choice.  Today, the power of even modest desktop hardware paired with dramatic developments in the Excel engine have spreadsheets poised to extend their ubiquity into the Big Data era.

This session will cover the forces behind these developments – both technical and social – and will include demos and best practices.

Presenter: Rob Collie

Rob spent 13 years at Microsoft in Redmond WA before moving back east in 2010.  Over those 13 years, he worked primarily on Excel, leading the design and implementation of many features in Excel 2003 and 2007.  In his final role at MS, Rob joined the PowerPivot team and led development on much of the PowerPivot v1 platform, particularly aspects aimed at the Excel audience. Today, Rob is CTO at Pivotstream, the world’s leading adopter of PowerPivot. He also runs two websites (PowerPivotPro.com & PowerPivotFAQ.com), consults/trains others on PowerPivot adoption, and is the author of a new book:  “DAX Formulas for PowerPivot: The Excel Pro’s Guide to Mastering DAX.”