If you were aware then you know now; myself and Joe Billingham (The Data Luthier) are bringing FabFest (a one day event) to Birmingham on the 3rd October at Millennium Point. The day will be a FREE day of talks giving training and knowledge in Microsoft Fabric and the Microsoft AI technology stack. Tickets are going fast so be quick get book your attendance here!

I’ve placed the Agenda below, but I just want to highlight a couple of sessions I am most looking forward to.

Barney Lawrence’s talk on record linkage at 11:20

I had the privilege of going to what would have been a precursor to this talk at this years SQL Bits in Farnborough. The essence of the talk is using the open source python library ‘Splink’ to link data records based on probability, so it will let you know how likely your Lewis in one system is the same person as the Louis in another. The main uses of this is via linking records of the same entity and/or removing duplicates, you are removing the pain points when looking to get a single holistic view of your data.

I found the talk immensely engaging and eye opening in regard to how Barney was able to explain the complexities of deterministic, fuzzy, and probabilistic matching in a simple and understandable manner, and then explain how Splink applies these to ‘automate’ the matching process. Definitely worth attending for anyone!

James Dales’ talk on real time data streaming in Fabric at 12:40

While I didn’t get to see this talk at SQL Bits this year, my colleagues who did attend came out blown away by this very demo driven talk and it seems the rest of the conference was as well as the talk was voted the best technical talk at SQL Bits this year. Therefore, I was over the moon when James confirmed he would be able to give the talk at Fabfest this year!

Without giving too much away, the talk is a demo showcasing the real- time intelligence capabilities of Microsoft Fabric, via ingesting live aircraft data captured using a raspberry pi and an antenna to capture the aircrafts live transmissions. James then goes onto analyse this data showing the busiest areas of sky and showcasing the sheer volume of data per second that is able to be processed.

As a talk it really showcases the art of the possible, and just how powerful Microsoft Fabric is, and while we all may not have a use for tracking aircrafts what we do receive is an excellent proof of concept that we will be able to apply to our own interests both in and out of work!