PowerPivotPro

“Hey!  Where’d you get that pic??”

-Kasper “The Killer Ghost” de Jonge

Guest Poster Becomes Co-Owner!

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.

OK…  what does this mean?

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.

Rob, are you still going to post?

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.

My evil long-term plans exposed!

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 :)

 
"You’ve been down there, Neo. You already know that road. You know exactly where it ends. And I know that’s not where you want to be."

 
Not looking for “Redmond Lite”

First of all, I’d like to thank all of you for your wonderfully kind thoughts and wishes on my “Leaving Microsoft” post.  That felt excellent, especially coming from such an illustrious group of people :)

In those comments, some expressed a sentiment that it was a shame MS didn’t keep me on in another role.  I want to clear that up – the folks at MS made many such efforts.  One way to view it is that they were trying hard to retain me.  Another way is that they were sincerely trying to help.  Both are true, for which I am honored and grateful.  MS could not have handled things any better.

Bottom line for me, though, was that after 14 years at “the brightest point in the MS galaxy,” I didn’t think I would thrive in “the outer systems,” to paraphrase from the book of Luke (Skywalker).

Please remove walls, ceiling, and net

Furthermore, in recent years I’d had a growing desire to try to build a business on my own.  Take an idea, accept the risks associated with pursuing it, take responsibility for delivering results, remove the restraints that naturally exist at a large company, and directly reap whatever rewards come from it… if it succeeds.

High risk, high reward.  Flexibility to pursue multiple ideas, to the extent that I am willing to put in the hours.  Ownership, in every sense of the word, was what I was looking for.  I’d been increasingly wanting that, and if I wasn’t willing to try it now, I knew I never would be.

I just needed to find the right fit.  And then, the right fit found me.

“Knock knock, Neo”

The trail started a few months ago.  An email from someone I didn’t know, with a movie quote as the subject line!  Followed by a face to face meeting in a picture-perfect town that looked like the setting of Gilmour Girls, The Truman Show, and the Stepford Wives blended together.

I never would have guessed that such a setting was the chosen lair of an analytics Morpheus, leader of a renegade BI outfit, who already grasped the potential of PowerPivot to change the rules.  It was a fascinating lunch – two High Priests of compatible religions opening each others’ eyes to possibilities.

I took the red pill :)

“That is the sound… of inevitability”

As of today, I am now officially CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and CAO (Cinematic Analogy Officer) of PivotStream.  (Seriously.  I’m gonna put both titles on my business cards.  I’ve long said that it would be ideal to be paid to quote movies, and this makes it official.)

They are data ninjas who move silently through the halls of big business. The Consumer Packaged Goods, Pharma, and Retail landscapes are where there art is most deadly, but they have forayed into other arenas as well, even…  sports data.  They accept data challenges for the sake of solving them.

I can’t say it any simpler than this:  they are my kind of people.

And PowerPivot figures heavily in our plans, so to already have “Pivot” shrinkwrapped in the title is pretty damn nice as well.

Why this fits me

No walls, ceiling, or net – the PowerPivotPro division
My mission is to run a Skunkworks-style startup division, charged with jumpstarting new platforms and business models.  No walls.

And for the first time in my life, I am a partner rather than just an employee.  I can’t tell you how exciting that is for me, to have my personal and professional success so tightly linked.  I can die by this particular sword, but I can also live very well by it.  No net.  No ceiling.  Pure motivation and energy.

Mission #1 – On-Premise BI JumpStarts
Think of this as consulting and training.  Want to hit the ground running with PowerPivot or the overall SharePoint/MS BI Platform?  The Pro (and my team, when needed) will come to you and get you up to speed fast.  More details here.

Mission #2 – My Pet Project
How cool is it to pitch your pet idea and be told “yes, get started immediately!”  Well that’s how Morpheus rolls.

What is it?  Well, it will be easier to show it than explain it, so I’ve got some work to do.  In the meantime, here’s the gist:

1. PowerPivot is at its core, so I will always have good fuel for the blog and FAQ
2. I see myself becoming a bit of a Mashup Monster – of data, tools, and services
3. At times, it most definitely will involve sports – how could it not?
4. At times it will also leverage PivotStream’s existing expertise in Retail, Pharma, and CPG
5. “IQ as a Utility” is one way we’ve described it amongst ourselves

Secondary Mission – PivotStream’s Current Business
PivotStream already has customers today, using an existing platform.  The expertise is already in place to keep that platform cranking along, as are the plans to grow business on it.  So that’s not going to be my focus, but I will be advising on infrastructure and optimization out of the gate.

Onwards

Thanks for reading this far.  We now resume normal programming.

“It’s about time you noticed”

-Excel Monkeys everywhere

As I mentioned the other day, I drew some fire when I role-played as the head of a business unit and referred to my army of “Excel Monkeys” who could crank out what I needed in a day, rather than the four months IT required to give me the same numbers.

It was a sympathetic joke that I thought would be taken as such – and I think by most, it was.  But these are a sensitive, downtrodden people.  Business runs on their backs.  Multimillion dollar decisions hang on the data they produce every day.  And because of that, they often are the first to arrive in the morning and the last to go home…  or at least, the last to go to sleep.

In my experience, they are neither properly respected nor compensated for their outsized importance to the business.  They are viewed as producers of documents, just as if they were taking dictation in Word.

They are viewed as Excel Monkeys.  But they are really Shadow IT.  Special Ops.  Ninjas.  Pick your analogy.  Writer’s guild, auto unions, pilots’ unions…  all of these pale in comparison to the power an Excel Monkeys Guild would wield, were one to exist.  They could bring the world to its knees.  But I digress.

Things might be different if they were viewed as applications programmers, as I explained in my post Microsoft Announces New Programming Language – XL#.  And PowerPivot itself is hopefully poised to start changing the landscape as well.

In the meantime, let’s do something else:

Excel Monkey T-Shirt Design Contest!

We need t-shirts, the cornerstone of any proper revolution.  And for that, we need a proper design.  Some of you out there are talented with graphics tools.  (I am not). 

So…  send me your designs!  Email me at robert.c.collie@gmail.com – send me pictures, or URL’s to pictures.

David Coe of Microsoft has set the bar high with his initial entry:

Bring it on!

Prizes!

Yes, there are prizes.  Denny Lee has volunteered an autographed copy of the upcoming PowerPivot book he is co-authoring.

Mr. Excel, Bill Jelen, then upped the ante with an offer of TWO autographed books – his upcoming PowerPivot for the Data Analyst book and his Pivot Table Data Crunching book, which is also highly relevant to PowerPivot.

Fabulous prizes indeed.

Contest Rules

Rules???  There ARE NO RULES!!!  OK, maybe a few things are worth saying:

1. Contest will be open until 11:59 PM US Pacific Time on Friday, March 12, 2010.
2. Contest will be judged by me, Denny, and Chris Givens (who had the guts to call me from a crowded bank lobby and make monkey hooting sounds into the phone – a man amongst men).
3. The winner will be announced during the week of March 14th.
4. Contest is open to everyone.  Doesn’t matter where you live or who you work for.

Begin!