October’s PBIMCR x Data Decoded MCR event will feature 3 lightening talks

Talk 1:
Matt Bromilow – No More Defaults: AI Workflows for Unique Power BI Visuals
This session is about using AI to build and implement custom visuals that serve real business needs. We’ll walk through a proven developer workflow coding and deploying a Power BI custom visual step by step with AI support. Along the way you’ll see how AI can speed up development, standardise the process, and make building visuals more accessible. Attendees will get a boilerplate to kickstart their own projects, and there will be live interaction as we bring a custom visual to life together.

Talk 2:
Chris & Craig Morrall co-founders of  Tugger
Tugger is the only end-to-end provider built specifically for Power BI, helping developers and teams streamline the process of turning raw data into meaningful reporting. We specialise in making connections to platforms such as Xero, QuickBooks, and HubSpot simple and reliable, without the need for ongoing custom API development or manual data prep.
With Tugger, the heavy lifting around extracting and organising data is handled for you. Our built-in data warehousing ensures that the data is centralised and structured in a way that’s ready to use in Power BI, so you can focus on creating dashboards and delivering insights rather than troubleshooting connections or managing refresh cycles.
Security and compliance are at the heart of our approach. Tugger is built with enterprise-level security, so you can be confident that data pipelines are robust, protected, and compliant with industry standards.
By combining seamless data integration, built-in warehousing, and enterprise-grade security, Tugger gives Power BI developers a trusted foundation to build powerful, scalable reporting solutions for their organisations.

Talk 3:
Johnny Winter – The Importance of Community and Networking
Being part of the data community has opened doors, created opportunities, and shaped Johnny’s career in ways he couldn’t have imagined. In this session, Johnny will share how networking and community involvement have helped him grow as a data professional, from building connections and finding mentors, to staying ahead of industry trends and boosting his professional profile.

Complimentary drinks provided by our sponsors Tugger who will have a sponsor stand at Data Decoded MCR

Join us at 5:30pm on the 21st October where we’ll be hosted by Data Decoded MCR for a special user group session! We’ll be at Manchester Central with food, drinks, and – of course – two Snowflake-tastic sessions!

1. Alan Buxton, CTO @ Simfoni
   Earlier this year, Simfoni launched Virgil, the procurement Text2SQL bot powered by Snowflake Cortex and added it to their Strategic Spend Hub software app.

   Strategic Spend Hub doesn’t just identify savings opportunities—it helps you take meaningful action to optimize your spend and is now available not just as a standalone SaaS application, but also as a native app.

   But how did they do it? In this talk, Alan Buxton will guide you through the journey from idea, to keyboard, to launch day.

2. Rebecca Jayne-Coupe, Solutions Engineer @ Snowflake
   Once you’ve been warmed up for the topic of AI, perhaps it’s time for some demos? During this session, Rebecca Jayne-Couple will be getting hands on keyboard to whiz you all through some of Snowflake’s newest AI features.

Databricks community! The Manchester Databricks User Group is officially returning  making its debut at Data Decoded.

We are excited to announce guest speakers from:

Hightouch is a data and AI platform for marketing and personalisation. Find insights, run campaigns, and build AI agents with all of your data.

dbt Labs – Since 2016, dbt Labs has been on a mission to help data practitioners create and disseminate organisational knowledge. dbt is the standard for AI-ready structured data. Powered by the dbt Fusion engine, it unlocks the performance, context, and trust that organisations need to scale analytics in the era of AI. Globally, more than 60,000 data teams use dbt, including those at Siemens, Roche and Condé Nast

ThoughtSpot is the Agentic Analytics Platform for every enterprise. Their mission is to create a more fact-driven world by empowering everyone to explore any data, ask any question, and uncover actionable insights faster—leading to growth, better business outcomes, and efficiency in their organisations

Ricky Patel (Sales Engineer Manager) – ThoughtSpot

Hicham Babahmed (Partner Solutions Architect) – dbt Labs

Asim Khadri (Senior Solutions Engineer) & Gary Banks (Enterprise Account Director) – Hightouch

PyData MCR is the Manchester chapter of the International PyData Community.
For Manchester based data people, to share and learn new things. All open data tooling welcome, we are not python focused.

THE TALKS

Ship stats – Doing demographic statistics on representation in romantic fanfiction – Ren Zoller (he/him)

This project explores the demographics of the characters who make the yearly rankings of the top 100 most popular pairings on wellknown fanfiction site AO3.

Its aim is to raise awareness about the work of the highly female-dominated author base of fandom, explore how fans choose to interact with mainstream media, and to provide visualisation and statistical insight for and about a topic and community that does not have as many members who code as more male-dominated ones do and therefore is less well-documented.

Ren is a queer online creator with a background and scholarly interest in fandom, online communities, and gender liberation for all. In his day job he is a data engineer and degree apprentice in data analysis.

Orchestrating the complex stuff with Prefect – Kerry Parker (She/Her)

Kerry is a Data Engineer at Climate Policy Radar has over 7 years experience in both Data Science and Data Engineering roles across multiple industries. She is passionate about learning, sharing knowledge and giving back to the community.

Kerry will be speaking about Orchestrating the Complex Stuff with Prefect where she will introduce the concept of orchestration, why it matters for modern data workflows and how Prefect makes it flexible and easy to get started. Drawing on her experience of designing and building orchestration pipelines across a range of projects, Kerry will share practical insights, real-world examples, and tips to help you decide when and how to bring orchestration into your own projects.