M is for Imke, w/ Imke Feldmann

Imke Feldmann is among the first few to have recognized the incredible value and potential of this thing called Power Pivot in Excel (which was the precursor to Power BI).  And did she ever run with it, launching quite the successful solo consultancy and training service!  She exemplifies the helpful nature of the data community through her blog, The BIccountant, where she shares her amazing Microsoft BI tool knowledge.

Her background is in Finance and Accounting, but you'll quickly realize she knows a great deal more than just Finance and Accounting!

Contact Imke:

The BIccountant

Imke's Twitter

References in this Episode:

Imke's Github

MS Power BI Idea - Customizable Ribbon - Please Upvote :)

MS Power BI Idea - Speed Up PQ By Breaking Refresh Chain - Please Upvote :)

Episode Timeline:

• 3:00 - The value of outsourcing certain business functions, Imke's path to Power BI starts with Rob's blog, a multi-dimensional cube discussion breaks out!
• 19:45 - One of Power BI's strengths is collaboration, Imke LOVES her some Power Query and M and loves DAX not so much
• 33:45 - Imke has a BRILLIANT idea about how to improve Power Query and some other improvements that we'd like to see in PQ
• 52:30 -  Rob's VS code experience, how COVID has affected the consulting business, Staying solo vs growing a company and how Imke determines which clients she takes on

Episode Transcript:

Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello friends. Today's guest is Imke Feldmann. We've been working for a long time, nearly a year to arrange the schedules to get her on the show, and I'm so glad that we finally managed to do it. For a moment, imagine that it's 2010, 2011, that era. During that timeframe, I felt not quite alone, but a member of a very slowly growing and small community of people who had glimpsed what Power Pivot could do. And for those of you who don't know what Power Pivot is, and that was the version of Power BI, the first version that was embedded only in Excel. And at the time, the way the community grew, we'll use a metaphor for this. Imagine that the community was a map of the world and the map is all dark, but slowly, you'd see these little dim lights lighting up like one over here in the UK, one in the Southwest corner of the United States, very faintly.

Rob Collie (00:00:51): And these would be people who were just becoming aware of this thing, this Power Pivot thing, and you'd watch them. They'd sort of show up on the radar, very tentatively at first kind of dipping their toe, and then that light would get brighter, and brighter, and brighter over time, as they really leaned in, and they learned more and more, and they became more adept at it. And this was the way things went for a long time. And then in 2011, out of nowhere in Germany on the map, this light comes on at full intensity, brightly declaring itself as super talented and powerful. And that was what it felt like to come across Imke Feldmann.

Rob Collie (00:01:27): Like all of our guests, there's a little bit of that accidental path in her career, but also a tremendous sense of being deliberate. When this stuff crossed her radar, she appreciated it immediately. And I didn't know this until this conversation, but she quit her corporate job in 2013, the same year that I founded P3 as a real company, and became a freelancer. So for eight plus years, she has been a full time Power BI professional. There truly aren't that many people who can say that in the world. Our conversation predictably w