Microsoft Fabric Community Conference, Day 1

I just wrapped up a fantastic week at Fabcon 2024! The Microsoft Fabric Community Conference brought data professionals all over the globe through multiple sessions and workshops to help us prepare for the era of AI through Microsoft’s Data and AI platforms. It was such an honor to attend the inaugural event. I’ll be recapping my time across those three days, then next week I’ll be rolling up my sleeves to tinker with and deep dive into some of the announcements and features announced.

Kick off

The day started with an engaging keynote from leaders in the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform. They set the theme and mood for the day, getting us pumped to dive into sessions with curiosity and inspiration by unveiling a ton of new features through demos.

Catch up on everything that was announced here: https://aka.ms/FabCon-Blog

One announcement the crowd seemed to get excited about was workspace folders, which solves the problem of navigating through items within a project, where workspace folders to keep things organized and maintain team productivity. This was a HUGE community ask, with thousands of upvotes in the Fabric Ideas community forum.

The feature I personally wanted to know more about was Database Mirroring, which went into public preview. This feature enables databases to be accessed and managed instantly within Microsoft Fabric with no complex setup. All data in Fabric is in Delta format when it lands in OneLake, including Mirrored data. What’s really cool about this is that you can join Mirrored data with other databases, warehouses, and lakehouses, wherever or whatever they might be. We’ll dive more into this next week.

Action Packed Day

After the keynote I made a quick trip to the community lounge to meet the winners of the “HackTogether: The Microsoft Fabric Global AI Hack”

We met the grand prize Winners, PIInovators who built a solution that classifies documents into compliant and non-compliant categories, further categorizing them based on predefined types (Delivery, Personnel, Online, Continual, Communication).

We also met the winner of the “Best use of Copilot for Microsoft Fabric”, Accounts Payable Payment Prediction that predicts the payment status of unpaid invoices – specifically whether they will be paid early, late, or on-time.

Next, I attended the session “Building AI Enabled Intelligent Applications using Azure Cosmos DB” with Mark Brown and James Codella, PhD. They walked us through all the parts of Azure Cosmos DB that enables AI ready apps. This demo heavy session focused on Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL and Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore. First, they walked through some use cases and scenarios for using Generative AI and Azure Cosmos DB, like Retrieval Augmented Generation and Semantic Caching.

??Nimbus Nuggets: Did you know Microsoft Teams and Open AI use Azure Cosmos DB?

Next, they walked through some key points and features of vector indexing, vector embeddings, and vector search currently available in Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB vCore.

Finally, they sat side by side walked through various demos, building a Retrieval Augmented Generation Pattern application from scratch. They wrapped up with a sneak peak of features coming to Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL, stay tuned for a full announcement in May!

Try the demos yourself at aka.ms/FabCon-Cosmos-AI-Demos and be sure catch Azure Cosmos DB Conf later this month.

I also wanted to catch a bit of the session, “Experience Microsoft Fabric and SQL Together” where the Microsoft SQL Product team described in detail how Mirroring worked in Microsoft Fabric and Azure SQL Database. Read here in more detail: https://aka.ms/LearnMirrorAzureSQLDB

Next was lunch! I attended the Women in Technology Luncheon, where data leaders shared their experiences, from motherhood to handling impostor syndrome and discussions about intersectionality.

I ran into Lihong at the Luncheon, wearing an amazing bright pink blazer and HAD to take a photo before getting started on my lunch.

Some of my personal highlights from the panel were:

• One of the panelists who loves Game of Thrones did a personal data analysis project to examine what happened in the final season (because seriously, what happened??). Someone noticed her work and it landed her land a new role. It reminded me to always be curious because you never know what opportunities it will create and a personal nudge to do projects on your favorite things and passions.
• A story from another panelist who is first generation American that resonated with me as a second generation American who struggled to find their place and people. ?
• A reminder that it’s ok to be uncomfortable at times, because that’s where you may find growth. It’s normal to be afraid, but the true challenge is being and staying courageous. ?
• Take more vacation, stop guilting yourself into thinking you don’t need rest!

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Some Quick Stops

I had to make a few stops before my first shift…

I caught a bit of the session “The SQL experience is beyond RDBMS with AI for Startups to the Enterprise”, where the Microsoft SQL Team covered all the goodies of Azure SQL Database that makes it AI ready.

Before I had to head to my shift, I caught Azure SQL PM Davide Mauri sharing an overview of one his popular samples and one of my personal favorites on vector search. It helped me grasp the basics of how developers can leverage the power of embedding models. He did an excellent deep dive into how he built it in a blog post. You can also build it yourself!

??Nimbus Nuggets: Did you know there’s a Copilot for Azure SQL Database? Sign up here to be part of the Private Preview: https://aka.ms/sqlcopilot-signup

I made a quick stop to the Community Lounge to say hello and grab some of the Fabric Flashcards, created by my colleague Alvaro Videla . They help you study for the DP-600, Implementing Analytics Solutions Using Microsoft Fabric exam. They were a hit!

You’ll hear more about them tomorrow, but in the meantime learn how to make your own flashcards here: https://aka.ms/FFWorkshop

I headed over to the Interactive Lab in the Expo area, where I helped attendees learn about Microsoft’s AI and Databases, provided in cohesive set of collections of Microsoft Learn training modules.

The conference might be over, but you can still try them yourself! https://aka.ms/fabconlabs

Then my day was done! I took a breather and celebrated with all the amazing folks who made Fab Con possible and caught up with a few folks and ended the day.

Be on the lookout tomorrow for my recap of Day 2!

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