Video recording of my session at the Global AI Bootcamp Dec 2019

I presented a session at the Global AI Bootcamp in Auckland on "Creating Real Time Image Classifiers"  -- Custom Vision vs. Computer Vision

The video of my presentation is here.  Thanks to Jonathan Ng for recording this.

My session materials for Webscraping in Power BI Webinar

@Kelly Kaye thanks for the opportunity to present a Webinar for the Power BI Community yesterday. My topic was  'Webscraping in Power BI''.
Below is the link to presentation material and PBIX demo files on github.
https://github.com/indupriya9/webscraping

I will share the link of the webinar as soon as it is available

Power BI Competition for Kids aged between 9 and 14 yeaars

On Monday the 18th November, I have concluded the 14 weeks databases and data visualisation classes by running a #powerbi data visualisation competition for kids.   #mvpbuzz

Extremely happy that Reza Rad and Leila Etaati have agreed to be the judges for this #powerbi nz competition for the second time in a row.

I have given the links to makeovermonday website to choose their own data and come up with their visualisations. Altogether 14 kids participated in the competition and they were amazing.

I sincerely thank all the kids and parents Anusha Pushparajan, Puvana, Sreesutha Nampally, Vinaya Shetty, Govardhani, Swathi and  all others who are not there on LinkedIn for all their extended support without which the event would not have been successful.  Now I feel that the kids have learnt something useful over the last 14 weeks. :) 

Below are the photos of the top 3 winners of the competition. If anyone is interested in watching the videos of the kids presentations you can access the below link  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fQafgnyKAUTBP2XXxqE4W_AVgz7ApKs6?usp=sharing

Free Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids Weeks 12 to 14 update

It has been quite a while again since I have posted about the free databases and data visualisation classes for 9 to 14 year old kids.  So here I am with another update. 

For the last 3 weeks, the kids have chosen their datasets that they want to work on. The datasets were varied from windmills, UK population, volcanic erupitions, consumer spending, credit card transactions, artists etc.

I have taught them how to create Bookmarks and everyone are making good use of the  bookmarks in their reports.  Some have started using custom visuals.

One of the parents of the kids, Goverdhani Tammina stepped up to help the kids with their questions as there were lots of questions from the kids.

I really enjoyed the past three weeks as i could see the joy the kids are having when they are developing visualisations with the data they like.

Young Entrepreneurs workshop at Balmoral Temple

I have organised  a #youngentrepreneur workshop in collaboration with FiftySix Creations. Kids definitely had a great time in this workshop. Everyone brainstormed their business ideas, presented their innovative elevator pitches, even tried the tongue twisters.

Thanks to Tionne Young and Dylan from Fiftysix Creations for coming over and conducting this session and giving a golden opportunity for the kids to develop their business minds.


Here is a video clip that shows glimpses of the event.

My journey with helping kids love data

In this article I wanted to share my journey with helping kids to get know about data and how to visualize data so that it makes more sense.

How did it all start ?

In June 2016, I signed up as a mentor for #jhackNZ. 2016 Game Development Competition for high school kids.  This competition was targeted for high school kids. 

JHACK in partnership with Microsoft ran their first workshop on 26^th June 2016. Over 100 kids were trained for half a day on a game development software called Construct 2. 

They were given 6 weeks to develop games and submit.  All the mentors that signed up also were trained on Construct 2.  After the training, when I was returning home from the event, a thought came up – “Why not I teach some of the primary school kids that come to the Sunday school.’

This idea was put into practice on July 11^th, with the start of the school holidays. I chose about 12 kids who come to the Sunday School between the age of 9 to 12 years and started teaching them the software Construct 2 that I learned in 2 hours.  I planned a 6 weeks course at that time.

I mentioned this to the Program Manager of #JHacknz after 2 weeks of successfully running the course.  She encouraged me and said “Why don’t the kids submit some games for the competition?”  This motivated me to encourage kids to build some games that they would like to build.  And on September 16^th 8 individual games and 1 group game were successfully submitted. 

On 25^th September all the kids and parents joined the other high school kids who have submitted games for the competition.  It was full day of fun and activity for the kids with industry experts and the final 5 games were selected for individual category and 5 games were selected for group games category. The kids whose games were selected had to present to all the audience about their games 

We were thrilled to hear that 2 of our kids games made to the finals.  You can have a look at them presenting 

Season Run

Star Gatherer

So after their presentations in the final round, we were once again pleased to hear that these two games got 2^nd and third prizes in the individual category.  I couldn’t believe this and this was a significant achievement for all of us.  You can check the photos here.

So what’s next ?

After the success of the game development course, I thought I should spend some time teaching kids about technology.  So I was thinking of what to teach them and came up with a lot of ideas and finally settled with -- why not teach them with what I have been doing for the last 15 years ?

I planned a 12 week course on Databases and Data visualisations and started my first class on July 10^th 2018   In the databases section of the class, I taught them fundamentals of SQL using Microsoft SQL Server Express using SQL Server Management Studio.  

I have posted a detailed description of what happened in each week in my blog posts –

Week 2 update

Week 3 update

Week 4 update

Week 5 update

This was planned to be delivered in the first 6 weeks.  At the end of the 6 weeks, I conducted a test in SQL to gauge whether the kids have understood what I was trying to teach them.  The results of the test was very good as described here. 

I started off Week 7 with the Data Visualisations classes that are mainly focused on Power BI.  I taught the basic concepts of Power BI as below:

·       Getting Data into Power BI, 

·       Power Query,

·       Creating a column,

·       Creating a measure and what is the difference between these two

·       Simple SUM and Count in DAX

·       Creating bookmarks

·       Creating data visualisations

At the end of the full 12 weeks course, I have conducted a Power BI competition for all the kids.  I have given them the link to the Makeovermonday datasets and asked them to pick their datasets that interests them and do an analysis from these for the competition.

The judges for this competition were the two renowned Microsoft MVPs Reza Rad and Leila Etaati

The details of this competition are in this link here

What did I learn from teaching kids about data ?

Below are some of the learnings from this journey

• Always try new initiatives –
• Have Fun – This is very important
• Be Fearless 
• Everyone is Special 
• Always Be Happy 
• Give with an Open Heart 
• Be Creative and Be Happy 
• Believe in Yourself

So What Happened Next ?

This year I have started the same course "Free Databases and Data Visualisations" for 9 to 13 year old kids. Updates can be obtained on my blog from here

Also the season 1 kids have submitted 4 visualisations for the #Backtoschool competition held by Microsoft.  The details of all the 4 submissions are below:

Climate News

Climate News (Back to School) 

Climate News (Back to School) Hi All This dashboard is developed by 12 to 13 year old kids whose names are as below: Harshavardhan Tammina...

Story of Historical Events

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Data-Stories-Gallery/Study-of-Historical-Events-Back-to-School/td-p/786138

Career Pathways

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Data-Stories-Gallery/Career-Pathways-Back-to-School/td-p/785700   

Road Safety

Road Safety (Back to School) 

Road Safety (Back to School) Hi All This dashboard is developed by 12 to 15 year old kids whose names are as below: Avantika Nannegari (15 ...

Free Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids Weeks 9 to 11 update

It has been quite a while since I have posted about the free databases and data visualisation classes for 9 to 14 year old kids.  So here I am with an update.  In the SQL test that was conduced in week 8, about 10 kids have written taken the test.  All of them have scored more than 80% except for 1 person who scored 70%.  I am pleased with the overall result.

For the last 3 weeks, I have started teaching Power BI to the kids.  Three more kids have joined the Power BI classes. I taught basics of importing data using a csv file.  Also gave an overview of the 3 views in Power BI Desktop, query editor, Applied steps pane, removing columns etc.

I have also covered about new columns and measures  what the main difference is between columns and measures. I have covered various visualisations in the Report View by explaining them what a measure and dimension is.

Next week I have asked everyone to pick a dataset on their own and come up with their data visualisations.  So waiting for their creativity to unveil.

Free Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids Week 8 update

Today I conducted a SQL test for kids to gauge their understanding of what I have taught them so far in SQL.

Altogether 10 kids participated in the SQL test.
This test is online and if any of you want to try the test you can try

The link is below:
SQL Test 

A few photos from the night below

Free Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids Week 7 update

Had a great time this week with kids who attended the SQL course yesterday. #sqlfamily #microsoftnz #mvpbuzz

This week they learnt how to import data from a csv file.  After they imported the file, I have asked them to view what they have imported and most of the kids started writing the select queries for all my questions. I again had a short recap of the last week's session covering update, delete and basic SQL functions.

In the next session, I will be organising a test to understand how much they have learnt.

Final Submission for Back to School Power BI Competition

As mentioned in my previous posts, the kids have finally completed their power BI files and I have successfully towards the BAck to School Power BI competition.

The details of the submissions are as follows:

Career Pathways

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Data-Stories-Gallery/Career-Pathways-Back-to-School/td-p/785700

Historical Events

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Data-Stories-Gallery/Study-of-Historical-Events-Back-to-School/td-p/786138

Road Safety

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Data-Stories-Gallery/Road-Safety-Back-to-School/td-p/785683


Climate News

https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Data-Stories-Gallery/Climate-News-Back-to-School/td-p/785721

If you like what the kids did, please like them without any hesitation.  This will boost their confidence levels 

Free Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids Week 6 update

Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids aged between 9 to 14 years week 6 update.

Had a great time this week with kids attending the SQL course. #sqlfamily #microsoftnz #mvpbuzz

I had a short recap of the last week's session covering update, delete and basic SQL functions.

This week they learnt how to import data from a csv file.  After they imported the file, I have asked them to view what they have imported and most of the kids started writing the select queries for all my questions.

In the next session I am planning to cover table joins to them. Hopefully this will be the last session on databases after which I will be organising a test

I am looking forward for the session on next Monday.

Participation in Back to School Power BI competition progress

As mentioned in my previous post, all kids have been working hard on their power bi files.

The following are the topics chosen by the kids for the Back to School Power BI competition (4 groups)

Career Pathways
Climate Changes/News
Road Safety
Historical Events

I had a chance to look at the first draft of the power BI files created.  Suggested some changes to improve them further. 

One of the groups were having difficulty in getting the data into Power BI, so helped them with that. 

One of the groups started developing the power BI visualisations directly in the app.powerbi.com as they thought that sharing between them would be easier.  Since you cannot convert the visualisations developed in the app to power bi desktop file, they had to recreate everything in the power b desktop from scratch.  This was a big learning for them.  But they quickly did that.

One of the groups wanted to know how to get data from a website, so pointed them to my webinar on "Top 10 tips" which they could use to create their visualisations.

The Road Safety group created a game that was meant to be interactive.  But when I tried to use it, I didnot find that it was very interactive.  So I have suggested to make some changes.

Some of the photos from this catch up

Free Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids Week 5 update

Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids aged between 9 to 14 years week 5 update. Had a great time on Monday with 10 kids and 2 parents attending the SQL course. #sqlfamily #microsoftnz 

There was no class last week as I was away in Melbourne at the #powerplatformsummit.

So there was almost a 2 week gap so I revised all that they have learnt so far in the last 4 weeks by asking them a lot of questions.  Most of the questions some of the kids answered them right but the revision helped them to understand a bit more.

I was pleased to see most of the kids eagerly answering my questions. I felt that now all the kids are able to genuinely understand what I am trying to teach them.

This week they learnt some of the basic SQL functions like Min, Max, Count, AVG, SUM.  String functions like Left and Right.

In the next session I am planning to cover the importing of data from a csv and also will try and explain joins to them.

I am looking forward for the session on next Monday.

My presentation at the Power Platform Summit Melbourne Australia

I really enjoyed presenting at the Power Platform Summit, Melbourne Australia.  The topic was "Top 10 things every Power BI creator should know.

Had really good audience who were really engaged and with a lot of questions.

Here is the link to the session materials
https://github.com/indupriya9/powerplatformsummit2019

Free Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids Week 4 update

Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids aged between 9 to 14 years week 4 update. It was another full house on Monday with 12 kids and 4 parents attending the course. #sqlfamily #microsoftnz  

The first 45 minutes were spent in solving issues with questions like --
- 'I created a table but I cannot see it'
- 'Why is my insert statement not working ?'
- 'I have inserted a lot of duplicate records.  How do I delete them ?'
- 'I am getting a syntax error'

After this, when I did the recap of what happened last week, I was pleased to see most of the kids eagerly answering my questions. I felt that now all the kids are able to genuinely understand what I am trying to teach them.

The agenda for this week was to explain the update and delete statements.  The Like and In operators in the where clause.  Some of the basic SQL functions like Min, Max, Count, AVG, SUM.  String functions like Left, Right and Substring.

It is interesting to see how some of the kids think.  One of them asked what if we accidentally deleted all records ?  Is there an undo?

As usual I felt very happy to see the enthusiasm in these kids. I am looking forward for the session on next Monday.

Initiating kids to participate in Back to School Power BI Competition organised by Microsoft

I have seen this tweet from Charles Sterling regarding Back to School Power BI Competition.

Announcing Power BI “Back to School” Contest! https://t.co/P7wDM3YJjl

— Charles Sterling (@chass) August 4, 2019

Since I have taught Power BI for 11 11 to 15 year old kids last year, I thought lets try and submit a few Power BI files if they are interested.  So I had a session with them today where I went through the Back to School Power BI competition rules.  I have initially created 3 groups making three 16 year olds as leaders to these 3 groups. 

I have asked them to spend some time and come up with ideas for creating Power BI visualisations for this competition.  Each team came up with a few options. 

The three 16 year old kids came to me and said that they want to make a separate group and create an app using Power BI that is useful for high school kids to choose their career pathways.  So the 4th group was created.

Now we have 4 groups trying to create Power BI visualisations.  I am anxiously waiting to see what they finally decide to work on.  We are meeting again in a week's time

Free Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids Week 3

Free Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids Week 3
Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids aged between 9 to 14 years week 3 update. It was a full house yesterday with 15 kids and 5 parents attending the course. #sqlfamily #microsoftnz

During my recap of what happened last week, most of the kids wanted to answer all of my questions.  For the homework that I have given, Imost of them completed the creation of the tables.  But everyone forgot to create the foreign keys.

There were only 2 challenges faced by the kids when they were doing their home work. First was when they had a space in the database or table name. Second was the table was not created in the new database they created.

The agenda for week 3 was to show them how to insert data into the tables and view the data.  I could just cover select statement and basic where clause and the time was up.

I feel very happy to see the enthusiasm in all of these kids. I am looking forward for the session on next Monday.

Below are few photos from the session.

Free #Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids aged between 9 to 14 years week 2 update

It was good to see all the kids come back to hear all about databases for the 2nd week.  There were a few new enrolments.
So first I started off with a Recap of last week, to help the 3 new kids understand the database concepts and also to test the knowledge that all the others have gained. It was good to see that they remembered most of the concepts except for the redundancy part.

The agenda for week 2 was to show them how they could access SSMS and create a database and a table.  Most of them had hands on experience creating a database named schools and a table named school.

I also wanted to cover how to insert data in this week but ran out of time so will do that next week.

I have also given them some homework to ensure that they practice what was learnt in the past 2 sessions.

I am looking forward for the session on next Monday.  . #sqlfamily #microsoftnz #mvpbuzz

Databases and Data Visualisations Course for kids Season 2 Week 1

Databases and Data Visualisations Course for kids Season 2 Week 1
I have started the second leg of Databases and Data Visualisations course for kids aged between 10 to 14 years yesterday.

This time I have asked the kids to fill out a survey to understand their current level of knowledge regarding what data is and what visualisation is. I also asked what they want to get out of this course.

The answers ranged from "understanding the basics of data" to "Learn about the basics of data visualization and what I can do about it in the future "

The best answer I liked was "I want to learn more about databases online. I also want to learn a little bit of coding since that is definitely not my best factor. I want to learnt things that I didn't know before to extend my thinking and become more all-rounder."

From the survey, I was confident that the kids already knew what data means and they could easily give some examples.

To explain about Relational Databases and Normalisation, I have asked each one of them to type in some information about their student ids names, classes, their emails, teachers and teacher's emails and schools.

This activity proved to be useful to make them understand the concept of redundancy and the disadvantages that arise out of it.  Then it was easy for me to explain the concept of Normalisation.

I have given them home work of installing SQL Server on their laptops.

I am looking forward for the session of Creating databases and tables using SQL Server next Monday.

My Microsoft MVP Award

At the beginning of this month, I received an email from #microsoft telling me that I have received the Most Valuable Professional (MVP Award). #mvpbuzz

Following that in the 2nd week, I received my MVP Award Gift package!

I believe that this award is for my contribution to the community in Microsoft technologies.

I never thought that my passion for sharing my knowledge would end up receiving this award one day. I would like to thank the Almighty for all the support in my life. I would like to thank my husband, my parents and 2 lovely daughters without whose support, this would not have happened.

I would like to thank @reza and @leila  for believing in me and nominating me.

Finally I would like to thank all the visitors to my blog posts, attendees of my various presentations, webinars and conferences.

My presentation materials for the power bi virtual days webinar

@powerbidays thanks for the opportunity to present at the virtual conference yesterday. My topic was 'Sentiment Analysis Using Cognitive Services in Power BI'.
Below is the link to presentation material and json code on github.
https://github.com/indupriya9/PowerBIDays-April-2019


Here is a link to the webinar on the same topic I did on PASS Marathon that you can use to follow my demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trtrgy59vSw&feature=youtu.be 

Global AI Night

I’ll be lucky enough to be part of the team hosting the 1st Global AI Night at the Auckland Microsoft Offices Auckland with the amazing team of Auckland Artificial Intelligence User Group.  The Global AI Night is a free evening event organized by local communities all over the world that are passionate about Artificial Intelligence on the Microsoft Azure.

You can register at https://www.meetup.com/meetup-group-LyenJaPw/events/259373751/

#GlobalAINight  #GlobalAIBootcamp

My first webinar session in PASS Marathon

My session from the hashtag#passmarathon this morning is here.  The topic is Sentiment Analysis using Cognitive Services in Power BI.


You can download the slides from this link beforehand
https://lnkd.in/gXSAmav

I will post the link to the webinar as soon as it is available,