This week, I was invited to the Microsoft office in London. The reason was a Level 400 training for Microsoft partners on Real-Time Intelligence.
As I’ve been working with RTI on a large project for the last year, it felt natural to join this training. My objectives were not listed, but I wanted to see whether the way we set up the code was consistent with best practices, whether there were things we were overlooking, and what options we could add if it would make sense.
Day 1.
The day started with brief introductions from the presenters and attendees. This laid the foundation for the training, as it made clear where everyone was coming from. After some basic slides on Fabric, the training quickly progressed into how to ingest data into Fabric RTI. The last part of the day was reserved for a ‘hackathon ‘, just to make sure we were working with what was shown.
The exercises really resembled the style of the training I’ve written on SQL; there is a vaguely described goal the attendee should reach, but no list of steps to take. This made it more challenging to find a working solution. For instance, I learned that you can add a custom connector as a source, where a notebook can push data into an Eventstream. Really cool, and something I hadn’t thought of before.
After a nice dinner in a curry place nearby Paddington, I went for a nice walk in Hyde Park.
Day 2.
This day started with a brief review of what was taught the day before, followed by different ways to process data when it’s in the Eventhouse. This was right into my wheelhouse, as I love tinkering with the KQL code. Again, there was a hackathon to work on. This was a little easier for me, as I already had a lot of the code written for our regular project. This meant I could focus on things I missed the day before and create a pull request for the code in the training, as there was a small omission in the SQL. You cannot remove the DBA from my source code!
Again, after the training, a nice curry in the same place followed by another nice stroll through Hyde Park. The rest of the evening was filled with something I hope to tell you more about soon.
Day 3.
This day started a little more slowly, as there wasn’t much content left to cover. But, the most interesting, in my opinion. We covered both security and activator. The first one triggered me because I learned that you can implement row-level security on Eventhouse. The activator one taught me that the 5-minute intervals where Activator would do something have been lifted; it can now trigger every 5 seconds. Other topics covered were CI/CD and the Fabric RTI MCP (Model Context Protocol).
After the learning, there was lunch and ample time for the hackathon. But more importantly, time to chat with the Microsoft people on-site. In my opinion, this is where the real value lies. Talking to people and learning from them through specific questions or scenarios. In my case, I learned more about using Terraform to deploy Fabric solutions and about the cost aspect of Fabric IQ.
As I had finished most of the hackathon’s exercises (I skipped the Power BI parts for obvious reasons), and the other attendees were done as well, we were released early to London. This gave ample time for a long walk via Hyde Park to Buckingham Palace and Kensington.
The people
In the end, the entire training revolved around the people, the connections, sharing stories and experiences. This added real value to the learning and reinforced my belief that learning is much more valuable when you’re in a room together than just following along online.
Going to London for three days was very much worth it from this human and learning point of view. Many thanks to Microsoft for organising this, and to my employer, Axians, for allowing me to attend. If you want to know more, you know where to find me.
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