WIT Newsletter November 2025
Hello Data WIT –
It feels like we’re in the home stretch of 2025. And November is going to be one of the busiest yet. Three major conferences across the US will be held in one week alone, and they aren’t the only ones we’ll see.
Before we get to November, we want to do a quick revisit of this past month. We want to thank Pragati Jain for her “Whirlwind Tour of Fabric” session, which she presented for our October meetup. It was definitely a whirlwind, but in the best possible way. If you missed it, you can catch it, along with all of our past meetups, on our YouTube Channel.
We are looking forward to welcoming Grace O’Halloran to our November 9th meetup. She will present “Another Brick in the Firewall: How to Secure Your Azure Data Platform.” Make sure you RSVP and join us for this session.
As we mentioned, November is a conference month bonanza. Microsoft Ignite, PASS Data Community Summit, and Live 360 are all happening the exact same week. And all of them will have some amazing WIT speakers giving keynotes, pre-cons, and sessions. Scroll to the bottom of the page for the complete list.
We want to take a moment to highlight a special event at the PASS Data Community Summit. It’s the annual Women In Tech luncheon. This year, our keynote speaker is Mridula Pandit. Her topic, “Unpolished, Unpopular, Unapologetic: The Superpower of Being ‘Not Special'”, is an important one, and we can’t wait to hear what Mridula has to say. The WIT luncheon is a “Can’t Miss” tradition at Summit so make sure you don’t miss it! Stay tuned for more information on how to sign up.
All three of us—Tracy, Deborah, and Kristy—will be at Summit this year, and we want to meet as many of you as possible. We’ll have #DATAWIT ribbons again, so make sure you get one. We want to hear what you have to say and what you want this group to be, so we can continue to build and support this community. So make sure you say hi—bonus points for letting us know that you read this in the newsletter.
As a reminder, you don’t have to see us in person to reach out to us. Feel free to drop us a line with your thoughts.
Looking forward to seeing you this November!
Deborah, Kristy & Tracy
SQL Saturday Houston 2025 – November 8
| Speaker | Session Title |
|---|---|
| Ginger Grant | Understanding and Using AI for the Data Professional |
| Marwah Obaid | Education & AI |
| Pam Lahoud | The Five Ws of SQL database in Microsoft Fabric |
SQL Saturday Oregon/SW Washington 2025 – November 15
| Speaker | Session Title |
|---|---|
| Amy Abel | AI Meets Data: Redefining Reliability in the Age of Intelligence |
| The Proactive DBA Building Reliability Through Automation | |
| Deepika Annam | Microsoft Data Platform Optimization: Exploring Deep Reinforcement Learning |
| Kellyn Gorman | Keynote: Guard Rails of Data Democratization with AI in Today’s World |
| Kristyna Ferris | The Fellowship of the Star Schema: Transforming OLTP Data for Power BI |
| Lenore Flower | Paginated Reports 101 for the Power BI Veteran |
| Michelle Bird | Don’t Outshine the Decision Makers |
| Robin Abramson | Bye-Bye, Northwind: Transform Static Demo Data with Live Copilot-Powered Data Lake Generation that a |
| Sally Dabbah | Step-by-Step Guide: Building ETL Workflows in Microsoft Fabric |
Live! 360 Tech Con Orlando 2025 – November 16-21
| Speaker | Session Title |
|---|---|
| Gilda Alvarez | Implementing Azure Arc for SQL Server |
| Migrating SQL Server from On-premises to Azure MI using DMS | |
| Meagan Longoria | Data Visualization in Fabric Notebooks for the Power BI Pro |
| Four Things You Can Do with Semantic Link Labs and Power BI Reports | |
| Panel Discussion: Data Quality in the Age of AI: Challenges and Opportunities | |
| Parameterizing Pipeline Connections in Microsoft Fabric |
PASS Data Community Summit 2025 – November 17-21
| Speaker | Session Title |
|---|---|
| Akshata Revankar | Power BI CI/CD Simplified: GitHub & Azure Devops Automation |
| Allison Harris | A Data Engineer Teaches A DBA Python: Mother/Daughter Duo Collaborates |
| Anupama Natarajan | Build Real-Time Dashboards with Fabric’s Eventstream and KQL |
| Smarter Together: Agentic Capabilities + Fabric = Intelligent Automation | |
| Blythe Morrow | Managing Yourself and Others |
| Cindy Gross | I got the role…. Now what? |
| Deborah Melkin | Optimized Locking: Improving SQL Server Transaction Concurrency |
| Deepthi Goguri | Performance Tuning: How Query Store Saves the Day (and Night) |
| Elayne Jones | Reign in the Chaos: Organizing Fabric Workspaces |
| Elena Drakulevska | Designing for Everyone: Power BI Through the Eyes of Your Users |
| User-Centered Power BI Report Development: Enhancing UX and Accessibility | |
| Elena Marquetti-Ali | Code to Clarity: Communicating Technical Ideas to a Non-Technical Audience |
| Erin Stellato | Becoming Azure SQL DBA – Copilot and AI |
| Becoming Azure SQL DBA – New opportunities in Azure – panel discussion | |
| Becoming Azure SQL DBA – Performance Monitoring, Tuning, and Alerting | |
| Breakfast with the Microsoft Data Leadership Team | |
| Inside SQL Server 2025 | |
| Smarter GitHub Copilot + SSMS 22 | |
| Ginger Grant | Developing a Fabric Environment From Start to End |
| Effective Data Modeling for Analytics in Warehousing, Fabric and Power BI | |
| Haripriya Naidu | Deep Dive into Memory Optimized TempDB |
| Maximizing SQL Server Performance with Read Committed Snapshot Isolation | |
| Heidi Hasting | Fabric-CLI Deep Dive: From Zero to Full Deployment with Live Demos |
| Heini Ilmarinen | Getting Data In and Out of Azure |
| No-Nonsense Guide to Data Engineering in Microsoft Fabric | |
| Janis Griffin | Mastering PostgreSQL Performance: A Systematic Approach to Query Tuning |
| Juliana Smith | Designing for Everyone: Power BI Through the Eyes of Your Users |
| User-Centered Power BI Report Development: Enhancing UX and Accessibility | |
| Kellyn Gorman | Becoming Multi-platform Proficient and the Tools Which Can Help You (Oracle, some MySQL and MongoDB) |
| Multi-Platform Databases in the Cloud – How Workloads Impact Decisions | |
| Redgate Keynote: The Data Professional of the Future: Practical Advice for Operational Excellence in an Uncertain World | |
| Toolbox Treasures: 10 Productivity Hacks to Level Up Your Database Work | |
| Zero to Understanding with Oracle as a Microsoft Professional | |
| Kendra Little | Advanced T-SQL Triage: The Art of Fixing Terrible Code |
| SQL Server RDS Starter Kit | |
| T-SQL That Doesn’t Suck: Real-World Patterns for Faster, Smarter Queries | |
| Kristyna Ferris | Unlock Real-Time Insights with Fabric Real-Time Dashboards and Kusto-Powered Power BI Reports |
| Laura Copeland | Picking the right Cloud Platform for your Project |
| Redgate Keynote: The Data Professional of the Future: Practical Advice for Operational Excellence in an Uncertain World | |
| Create and Manage Masked Databases in the Cloud for Development and Testing | |
| Lenore Flower | Beyond the Tech: Improving Collaboration in Data Governance |
| Leslie Welch | It’s Only a Model: Demystifying Row Level Security in Power BI |
| Marsha Pierce | Deploy, Restore, and Patch Your Databases Anywhere, Anytime in Minutes |
| Rapid Cloning & Data Privacy: Accelerating Dev/Test with Nutanix + Redgate | |
| What I Wish I Knew: A Candid Guide to Becoming a Leader | |
| Monica Morehouse | Solving Real-World SQL Server Performance Problems |
| Automatic Performance Tuning | |
| Becoming Azure SQL DBA – New opportunities in Azure – panel discussion | |
| Becoming Azure SQL DBA – Performance Monitoring, Tuning, and Alerting | |
| Top 5 Performance Considerations for Database Cloud Environments | |
| Mridula Pandit | Decoding Software Purchases: A Vendor-Neutral Guide to Achieving Organizational Buy-In |
| WIT Luncheon: Unpolished, Unpopular, Unapologetic: The Superpower of Being ‘Not Special’ | |
| Padma Rama Divya Achanta | Mastering Azure SQL Database Essentials for Modern Data Professionals |
| Pam Lahoud | Becoming Azure SQL DBA – New opportunities in Azure – panel discussion |
| Becoming Azure SQL DBA – Performance Monitoring, Tuning, and Alerting | |
| Becoming Azure SQL DBA – Security, Compliance, Threats, Connectivity | |
| Priya Sathy | Breakfast with the Microsoft Data Leadership Team |
| Microsoft Keynote: What’s New in Azure Databases: Real-World Solutions for Developers and Enterprises | |
| Sakshi Kiran Naik | Building Trustworthy AI With Techniques To Reduce Bias In Real-World Use |
| Sharon Reid | A Data Engineer Teaches A DBA Python: Mother/Daughter Duo Collaborates |
| Stephanie Reis | You Can Do WHAT in SQL Server?!? |
| Surbhi Pokharna | Redgate Luncheon: Harnessing AI: Insights and Innovations from the Community |
| The Role of AI in Modern Data Management | |
| Unleashing the Power of Azure SQL Database ‘Hyperscale’ | |
| Tiphfennie Gray | Inclusive Strategies for Stress Management and Work-Life Balance |
| Varsha R | Building a Proactive Database Monitoring Playbook That Actually Works |
| Yo-Lei Chen | SQL Database in Fabric: The Unified Database for AI Apps and Analytics |
Microsoft Ignite – November 18-21
| Speaker | Session Title |
|---|---|
| Ann Choi | Accelerate Secure AI: Microsoft’s Security Advantage for Partners |
| Maithili Dandige | Securing data across Microsoft environments with Microsoft Purview |
| Nathalia Borges | Beyond Visibility: Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management |
| Community Connection Pod: Reimagining data protection with the new Microsoft Purview Data Security Posture Management | |
| Securing data across Microsoft environments with Microsoft Purview | |
| Paige Johnson | Protecting your data at speed and scale with AI-powered data security |
| Samriddhi Seth | Securing data across Microsoft environments with Microsoft Purview |
| Sushma Rao | Securing data across Microsoft environments with Microsoft Purview |
| Uma Arjunan | Address core data security & governance goals with Microsoft Purview |
| Vivian Ma | Best practices to maximize Microsoft Purview data security solutions |
| Preventing data exfiltration with a layered protection strategy |