This blog is based on the POWER BI or DIE podcast episode with one of the world's leading experts and influencers in Power BI - Nikola Ilic, better known as Data Mozart with his blog.
Nikola, a freelance Power BI consultant, mentor, speaker, and teacher, shares his journey into the world of Power BI. He began blogging four and a half years ago, encouraged by his wife, to document solutions to challenges he encountered at work. His background in relational databases, particularly SQL Server, eventually led him to Power BI when it was still new on the scene.
The Motivation Behind the Community Work
Nikola’s blog, Data Mozart, started as a personal project to make it easier to find solutions to common problems. What began as a tool for self-reference quickly became a resource for others facing similar challenges. He emphasizes that no matter how obvious a solution might seem, there’s always someone who can benefit from it.
Nikola’s influence extends beyond his blog. He is a well-known speaker at various international events. In 2024 alone, he has already participated in 14 events by June, traveling to places like Munich, Vegas, Prague, Croatia, Dublin, and even Lingen.
Mentorship and Giving Back
Nikola talks about his involvement in mentorship through initiatives like New Stars of Data and Power BI Bootcamp. He shares how he was mentored by Wolfgang Strasser and now mentors others in return. The Power BI Bootcamp, which he initiated, supports people who can’t afford paid training, with a particular focus on women in technology. This year, over 250 people participated, learning Power BI through a hands-on, project-based approach over 10-11 weeks.
The Challenge of Keeping Up with Power BI and Fabric
As Power BI and Fabric continue to evolve rapidly, Nikola discusses the difficulty of staying up-to-date. He shares an example from a recent presentation where changes in Fabric’s architecture required him to update his session just weeks after preparing it. He acknowledges that it’s impossible to keep track of everything, even within the scope of Power BI alone, let alone the entire Fabric ecosystem.
It is OK not to know everything
Nikola speculates on the future of specialization in Power BI and the role of AI tools like Copilot. While Copilot and similar technologies are advancing quickly, Nikola believes they still have a way to go before they can replace true data professionals. However, he cautions that predicting the future in such a rapidly evolving field is challenging.
Nikola’s Favorite Tech Stack in Fabric
When asked about his favorite tech stack in Fabric, Nikola expresses a preference for Lakehouses and the use of Spark SQL in notebooks. He highlights the potential of Fabric’s shortcuts feature, which allows users to build Direct Lake reports without physically storing data in Fabric.
This reminds me of one of my favorite concepts in Fabric - the Lakehouses for central data combined with a self-service data management workspace.
The Power of Community and Continuous Learning
Nikola shares his experience of collaborating with Michael Kovalsky from Microsoft on migrating complex semantic models to Direct Lake mode. This collaboration led to improvements in the migration tools, showcasing the power of community-driven development that finally led to the release of the semantic link labs - a free python library for lots of admin tasks in Fabric.
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