DevUp 2025 Recap

Had an incredible time at DevUp in St. Louis this weekend! This conference gets better and better each year and draws in some incredible folks from all over the country. Huge shout out to the organizers for planning such a fun event and facilitating an attendee party where we all got to make some great new friends (and even see a few magic tricks!). I’m honored they asked me to give two sessions this year, thank you to everyone who attended and asked thought provoking questions that really took the sessions to a new level. Hope we can stay connected and learn more from each other in the future! Below are some notes from a few sessions I attended or heard about from other attendees that sounded amazing. I also included a link to my github with the slides and resources used in the sessions for future reference.

https://www.devupconf.org/sessions

Link to my github: https://github.com/Anytsirk12/DataOnWheels/tree/main/2025%20Presentations/2025%20DevUp

It was also awesome to hang out with another member of the P3 tribe, James Bartlett! We always have a blast and he had some awesome sessions, so check him out if you attend a conference he’s at! But also, check out the Drill Down podcast (https://www.linkedin.com/events/7285420982427693057/). Highly recommend tuning in to their bi-weekly pod for some top notch content and speakers

How to Navigate Change with Confidence by Alain Hunkins

alainhunkins.com/devup

Industrial Age: human resources

Digital Age: human beings

The goal is to crack the code of human behavior to help humans become great. The key is ritual.

Ritual = shared meaning + repetition + emotion

You manage processes and projects, you lead people.

Leading humans is all about collaboration, communication, and connection.

Your brain has a negativity bias.

Every behavior of a person is a lagging indicator of the behavior of their leader.

Trust = credibility (do what you say) + connection (show up real) + care (act like others matter, fake it until you make it if needed)

As leaders, build rituals around credibility, connection, and care. Small actions have big impact.

Ritual <> Routine (habitual action with no emotion or meaning)

Ritual design elements = purpose, cadence, format, leadership signal, test & adjust

3-Question Check-in is a great tool. How are you feeling? What is on your mind? How can I support you?

Psychological safety is key to a great team. What does that entail? Equal airtime, leaders model vulnerability,

End meetings by asking for receipts – what were the major action items?

How do we start? 5-minute ritual challenge – pick a stupid small ritual, scale, try it for 30 days. There’s a lot of rituals you can implement. Which ritual is best? The one you use. Some options are the agile leader toolkit. https://alainhunkins.com/devup_agile/

Build a Fabric Real-Time Intelligence Solution in a Day by Alex Powers

Very hands on workshop, highly recommend attending one of these if you get a chance! It was a 90 minute demo where you build your own RTI solution end-to-end. Pretty incredible!

Power BI Governance – All-In-One Solution for Impact Analysis & Backups by Chris Cusumano

Awesome solution to view your Power BI estate without being a tenant admin. Easily identify what will break if a measure changes down to the visual level. I’m super bummed I didn’t get to attend this one, but we chatted about it together after lunch and WOW it blew me away! Check it out and let me know what you think!

https://github.com/chris1642/Power-BI-Backup-Impact-Analysis-Governance-Solution

https://chris1642.github.io/Power_BI_Governance_Presentation/

Seamless, open and intelligent integrations with Microsoft Fabric by Alex Powers

Alex expertly walked through easy ways to utilize Fabric as an application developer. Honestly, it blew me away to see the demos of using event houses, transanalytical task flows, workflows, and AI features throughout Fabric as a backend for an application. This is definitely a space to watch as Fabric matures in a world of AI and agents.

Report Building at Light Speed – Wireframes & Themes by Mike Carlo

This is a session I desperately wanted to attend, but couldn’t make it since I was speaking at the same time. I’m hoping Mike posts some of the resources from this talk soon (keep an eye out on PowerBI.tips resources!) because just our discussions about this were incredible. If you’re looking to level up your report design, I cannot recommend it enough.

Here’s the abstract for more details:

As you think about building Power BI reports, there is so much time needed to stylize to create a stunning looking report. Wouldn’t it be nice to build reports faster with more precision.

This is a fun demo heavy session about how to create wireframes of Power BI reports with themed properties. The worlds best theme generator has evolved to now build entire reports!