Posts

From Michael Jordan’s lucky shorts to my pre-talk routines: rituals help performers access their best state. While ‘power posing’ science failed, the psychology of consistent pre-performance routines holds up. Discover why rituals work, how they create mental anchors, and the three specific rituals that help me deliver better presentations.

Sugar went from luxury to ubiquitous poison before we understood what it was doing to us. We’re doing the exact same thing with AI, adding it to everything without genuine use cases while it erodes literacy and critical thinking. By the time we realize what we’ve lost, the infrastructure will already be built.

The ‘Angel’s Cocktail’ story about releasing hormones through storytelling is popular, but the real mechanisms are richer and more useful. Learn what’s actually happening when you hook your audience—and how understanding attention, memory, and cognitive tension makes you a better speaker.

A new city, a new country, and a new session - so many firsts in Hungary!

‘The Untruthful Art’ is back for 2025, completely revamped for our AI-driven misinformation era. With 59% of shared links never clicked and AI presenting statistical hallucinations as facts, data literacy has never been more critical. I’m updating with modern examples: AI benchmarks, social media dynamics, election polling, and climate data manipulation.

The ‘30-second rule’ for presentations is based on a misunderstood study, but the principle of starting strong still matters. Learn why leading with credentials fails, how to open with value instead, and why I memorize every word of my first five minutes.

It is time to resurrect the blog, almost exactly 10 years after its inception.

Southwest Airlines’ December scheduling collapse exposed the dangers of deprioritizing both people and technical debt, as 90s-era systems designed for 300 daily operations failed under 20,000+ operations following a leadership shift from operational focus to profit-driven management.

Encountered cryptic NuGet package errors while setting up a .NET test environment. The fix: remind NuGet where to find packages by re-adding the source with dotnet nuget add source. A simple solution to a confusing problem.

Retiring my most successful session after 20 presentations. Not because it failed, but because it exploded beyond what one session can hold. Splitting the original ‘The Untruthful Art’ into multiple new talks, with the final bow at DataMinds Connect in October.

Conferences aren’t the party most people think they are. The hidden reality: spending 10-100 hours preparing a single session, the mental exhaustion of networking, and why professional conferences are about career growth, not celebration.

One virtual session at Global Power BI Summit, then straight to the airport for SQLBits in London. Two talks, three countries, five days. The European data conference scene doesn’t stop, and neither do I this week!

Pandemic killed 2020’s plans. Now finally back on stage at DataMinds Connect in Belgium with a new session on something technical speakers ignore: emotions. First in-person conference travel since the world stopped. I’m so ready to teach again!

Years ago, fear kept me silent about bad actors in tech. Now stepping away from Data Weekender after organizers kept a speaker with documented harmful behavior. Safety demands action, not just codes of conduct. No longer afraid to speak out.

Survived a year of remote work with three essential tools: OBS for presentations that don’t bore people to death, Hugo to escape WordPress hell, and a Kindle that keeps me sane when screens become too much.

Live demos waste time at conferences. After 20+ years training, I’ve learned that controlled, pre-crafted demonstrations teach better than live coding. Can’t zoom, highlight, or control pacing when coding live. My job is helping you learn, not showing off.

Built a full-size R2D2 from scratch. Learned CNC machining and wood inlays. Got back in a glider cockpit after 16 years away. How I’m staying sane: making things with my hands and flying when my mind needs grounding.

I just had an absolute blast presenting at the Data Platform Discovery Days - both the European and the US edition! For the US edition I presented “Azure Machine Learning for the Absolute Beginner”, a session looking at machine learning in general, walking through Azure Machine Learning and giving several examples of machine learning in action - in both expected and unexpected places! The European edition asked for “Building an Empire - Implementing Power BI Step by Step”, a session on Power BI, datasets and dataflows. 

After an exceptional year of speaking internationally and contributing to the community, an unexpected email brought news. The recognition marks a journey from being intimidated by MVPs at a first PASS Summit to becoming one, with a mission to continue mentoring and sharing knowledge.

Woke up in Tel Aviv after speaking to a room that went from two people to 40 in minutes. From a small Swedish town to seven countries this year — never expected databases would take me this far.