So Rob, before we get started, anything you think the audience needs to know about you and, uh, what you've been up to?

I think you did a great job.

I mean, uh, I helped build the first version of Power BI at Microsoft.

Um, and so that's where I grew up essentially was, was at Microsoft.

And, um, yeah, I saw what Power BI was gonna do to the BI industry, and I wanted to be part of that.

And then so, um, you know, P3 Adaptive, um, we, we originally were called Power Pivot Pro at the time because Power BI was called Power Pivot at the time.

Um, we were the first, uh, consultancy dedicated to Power BI.

Mm-hmm

all right.

I'm glad I broke through there.

The way I describe it is that the old way of building a business intelligence project, and I was part of this problem.

I helped build the first and older wave of business intelligence technology, and then I helped build this new wave.

So I'm sort of like...

Reformed in a way, right? Like I'm making up for past sins when I say this.

So the old way of doing a BI project was very plumbing first.

So you embarked on this research process.

And in fact, that

was the reason why they recruited me to work, be one of the first people working on Power BI was because of my experience with the Excel crew.

Yeah, I mean, Excel is a much deeper product than, let's say, something like Word or Outlook.

Everyone looks at the Office suite.

And, you know, it's sort of just sees a row of icons, uh, as if they're all kind of the same animal and they all, they all kind of look like the same animal.

They've all got the same sort of user interface ribbons across the top and they all produce documents and they have the same file open and file save experience and all that kind of stuff.

Excel is the, is the world's not even like VBA, not even macros or the JavaScript API.

the longer the chats go, the weirder it gets.

So if you were a leader, you were to advise a leader, um, what, what's kind of the baby steps they should be taking right now, um, or is this something that you don't start at the, uh, at the top level? Maybe like you mentioned, uh, this is a bottom-up kind of plan.

Well, I think there's two things here.

There's a-- there are, you know, there's again, like multiple altitudes at which you need to approach this stuff.

Um, [clears throat] one of them, I think the-- I, I give you an example sort of at both, at both heights, right? So like a high level example and then a, a low level.

So the, the high level example is, um, basically to understand that, um, these LLMs basically have a PhD in every topic that humanity offers PhDs in.

I mean, it, they, it just, they know so much, and they, they are so, they're so capable of reasoning through all of those things.

But they still show up at your business every day, and in every chat, they show up as a new hire.

... that can do this for you, but for most organizations it sounds like this is a definitely a stumbling block or at least the thing that keeps the leadership up at night.

But boy, that blank page is intimidating.

Yeah, I honestly wouldn't recommend it.

I've written books before.

About 10 years ago, I wrote what was at the time the runaway number one bestseller on Power BI, the dashboards and BI product from Microsoft.

And that process was so grueling on both me and my family that I swore it off.

I said, that's it.

That's the last time I'm ever going to do that.

but you know for people getting involved it's like the llms are very well trained to like start to understand your habits and what you like and what you don't like and make recommendations around workflows that like actually you know make a big difference

And what's the story arc then from that founding of Power Pivot and the blog and the company to the P3 Adaptive days?

Well, the short version of it is that I was really shocked at how good PowerPivot was, even though I was one of the first few people to work on it.

I mean, Nets came and recruited me to be one of the first few to represent this Excel demographic that we're talking about in the design of this product.

I've worked on plenty of version one initiatives like this at Microsoft.

I was as familiar as anyone about the trope that Microsoft doesn't get anything right until version three, if ever.

It was a very easy mission to be excited about, but it just seems like such a reach that when I started actually using Power Pivot, I wanted to... my expectation was that it would be, it would fall short of what could be done in multidimensional, in traditional IT.

That was my expectation.

just used fable this afternoon and half an hour i built what looks like a working version of that it's just ridiculous right just ridiculous and so that those two things that that was sort of the uh the inspiring bit out of the book for me really

I've had a few projects like that.

Yeah.

Well, I do too, right? You know? [laughs] So but I felt like what, what you're describing, Glenn, I think you're really picking up on exactly the kind of feeling I was having then, was this like, like, like, you know, these silly things, it's almost like my whole career had been building to that moment.

And, and people needed to know the things that were in my head, and I knew that other people were gonna be able to do this, that it wasn't something special about me.

It was just that I had kind of like an early glimpse.

And yeah, I am feeling that again today, and you know, this, this book that I'm, you know, releasing soon, I didn't go into this process of, of diving deep into AI so that I could write a book.

You know, it really started a little over a year ago, like really diving really super deep into AI because not...

Well, and actually, while you're talking about it, let's be sure that everybody knows the name and, and it sounds like I- we have a pretty good idea of what it's about, but maybe a little bit more details about what it's about, and uh, release date and where people can find it and all that.

I've had a few projects like that.

Yeah.

Well, I do too, right? You know? [laughs] So but I felt like what, what you're describing, Glenn, I think you're really picking up on exactly the kind of feeling I was having then, was this like, like, like, you know, these silly things, it's almost like my whole career had been building to that moment.

And, and people needed to know the things that were in my head, and I knew that other people were gonna be able to do this, that it wasn't something special about me.

It was just that I had kind of like an early glimpse.

And yeah, I am feeling that again today, and you know, this, this book that I'm, you know, releasing soon, I didn't go into this process of, of diving deep into AI so that I could write a book.

You know, it really started a little over a year ago, like really diving really super deep into AI because not...

Well, and actually, while you're talking about it, let's be sure that everybody knows the name and, and it sounds like I- we have a pretty good idea of what it's about, but maybe a little bit more details about what it's about and, uh, release date and where people can find it and all that.

I've had a few projects like that.

Yeah.

Well, I do, too, right? You know? [laughs] So, but I felt like, you know, what, what you're describing, Glenn, I think you're really picking up on exactly the kind of feeling I was having then, was this, like, like, like, you know, these silly things.

It's almost like my whole career had been building to that moment and, and people needed to know the things that were in my head.

And I knew that other people were gonna be able to do this, that there wasn't something special about me.

It was just that I had kind of, like, an early glimpse.

And yeah, I am feeling that again today, and you know, this, this book that I'm, you know, releasing soon, I didn't go into this process of, of diving deep into AI so that I could write a book.

He's... [laughs]

Like how would an individual contributor think about going about that in a way that's productive for them in role? Like, do you have any advice for taking that leap, which feels like another step?

Yeah.

I mean, the, the what's really amazing is just how much smarter even the LLM seem to get when you give them something to go on.

Um, so the, the first example that I talk about in the book is this, the concept of what I call a handbook.

Um, so if you, if you had a new hire, uh, and one of the metaphors I use is, um, an LLM is basically something that has a, especially the frontier new LLMs, they basically have PhDs in every human subject.

Every-everything that you could get a PhD in, the LLM has that level of knowledge [chuckles] and even ability to reason to a certain extent in all of those subjects.

But it shows up every day knowing nothing about your business.

[laughs]