Episode 100 of the #MVPbuzzChat series. Conversation between Microsoft Regional Director and MVP Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), Founder & CEO of CollabTalk LLC, and Microsoft Regional Director and Data Platform MVP, Reza Rad (@Rad_Reza), an author, trainer, speaker, and founder and consultant at Radacad, based in New Zealand. Recorded in July 2020.

Reza is a 10-time business intelligence and data platform MVP, an active blogger, and a community organizer who helps organize the annual Difinity Conference, the largest Microsoft Data, AI, Power BI, Power Platform and Business Applications conference in New Zealand focusing on Data Platform, AI, Business Intelligence, Business Applications, Power Platform, and Analytics.

In this episode, Reza and I talk about the evolution of the Data Platform category within the MVP program, and how Microsoft adjusts their focus areas from time to time as the technology evolves. We also have a great discussion on the data preparation and "clean up" that needs to happen before you can build your data visualizations, the learning curve, and the complexities and benefits of understanding your data. We also talk about how data science is one of the fastest growing job categories across almost every industry.

You can watch this entire interview on the CollabTalk YouTube page at https://youtu.be/0giRbAehA-8