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Democratized Data Science, Custom Software is the Future, and the Data Gene Rides Again
Every week brings a new AI model, a new benchmark, and a new reason to believe everything just changed. But for most companies, none of that matters if the people closest to the work can't use these tools to build something real. In this ep
The Apparent Meaninglessness of AI Benchmarks, plus How to Explain AI Opportunities to Others
Every week brings a new AI benchmark. Higher scores. Bigger claims. Louder voices insisting this changes everything. And yet, when you put AI in front of a real business problem, none of that noise seems to help. In this episode, Rob and Ju
The Power BI Fundamentals Behind Expert Development *and* AI Simplicity, w/ Microsoft's Rui Romano
Everyone keeps asking whether AI kills Power BI or makes it stronger. Rui Romano flips that entire question on its head. As the Microsoft PM behind PBIP, TMDL, and all the file format work that rebuilt Power BI's foundation, he explains how
Why We Should Stop Paying Attention to the % of AI Projects which Fail (and Instead Learn Why the Others Succeed)
This episode starts with a familiar scene. A role opens, the applications pour in, and suddenly you're staring at a mountain of resumes that deserve real attention but arrive faster than anyone can process. The mix had everything… experienc
Cat Negotiations, Dishonest Chatbots, AI vs AI in the Job Market, and More Real World AI Use Cases
Rob finally cracked his years long standoff with the podcast lair cat, and the fix was hilariously simple. That small victory ends up setting the tone for the whole episode, because everything that follows has the same energy: real problems
Customizing AI for Your Business is Crucial But It Isn't Hard
Everyone's talking about AI like it's plug-and-play. Spoiler: it's not. In this episode, Rob digs into why Big Tech's billions in AI R&D haven't yet turned into matching revenue — and what that means for the rest of us. The truth? The real
Is AI a Bubble?
When the bubble pops, what's left standing? Everyone's calling AI a bubble — and yeah, there's some wild stuff happening behind the scenes. Billions changing hands between the same few tech giants. Investments that look more like circular l
Getting Specific with AI via Categories: Chat, Headless, and Embedded
Everyone's talking about AI. Almost no one's getting specific. And that's the problem. Rob and Justin break down the three categories that matter: chat agents you talk to, embedded assistants baked into your workflows, and headless systems
AI Agents for the Manufacturing Industry, w/ Interpak CFO Bill Krolicki
AI without the committee: Most manufacturers are still holding meetings about AI. Bill Krolicki just built it. As CFO of Interpak, he didn't wait for a strategy deck or a vendor pilot—he wired Power BI and Power Automate into a self-running
AI is "Just" a New Faucet, plus the Value of Getting Specific
Last week we got a facelift—new name, new look, same deep data dives. This week? We prove the rebrand wasn't just cosmetic. Rob kicks things off with a time machine moment: his first gig at Microsoft in the '90s, building the Windows Instal
YOU are the AI Cavalry
Everyone's talking like AI is coming for your job. Rob's here to tell you it's coming for your skill set. If you already think in tables, models, and relationships, congratulations—you're built for what's next. This episode is part pep talk
Can AI Go Straight from Requirements to Power BI Models?
Nobody loves requirements docs. They're the corporate equivalent of writing a novel just so someone can skim the back cover. The real question is whether you can ditch all that and go straight from "here's what I need" to a working Power BI
AI Isn't Magic - It's Middleware (And That's Good News)
Large language models aren't magic. They're pivot tables for words. That's the real breakthrough — not a crystal ball, not a robot overlord, but a new way to roll up all the noise in your business into something you can actually use. And th
What Exactly IS an AI Agent? We Propose a Friendly, Non-Gatekeeping Definition
This isn't another AI think-piece, it's a full-on data brawl. Copilot is out here plagiarizing Rob's pivot table crusade while the self-appointed nerd police try to lock down the definition of agentic AI. Meanwhile, thirty years of fantasy
Is CoPilot the End of Filters? (Plus a Cautionary Tale)
Pivot tables finally auto-refresh. Humanity wins, but our host Rob Collie is still annoyed. Why? Because he asked for it back in 2007 and got shot down. That little gripe kicks off a bigger conversation: what else in data is overdue for a s
The "Steal My Money" Lever: A Timely Tale of Data Saving the Day
Every campaign has it: that shiny "more reach, lower cost" lever that looks like marketing gold but really just siphons your budget into digital quicksand. We pulled it. The metrics looked fantastic. And that's exactly how we knew we'd been
Even in the AI Era, Communication is the Central Theme
AI is rewriting the rules of analytics. Copilot can pull answers straight from your semantic model and bypass the dashboard entirely. But for all the tech fireworks, the same old truth holds: communication is still the hardest part. Stakeho
Episode 200: The Road Ahead for Data and AI
Two hundred episodes in, and we're done with the warm-up! Episode 200 finds Rob flying solo and pulling zero punches on the question everyone's quietly asking: what's the future of data work? No anniversary nostalgia here, just uncomfortabl
The "Dobie Moment" (The Awesome Power of AI/CoPilot Frontends - AND a Cautionary Tale)
Most of us have been in the trenches long enough to know when something's about to flip the script. And brother, we're standing at the edge of a cliff most data folks don't even see coming. Rob Collie thought he had Power BI figured out. Th
The Million-Token Myth and the Magic of Digital Colleagues
AI looks unstoppable… until you hand it a hundred pages of meeting notes. Rob and Justin dig into why context windows and token limits quietly run the show. That "million-token" brag from Google? More like weighing the Titanic in bananas. F
Semantic Models Give You (and Microsoft) the AI Upper Hand - Plus a History Lesson on Why Frontends Matter
Back in 2010, Tableau beat smarter tools with a better demo. No brain, all charm and the market loved it. Fast-forward to now: same playbook, new costume. The AI dashboard crowd is selling "natural language BI" with zero semantic model, zer
Everything's Real, Everything Matters, and Everyone Knows It w/ Quadrant Concrete CFO Joseph Graziano
Let's say your business runs on sun, sweat, and schedule precision. You've got crews in the field, materials that don't wait, and about 90 minutes to get it right before the product turns into a thousand-pound paperweight. That's the world
It's Time to Start Giving Power BI CoPilot a Serious Look (For End User Interaction)
It started as a side project. Rob Collie built a Power BI model for his rec league hockey team. Just for fun. Just to see what the data could say. But something weird happened. The dashboards were solid. The data model was solid. But, the u
Connecting AI to Your Company's Internal Information
AI wants your data, but it can't handle the truth . . . "We'll just plug our data into ChatGPT." Sure. Sounds easy. Rob thought so too, right up until he hit token limits, had to install Python, and discovered that even two megabytes of tra
An Inflection Point in AI? Understanding MCP and Multi-Agent
For a while, you could pretend AI was still a someday problem. Not anymore. Rob Collie and Justin Mannhardt are back, and this time they are tackling Model-Context-Protocol (MCP) and Multi-Agent Systems, two shifts that could finally put an
Confessions of a Data Gener w/ Sakiko Stickley
Sakiko Stickley joins Raw Data to share a story that is part inspiration, part revelation, and a whole lot of truth-telling. From the first moment she discovered Power Pivot, Sakiko did not just learn data. She lived it. She rewired reporti
The Biggest Improvements Announced at FabCon, and the Ever-Widening Gap Between Adoption and Capabilities
What's the value of a long-awaited feature? Well, that depends. Have you ever tried explaining a fiscal calendar that doesn't believe in months? This week, Rob Collie and Justin Mannhardt dive into the latest Microsoft Fabric updates, inclu
Data, Data, and Metadata: Letting ChatGPT Interpret Power BI Output
What happens when you hand off your Power BI output to ChatGPT and ask it to make sense of your world? You might be surprised. This week, Rob shares a deeply personal use case. One that ties together two major themes we've been exploring: •
AI Agents, Business Bros, and Snake Oil
AI agents are making big waves, but are they the future of business or just another passing trend? In this episode, Rob Collie and Justin Mannhardt explore the rise of AI agents, what they actually do, and why the excitement might be a litt
One Data Model to Rule them All?
Listener John sent in a classic question: should you build one all-encompassing data model, or should each part of your business have its own? If you think the answer is black and white, well, welcome to the world of data modeling, where nu