Pillars of Power BI Development — Visualization and Reporting (Part e: Data Storytelling)
Last week, I shared the 1st part of my article on data storytelling, with focus on books and blogs related to data storytelling. I had mentioned that it is by no means a comprehensive list and people can share resources that they use in their own work or have found useful. I must admit that I got some good feedback in comments and in DMs as well. So, I am going to start with a few resources that I missed out last time and then discuss some of the data viz experts and Power BI report developers that always use elements of data storytelling embedded in their reports.
I start with the resources on data viz shared by Aurélien Vautier. I am feeling kind of embarrassed that I missed him last time, but you can visit his website here and you fill find some amazing resources on data viz, how to develop reports and dashboards using UX practices and effectively treat these as a data product. There is a pretty cool gallery that has been maintained and you can subscribe to it and support some of the amazing work Aurélien Vautier is doing in this area.
There are 2 great authors that I also missed out last time. The first one is Alberto Cairo who has written some great books on data viz. His books are “The Art of Insight” (November of 2023), “How Charts Lie” (October 2019), “The Truthful Art” (2016), and “The Functional Art” (2013). I have read some great reviews about all of these books. So, do check these out. Next author is Nick Desbarats and his books “Practical Charts” and “More Practical Charts”. My friend Brian Julius did this post a couple of days back, where he has covered these books and you can read more about these books here and how you can purchase these.
Lastly, there are some excellent resources on data storytelling that are shared by Stephanie Evergreen on her website here. She has an excellent newsletter too where she talks about data storytelling and data visualization. Again, readers are encouraged to share more resources in the comments.
Before I actually talk about the Power BI data visualization and storytelling experts, I would like to mention 2 very good websites that put to practice all the things about data viz and storytelling that I have been talking about. Make over Monday is perhaps the best go-to website for practicing and improving data visualization. They have a dataset on a particular theme every week and then people share their data viz with the hashtag #MakeoverMonday. The other one is Workout Wednesday that works on a similar theme and people can participate in their challenges every week and learn from some of the best like Kerry Kolosko, Meagan Longoria , Shannon Lindsay and so many others.
So, now let us come to the people who use all these great data storytelling best practices in their work and make Power BI reports and dashboards. I will just stick with Power BI report developers in this article, because that is what this whole series focuses on, but there are so many report developers who use tools like Excel, Tableau, Qlik and others to showcase these best practices and their work can definitely be used as an inspiration by all Power BI report developers.
Again this list is by no means complete, so please feel free to add more names to it. You can find the work of most of these people on the novyPro website, so do check out the amazing reports and dashboards made by these people.
The people who you should follow include
Gustaw Dudek — Some of his reports can be seen here and his LinkedIn content production dashboard here
Alexandru Badiu — Some of his reports can be seen here and read his blog here
Gerard Duggan — Some of his reports can be seen here and read his blog here
Matthew Spuffard — Some of the demo reports that he developed are here
Federico Pastor — The King of Challenges!! The most liked report on novypro is here
Mudassir Ali — Check out his amazing work on Enterprise DNA
Sean Chandler — Some of the reports he has developed can be seen here
Kavita Behera — Just look out for #TheWeeklyChart on LinkedIn and you will see all the amazing content she shares with the community.
Kerry Kolosko — Check out her amazing work here
Alice Drummond — Check out the excellent work she is doing in mapping and on the environment here
Isabelle Bittar, MBA, PMP, CRHA — One of the best data viz blogs on Medium
Brian Julius — The most loved data guy on LinkedIn! His reports can be found here and Enterprise DNA
Greg Philps — Check out his work here and on Enterprise DNA
Rachwen Mosbehi — Check out his work here
Paul Gerber — Check out his work here
Ashish Babaria — Check out his work here
Manan Intodia — Check out his work here
Bianca Canalli Zagueto Barragan — Check out her work here
Mara Pereira — She is the person behind Data Pears and her amazing work can be found here
Jefferson Alves — Most of his content is in Portuguese and highly inspirational. Follow his channel here
Leticia Smirelli — Some amazing work she shares on her Portuguese website here.
carlos barboza — An Excel guru who contributes in the Power BI community as well. Some of his Excel work serves as an inspiration for a lot of Power BI developers. Do watch this webinar with Nestor Adrianzen , who himself shares excellent Power BI content on his website here.
Andrzej Leszkiewicz — He has been sharing some excellent stuff on #deneb and data visualization on LinkedIn and his YouTube channel.
David Johnston — He shares some excellent stuff related to data viz on LinkedIn and you can check out his work here.
Elena Drakulevska — She is very enthusiastic about UX and Power BI. I have watched some of her talks and these are excellent. Any newcomer must watch this video to learn about the UX principles and how to use these effectively
Jarrett Moore — Check out his work at Enterprise DNA
Armand van Amersfoort — A member of the elite Power BI data visualization team, his amazing and inspirational work can be seen on his channel.
Laurens Wessels — He shares some stunning UI/UX designs made in Power BI in his posts.
I have already mentioned and shared the work of some people in previous articles in this series, but still if I have missed out on some people, then please do share those in comments.
Next week, I move from development to deployment and start covering areas important within Power BI Service. Stay tuned!!
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