Data to Insights: Amazon QuickSight & Firemind Event

Last week, Firemind and Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosted a one-day event at the Blue Fin Building in London, focused on leveraging the generative BI and AI capabilities of Amazon QuickSight to drive innovation for organisations.

The day was a massive success, bringing together industry experts, AWS specialists, and data enthusiasts to provide attendees with valuable insights and practical knowledge on a range of topics.

The morning sessions laid a strong foundation, covering critical areas such as data governance, the latest advancements in business intelligence, the integration of generative AI within Amazon QuickSight, and cost optimisation techniques. These sessions equipped attendees with a deep understanding of the tools and strategies needed to drive data-driven innovation.

In the afternoon, attendees had the opportunity to put their newfound knowledge into practice during hands-on workshops. Here, they were able to build their own dashboards using Amazon QuickSight, experiencing first-hand how they can leverage generative BI capabilities to streamline their dashboard creation process.

The gallery

The day’s agenda

Data strategy in the era of AI

The morning sessions kicked off with a presentation from Luis Campos, the EMEA GTM Lead for Data Governance at AWS. Luis addressed the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias where people overestimate their abilities. He emphasised that while AI will provide many answers, the key is ensuring that AI is learning from high-quality data.

Luis explored what attributes make “good data,” which include accuracy, completeness, reliability, relevance, and timeliness. He also showcased Amazon DataZone, a service that helps organisations manage and govern their data effectively.

How Amazon QuickSight delivers a modern BI experience

Next, Jonathan Preston, the Worldwide GTM Specialist for Amazon QuickSight at AWS, provided an overview of the platform’s Buisness Intelligence (BI) capabilities. He highlighted QuickSight’s ability to create beautiful, interactive dashboards with rich interactivity, fast navigation, and accessibility on any device. Jonathan also showcased Amazon QuickSight’s power to embed analytics into custom applications, enabling developers to quickly add generative BI capabilities to their web apps.

Customer success story: snap-on’s data-driven transformation

One of the highlights of the morning was the customer success story shared by Ahmed Nuaman, the Managing Director of Firemind. Ahmed detailed Snap-on‘s journey in migrating from a legacy BI solution to Amazon QuickSight. Through on-site workshops, Firemind built trust with Snap-on and showcased the art of the possible with QuickSight, including best practices for removing ETL from business intelligence tooling and leveraging Amazon Redshift for increased flexibility and scalability.

Generative business intelligence

Ahmed Nuaman then went on to deliver a second session around generative BI capabilities in Amazon QuickSight. He demonstrated how the platform’s new Amazon Q capabilities can assist business analysts in building dashboards more efficiently and empower business users to generate data-driven stories and insights on demand.

Driving value and powerful cost analysis with Amazon QuickSight

Nisha Notani, a Technical Account Manager at AWS, showcased how Amazon Web Services (AWS), leverages the cloud intelligence dashboards within Amazon QuickSight to gain visibility into its cloud costs and optimise its cloud spending. Nisha highlighted the importance of FinOps, a cultural practice and operational framework that enables organisations to maximise the business value of the cloud.

Hands-on with QuickSight

The afternoon consisted of hands-on workshops led by Andrew Bacon, a QuickSight Solutions Architect at AWS, and Harry Dean, a Data Engineer from Firemind. Attendees had the opportunity to build their own dashboards using Amazon QuickSight, exploring the platform’s intuitive authoring experience and leveraging the generative BI capabilities to streamline their dashboard creation process.

Resources for ongoing learning and engagement

As the event drew to a close, attendees were introduced to a range of resources to continue their learning journey with Amazon QuickSight.

This included the Amazon QuickSight Community, which offers a Q&A forum to learn from Amazon QuickSight experts, video guides, and the latest blogs and news.

Additionally, attendees were encouraged to sign up for the Amazon QuickSight User Group to stay connected with other QuickSight enthusiasts, engage in polls, and follow along with a video series.

Details about the Powered by QuickSight (PbQ) program were also shared, which supports AWS software partners across their embedded analytics journey, providing curated technical guidance, co-marketing programs, and amplification from AWS.

Learn more about Firemind

As an AWS Specialist Data and AI Partner, Firemind is positioned to help businesses leverage the power of generative BI and AI capabilities within Amazon QuickSight to drive innovation and meaningful business outcomes. If you’re interested in finding out how we can help your organisation we encourage you to reach out to the team using the form below.