James Dales

Having previously led the Power BI and Microsoft Fabric capabilities at both UK and global level for a large multi-national Microsoft consultancy, in 2024 James established an ambitious geospatial data company Tekantis, to focus on geospatial analytics and data products. James is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and is the co-leader of the London Fabric and Power BI user group. In 2019 he became the first member of the Power BI Contributors Program, working alongside the Microsoft engineering team to build new functionality into the Power BI product codebase. He has a keen interest in geospatial and real-time analytics and is the author of the Icon Map visuals for Power BI.

Proposed Sessions for 2026

Real-Time Intelligence Meets Location: How Maps in Microsoft Fabric Transform Your Analytics

Learn how Microsoft Fabric brings real-time and location intelligence together. Stream and transform live data with Real-Time Intelligence, visualize it instantly with Maps in Fabric, and then use Power BI to build interactive, rich geospatial analytics. In this demo-heavy session, we'll build the end-to-end solutions using real life data sources and examples.

Previous Sessions

Scanning the skies above SQLBits - Realtime streaming of flight data with Microsoft Fabric

Using the real-time analytics capabilities of Microsoft Fabric we'll stream aircraft transponder data via a Raspberry PI and antenna into Microsoft Fabric. Through an end-to-end demo, we'll use Eventstream and KQL database to ingest the current locations of 100s of aircraft as they fly above the SQLBits venue. We'll then display and analyse these aircraft in Power BI, and use KQL DB's powerful spatial functions to determine the which parts of the area experience the most amount of air traffic.

Power BI Map Magic - Make amazing maps with Power BI

Liven up your Power BI reports with spatial analytics. Which visuals fit best for different map types with a deep dive of more advanced mapping themes.