Christmas comes late for Premier League clubs looking to bolster their squad in the January transfer window. Lots of spending is expected this year, but the winter World Cup makes the January window a bit different from most years.

The general trend has been for spending in January to increase. But there are plenty of exceptions. The biggest January spending spree came in 2018 as Liverpool splurged on Virgil Van Djik, Arsenal brought in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and Manchester City added Aymeric Laporte. The pandemic and the resulting empty stadiums meant spending in 2021 was the lowest in nine years, but last year saw January spending bounce back

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Marketing Podcast with Laura Bull

Laura Bull, a guest on the Duct Tape Marketing PodcastIn this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Laura Bull. Laura is a bestselling author and brand strategist who specializes in transforming people into competitive and sustainable business brands. Her latest book is — From Individual to Empire: A Guide to Building an Authentic and Powerful Brand.

Key Takeaway:

Laura Bull spent ten years with Sony Music Entertainment and spearheaded artist development including Carrie Underwood, Brad Paisley, and Johnny Cash. Now she’s helping entrepreneurs discover and leverage their authentic and competitive brands. In this episode, we dive into how to build a personal brand, why she’s working to redefine the term “influencer”, and how to transform entrepreneurs into viable brands.

Questions I ask Laura Bull:

  • [1:40] The branding of the music industry has changed dramatically — hasn’t it?
  • [4:27] What’s one of the wackiest stories from working with artists in the
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This is my last blog post in 2021. I wish you all a wonderful break and a happy new year.

In the first post of my Power BI 101 series, we learnt that Power BI is a data platform containing various tools and services. We also explained the currently available subscriptions within the Power BI platform. The focus of the second post of this series is on what we should learn to achieve our goals more efficiently. In this post, we focus on the reporting tools available to us according to our subscription plan. From this post onwards, we discuss more specific aspects of the Power BI platform.

We learnt so far that Power BI is not just a reporting tool to build sophisticated reports; it is indeed a platform supplying a wide range of features from data preparation, data modelling and data visualization to contribute to an organisation’s data

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T20 cricket, played over three hours, has become the sport’s most popular format underlined by the sprouting of franchise leagues globally headed by the billion-dollar Indian Premier League.

It’s also been deemed the ‘growth engine’ for the global development of the sport highlighted by a new cashed-up T20 franchise league in the U.S. set to start in 2023.

But there are those pushing for an even shorter and sharper version of the game, believing it can appeal to those weened on soccer’s 90-minute playing time and better suit declining attention spans.

The T10 format, played over 90 minutes, has started to spread forcing the sport’s gatekeepers to start making decisions over whether to legitimise it. The arrival of the Abu Dhabi T10 league in 2017 led to widespread sneering with cynics believing this supercharged version was starting

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My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one I took on the road.

  • Chatsonic – Chatsonic is a new way to create content, easily and quickly. You can chat with your computer, giving it commands in plain English. It’s like ChatGPT, but better!
  • Chron – Cron is a next-generation calendar for professionals and teams. It streamlines workflows, integrates other productivity tools, and builds collaboration right into your calendar. Cron is helping make the modern workspace more efficient.
  • Readitfor.me – is the world’s leading book summary service for executives and entrepreneurs who want to stay on top of the latest
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Incremental-Refresh-in-Power-BI-Part-1-Implementation-in-Power-BI-Desktop

Incremental refresh, or IR, refers to loading the data incrementally, which has been around in the world of ETL for data warehousing for a long time. Let us discuss incremental refresh (or incremental data loading) in a simple language to better understand how it works.

From a data movement standpoint, there are always two options when we transfer data from location A to location B:

  1. Truncation and load: We transfer the data as a whole from location A to location B. If location B has some data already, we entirely truncate the location B and reload the whole data from location A to B
  2. Incremental load: We transfer the data as a whole from location A to location B just once for the first time. The next time, we only load the data changes from A to B. In this approach, we never truncate B.
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Over the last few years, consumers have been practicing more conscious drinking, whether that’s abstaining, sipping low-proof drinks or tiger-striping — switching between no-alcohol drinks and regular-strength drinks,

In 2022, sales of no- and low-alcohol beverages grew by more than 7% in volume across 10 key global markets, surpassing $11 billion in market value. This is up from $8 billion shown in 2018, according to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis.

The pace of growth is expected to surpass that of the last four years, continuing at a CAGR of 7%, compared to a CAGR of 5% between 2018 and 2022.

“The dynamic no/low-alcohol category presents opportunities for incremental sales growth as consumers are recruited from drinks categories such as soft drinks and water” comments Susie Goldspink, Head of No-

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Marketing Podcast with Jenn Herman

Jenn Herman, a guest on the Duct Tape Marketing podcastIn this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Jenn Herman. Jenn is a social media consultant, speaker, and globally recognized Instagram expert. She is a sought-after international speaker providing tips, resources, and training for organizations of all sizes that need to structure their social media strategies. She is the co-author of Instagram for Dummies 2.0 (2022) Edition.

Key Takeaway:

Instagram is a powerful tool for companies of any size to make connections with potential customers and promote their products. With over two billion people logging in monthly, if you haven’t already hopped on the bandwagon, now’s the time! In this episode, Jenn Herman and I chat about the current tactics that work on Instagram and the guidelines that you should keep in mind.

Questions I ask Jenn Herman:

  • [1:21] Why did you feel like you needed a new edition to your
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Content Endorsement in Power BI, Part 2, Endorsing Contents

In the previous post I explained the basic concepts around content endorsement in Power BI. We discussed that users’ ability to collaborate in creating and sharing content is one of the key aspects of users’ experience in Power BI. But it would be hard, if not impossible, to identify the quality of the content without a mechanism to identify the content quality in large organisations. Content endorsement is the answer to this challenge. We discussed the following in the previous post:

In this post, I explain the following:

How do Power BI administrators enable certification and grant rights to security groups?

In the previous post, we discussed that a Power BI administrator must enable certification and grant sufficient rights to the security groups. Therefore, all members of the specified security group are authorised to certify the content. If you are a Power BI administrator, follow these steps to do so:

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It’s nearly Christmas, which is what I’m blaming for my current woes: PC problems.

I think my main PC is jealous because I was considering building a new one. I’m eyeing all these newer components—the latest and greatest CPUs and GPUs (pricey!)—and getting a bit carried away since my current gaming rig is perfectly fine. Or was fine.

This weekend it started acting out. I’ve had to fire up a different machine to type this post because it won’t go past the BIOS screen and also won’t let me press the key that takes me into the BIOS, which means I’m basically stuck. Really not sure how to resolve a boot issue if I can’t access Windows or the BIOS!

I don’t need this crap right now!

In any case, let’s do this Wordle and then I can get back to

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