Quick tip: troubleshooting Jupyter notebook not starting correctly

The other day my Jupyter notebooks did not start correctly from Anaconda navigator - luckily the Jupyter docs have a section  Jupyter - What to do when things go wrong. So I tried starting it from Anaconda prompt and it indeed gave me an exception that there was an invalid path in the Jupyter config file - to find out where to look for the config file check out Jupyter common directories and file locations

Quick tip: updating Anaconda with command prompt

 I recently started getting a popup for updating Anaconda Navigator on my Windows machine and I also received a warning when installing packages using the Anaconda prompt. I first started the update through the user interface but this update completely stalled and I had to do a hard reboot after almost 2 hours (when my patience ran out). Running the update using Anaconda prompt worked without problems - next time I will use this method first. If conda is installed on your machine, you can update it to the most recent version and patches using  conda update -n base -c defaults conda

Speaking engagements in coming months

With all Covid bans lifted and summer holidays well over, the conference season kicks off. 

I will be speaking at a couple of events in the coming weeks and months:

• Dataminds evening session Upcoming in-person event on September 29th organized by dataMinds.be at Inetum-Realdolmen offices in Kontich together with Benni De Jagere. First session a little bit off the beaten track for data professionals: #dataviz for investors. Second session: #PowerBI roadmap and #AMA by Benni.
• Collabdays Belgium 2022. Free community-driven event in Brussels, Belgium. Focus is Microsoft 365 with some Power Platform and Azure sprinkled on top. I am particularly excited to be speaking at this conference which was born out of the SharePoint Saturday conferences which I helped organize many years ago. I will be delivering Dataverse Deep Dive: watch out for sharks.
• Cloudbrew 2022. A two-day conference focusing on all things Azure on November 18-19 in Mechelen Belgium. I will be delivering Using Python and Azure Cloud for trading and investing

Dataminds event - How data visualization can help you become a better long-term investor and Power BI roadmap session

I will be delivering a  Dataminds session together with Benni De Jagere (@BenniDeJagere) on September 29th - for registration and info see the Dataminds in-person event at Realdolmen. 

Below the summary of the session and a sneak peak at the opening slide (spoiler alert: investing like a sloth isn't that hard)

How data visualization can help you become a better long term investor

Summary: Whether you prefer passive investing or are more into actively managing your investments, data visualization can help you overcome the emotional biases associated with investing in the financial markets. In this session, we will explore how you can use Python, Azure and Power BI to become a better long term investor. We will start with gathering the relevant data using Python, process it with Synapse and Python, and finally finish off with building  data visualizations using Jupyter notebooks and Power BI. We will see how these visualizations can help you understand portfolio returns and risk, get a better understanding of market manias and crashes and visualize different investment strategies.

The aim of this session is not to tell you what stocks, bonds, funds or ETFs to buy but will show you how data visualization might help you not to fall for the irrational and manic-depressive characteristics of Mr. Market or other pitfalls when starting to invest.

Attendees are invited to fill in this survey (max. 5 minutes) https://ecv.microsoft.com/pteCfVQ89I – survey results will be used in the session.