Today I received an email with the subject line:
Session Feedback – Dynamics 365 & Power Platform User Group – Manchester – March 11th 2026
Uh oh.
Panic. Anxiety. A bit of excitement.
Up until now I have only ever received feedback in person after talks. That usually means the feedback is very… nice.
People are polite when they are standing right in front of you.
In all the events I have spoken at so far, not one person has ever walked up to me and said:
"Duncan what the f**k are you talking about, do you even work with data?"
So getting proper anonymous feedback is actually a really valuable thing.
(With one small exception. Noel, if you are reading this, I can usually tell when it's you.)
Despite some mild scepticism before opening the email, the feedback turned out to be amazing.
The Score
4.81 / 5
I was genuinely blown away by that.
But what mattered more than the number was the actual feedback itself.
Anonymous feedback tends to be more honest, and that honesty is exactly what helps you improve as a speaker.
The Feedback
Here are the comments that came through from the session.
Need to make code snippets bigger
Very good but more of an overview dashboard demo. Would be good to see a session for beginners going into more detail and basics
Great delivery very clear and easy to follow with some humour thrown in for good measure
Super engaging and brought to life what's possible with Power BI dashboards and how they relate to real business value
The session was fantastic – I learnt about building wireframes on Figma and importing JSON theme files
Great session, easy to follow
Nice practical session. Informative, practical and valuable for beginners
Duncan was very clear, witty and knowledgeable. Didn't feel like being talked at, rather a conversation about how to do the dashboard
Very engaging speaker that showed his experience and knowledge. Commentary of why he was doing what he was doing was mostly on point and excellent. The idea of building the dashboard in 45 minutes made him skip a little too much along the way for my liking, I'd like to see more of a breakdown of a dashboard and why things are done as they are rather than a speed run
This was very insightful and informative. Most importantly I learnt that I need to stop doing too much with my dashboards
A very down to earth session. Easy to understand and delivered with a smile. Left me with questions on topics I can go and research further. Great taste in shirts
Great engaging session. Great to see a quick high level dashboard being created and the tips for Power BI that came with
Very engaging and interesting talk. Following a lot of good best practice in Power BI. Overall thought it was informative and useful despite the time pressure ask. Impressed with the speakers mad live demo skills.
I would like to have seen some more explanation around the measures that were created, apart from that I thought it was great.
Fab
What I'm Taking Away From This
The best part about feedback like this is that it gives you clear ways to improve.
There are a few obvious things I will take forward into future versions of the talk:
- Make the code snippets bigger
- Slow down a little in places
- Spend more time explaining the thinking behind certain measures instead of rushing through them
That is probably the natural side effect of calling a talk:
"Dashboard in a Day? Nah. Let's Do One in 45 Minutes."
When you deliberately build something live and quickly, there is always a balance between showing the process and explaining every detail.
Still, that balance can definitely be improved.
One thing I probably cannot do much about though…
Fab
But I will take it.
Thank You
A big thank you to the UK Dynamics 365 & Power Platform User Groups (D365PPUG) Manchester team for organising such a great event.
And thank you to everyone who came along to the session, asked questions, laughed at the jokes, and tolerated my occasionally awkward live demo mouse moments.
Live demos always have a bit of chaos in them.
That is part of the fun.