Thanks to all of you for the kind words, congratulations and encouragement. I’m not going to lie and say it’s not a thrill to win, but that also comes with the absolute recognition that there is truly not a playing card’s width of difference between my report and @Greg’s, @alexbadiu’s, @MudassirAli’s, @kirank.gh’s, @datazoe’s, @JarrettM’s and a number of others .
As great as the videos, the forum and other training content on eDNA are, for me these challenges represent the best experience you can have as an eDNA member. In talking with people who have not been participating in the challenges, some of the reasons I hear are “I find the whole thing intimidating” or “I could never do what some of the people in the challenges are doing”.
To address the second point first, we all started somewhere and most of us remember exactly what that felt like. When I first started as eDNA member, I would wrap all my arithmetic operations in CALCULATE(), because hey, they were “calculations” and I wanted them them to “calculate” (true – you can find some of these on the forum, but please don’t… 
). I can absolutely guarantee that nobody was looking at my early DAX and saying “you know who’s going to be good at future data challenges? - that guy.”
You know who else could not do what I did on this challenge – me from 4 months ago. I just conducted a number of Power BI training sessions at work this week, centered around a report I developed in late May (right before Challenge 1 began). At the time, I thought the report was pretty good, but looking at it this week was a cringey experience. Based on all the things I’ve learned from the other participants in these challenges (you can find a partial list of these things in my initial writeup on this challenge), there is literally not one thing on that report I wouldn’t change - each element has a better, faster, cooler or more attractive version that I’ve learned from someone in these challenges.
Finally, none of us who love these challenges want them to be a small, exclusive club. The whole community environment is better and more fun when lots of people, with a diversity of experience, ideas and approaches get involved. @sam.mckay’ s vision is that each challenge will have hundreds of participants, and I certainly hope that comes to pass.
So, if you’re holding back thinking that you’re submission won’t be great - don’t. It may not be great initially, but I guarantee you’ll be warmly welcomed, you’ll receive some terrific, constructive feedback, you’ll have a lot of fun and within a few challenges you will be completely amazed by how much better you’ve gotten, regardless of where you started.
So, a final thanks to @sam.mckay, @haroonali1000, the @enterprisedna team, the expert team, and all of you who make this community a really special place. I feel honored to be a part of it, and to have the chance to give back even a fraction of what I’ve received.
See you in Challenge #8…
- Brian