How does a Tableau Conference (in the US) look like?
Imagine more than 14000 people from all the corners of the world, with different job descriptions, different backgrounds, who are working for 1000s of different organisations. All those people are coming together to the same conference centre for 5 days.
Why?
The solely reason is their passion for visual analytics & Tableau!
How does the Tableau Conference fuel the passion of all those attendees?
FUTURE OF VISUAL ANALYTICS
Everything starts with the first Keynote where the CEO, CPO, CMO and several other data leaders share their vision for the future of visual analytics. There were two more Keynotes. One from the co-authors of Freakonomics and one from Adam Savage. They explained how they discovered the hidden side of data and many highlights from their work.
DEVS ON STAGE
During the first keynote, the developers are coming on stage and are presenting many of the new features the dev teams are working on. In Las Vegas, we saw many cool stuff which will be introduced in the Tableau platform in the coming releases:
- Hyper: The new analytical engine which will replace the Data Engine. Faster extract creation and faster cross-database joins. Tableau Public is already running on Hyper (Hyper Hyper!).
- Maestro: It is a new product for data preparation when dealing with data inconsistencies among the different data sources.
- Viz in tooltips: Hover over a mark and a visualisation (another worksheet) will appear in the tooltip
- Nested sorting improvements: higher level of control with how you implement sort
- Collaboration: Commenting on Tableau Server regarding
Any attendee could drop by the Tableau Labs in the Data Village and see a demo or even try all the above new features!
LEARNING
In addition, during the TC you can build your knowledge on pretty much everything around the Tableau platform. There are 10s of sessions for all levels of users (from beginner till jedi) running simultaneously from the morning till late afternoon. The topics span from IT & Tableau Server to best practices for Dashboard & Design and more. In addition, you can either register for a hands on session where you are provided with a laptop and work on several exercises along with the instructor or a breakout session where you sit comfortably and watch the presentation.
FUN
Last but not least, attending a Tableau Conference is fun! You are surrounded all day by so many enthusiastic data people. If you are a sports person, there are organised morning runs where 100s of people participate. If you like partying, the Data Night Out is the biggest party which among all it has a stage with live music. If you are a big fan of competitions, you can watch live the Iron Viz final where three contestants are creating their best viz in 20 minutes so as to win the trophy!
Final Thoughts
I would not believe that all the above are true before attending a Tableau Conference in the US. Therefore, I strongly recommend you mark the dates of the next TC in your calendar and make it happen. During the TC you will learn things you didn’t know and you will have a lot of fun!
The Information Lab team!
Tableau Conference 2018 will take place in New Orleans!
