News

Last week, I was in Kansas City to present at the University of Kansas campus in Overland Park. The venue was really nice, and the Tableau user group founder and leader in Kansas City, Ryan Sleeper, did a great job promoting and organizing the event. Between 160–170 people attended. I answered questions for around 45 minutes after my talk, then went to a following reception that lasted about 90 minutes for more conversation with attendees. Ryan introduced me to some great Kansas City BBQ. Overall, it was an enjoyable event. Thank you to KU for hosting the event.

Below is my slide deck from the presentation followed by the relevant files:

Russ Johnson at Cox invited me to speak to the Cox Enterprises internal Tableau User Group this week. Cox is one of the most impressive companies in the Atlanta market, and their Tableau use is expanding internal. I enjoyed speaking to the Cox team and meeting their Tableau team.

This talk was a little different. I have no slide deck. All of the material was delivered in two different Tableau workbooks. The material includes examples on the Data Interpreter; the new UNION facility that is great for joining large text files; a Tableau Dashboard example from the 2nd edition of Tableau Your Data!; and an example of using Tableau with a Python/Flask web application, Postgres, R and Amazon Web Services to operationalize more sophisticated forecasting. Below are the relevant files:

• Cox TUG Talk Workbook
• Cox Dashboard Discovery Workbook
• Superstore for TYD2 XLSX

Friday, May 6 was Georgia STEM day for students who are interested in science, technology, engineering and math-related careers.

My friend, Andy Piper; my youngest daughter, Hannah; and I were honored to provide a talks and Tableau training to middle school students at Louise Radloff Middle School. 
I’ve taught a lot of people to use Tableau, but they are generally over 21 years old. Teaching a group of kids was eye-opening. Some were bold, others a little tentative, but they all seemed to enjoy creating visualizations.

My daughter, Hannah, is graduating as her class valedictorian and plans to attend Georgia Tech to study math. Her talk generated questions related to studying, boys and college. My favorite moment was when a student asked, “How can I get a job doing this?”

Thank you to Linda Hutchinson of S2R for inviting us to participate!

Below is my slide deck from the presentation:

Check out photos from the event on the S2R Facebook page.

Randy Krum is one of my early idols in the world of data visualization and infographics. Randy started a blog right around the time I got interested in this industry, so I jumped at the opportunity to speak at a meetup he sponsors in Dallas on a regular basis. Randy is also an author and consultant with clients all over the USA.

Randy arranged to have John Colaruotol of Collective Next create a sketchnote of my talk. The talk was also videotaped and will be available on Randy’s blog sometime in the near future. Thank you to Randy and SMU for hosting my talk!

Below is my slide deck from the presentation followed by the relevant files:

• Database Ranking May 2016 Workbook
• Data Interpreter START Workbook
• Forecasting Workbook
• Dashboard Discovery Workbook
• Superstore for TYD2 XLSX
• Database Popularity Ranking Jan 2016 XLSX

Here are a few photos:

I always enjoy my trips to Omaha. A long time ago, I met a fellow there named Mike Moore. Mike is passionate about data. Years ago, I offered to help him start a Tableau user group in Omaha. GOTUG is now a very successful user group. This week, I followed Dewey Heffelfinger. Dewey showed some obsessively-detailed golf dashboards from a tournament he’s been doing for years with friends, featuring everything you might want to know about scoring and handicaps down to specific hole statistics. I also learned a different way to build box plots from Dewey.

InterWorks teammate Mark Bingham who lives in Omaha also attended the meeting.

Thank you to Creighton Universities’ Heider College of Business for hosting the talk. If you are ever in Omaha, I urge you to visit and check out the Heider Business School. They have one of the coolest securities analysis rooms that I’ve seen at any university in the country.

Below is my slide deck from the presentation followed by the relevant files:

• Big Trends in Data 1980 to Now
• Data Interpreter START Workbook
• Data Interpreter FINISHED Workbook
• Forecasting Workbook
• Dashboard Discovery Workbook
• Superstore for TYD2 XLSX
• CitiBikes TDE & TWBX

Here are a few photos:

I got to do a hometown talk this week at the first Tableau user group in the world. I co-founded ATUG seven years ago with Andy Kriebel, John Hoover, Andy Piper, Martin Click and Chris Cushman. Many of us have scattered since then. Andy K is now a consultant in London. Martin moved from UPS to logistics consulting. Chris is a data visualization consultant in Denver. The only real constants in the group have been Andy Piper and John Hoover at Norfolk Southern.

I want to thank Andy and John for their sponsorship of ATUG and their continuing support and guidance of the group. For the last few years, I’ve only be able to speak at the ATUG meeting one or two times per year. I’ve tried to spread the lessons we learned when we started ATUG to other Talbeau user groups in North America and Europe. John and Andy have made a very large contribution to the Tableau community in Atlanta. I’m proud to call them friends along with Andy, Martin and Chris.

Below is my slide deck from the presentation followed by the relevant files:

• Big Trends in Data 1980 to Now
• Data Interpreter START Workbook
• Data Interpreter FINISHED Workbook
• Forecasting Workbook
• Dashboard Discovery Workbook
• Superstore for TYD2 XLSX
• NST-EST2015-01 XLSX
• CitiBikes TDE & TWBX

Here are a few photos:

This week, I went to Miami to deliver a talk to a relatively new Tableau user group. I arrived early and had some interesting conversations with attendees. After the talk, I stayed for nearly an hour answering questions. There were a couple of people there with Tableau Your Data! 2nd Edition. I love to see the book marked-up with sticky notes and highlights.

I had a long conversation with Robert Prymus, Senior Systems Analyst at Miami-Dade Airport. Twitter, you can thank me for getting Robert to share his first tweet ever.

Thanks to Arnold Williams and Jonathan Cardenas of Verdatos for organizing and sponsoring the talk. Hey, big companies in Miami, help these guys out by agreeing to participate in the TUG and providing meeting space. By doing this, you’ll get a lot of useful (and free) training.

Below is my slide deck from the presentation followed by the relevant files:

• Big Trends in Data 1980 to Now
• Data Interpreter START Workbook
• Data Interpreter FINISHED Workbook
• Forecasting Workbook
• Parameters Workbook
• Dashboard Discovery Workbook
• Superstore for TYD2 XLSX
• NST-EST2015-01 XLSX

Here are a few photos:

This week I traveled to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to talk to a fairly new TUG. The event sold out, and the room was full of excited Tableau addicts. Thanks to Farmers Insurance for hosting the event and to Nolan Ackerman of Kellogg for organizing a great day. One person there actually saw me speak at the very first Tableau Conference, Aaron Medema. That means Aaron’s been using Tableau since V3.0 or so.

Nolan also presented a very cool big-screen projection system that Kellogg uses to create massive (touch-sensitive) dashboards. I’ve seen these types of systems in Phoenix and Atlanta but never using projection systems which reduce the cost of these configurations considerably. Image a 4000 pixel wide dashboard! Shanna Granda of Tableau Software also spoke about V9.3 and V10.0.

All in all, it was a fun and informative event.

Below is my slide deck from the presentation followed by the relevant files:

• Big Trends in Data 1980 to Now
• Data Interpreter START Workbook
• Data Interpreter FINISHED Workbook
• Forecasting Workbook
• Parameters Workbook
• Dashboard Discovery Workbook
• Superstore for TYD2 XLSX
• NST-EST2015-01 XLSX

Here are a few photos: