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This is the fourth time that I’ve gone to Milwaukee in the last few years to give a talk at the local TUG, speak at a Tableau Data Driven event or judge a Viz War contest. Each visit has been fun and engaging.

Leaving home around 6 a.m. for the airport, I arrived in Milwaukee plenty early. I decided to stop for some coffee at Colectivo Coffee in the Third Ward to review my files. I got a great cup of Rwanda single-origin pour-over that was excellent. If you’re in Milwaukee, you should definitely stop in one of Colectivo’s locations. They aren’t paying me to say that — I just like the vibe of their locations and their coffee.

I walked from Colectivo’s Third Ward location to the speaking venue, which was generously hosted by MGIC. Special thanks to Tracy Childs and Nick Bachofen of MGIC for the flawless room setup and internet access.

Since my last visit, my friend, Sarah Nell (a.k.a Viz_Dork), left Milwaukee and joined Tableau’s training team. Brandi Beals of Artisan Partners is doing a capable job of organizing the TUG in Milwaukee these days. I also want to point out that there were some excellent presentations from Milwaukee TUG Members. Olga Rosales of MCIG provided some insight into the challenges and opportunities experienced during their ongoing Tableau rollout at MCIG, and Chris Patrick of Artisan Partners did a great three-minute demo of Tableau and Mapbox.

During and after my talk, I received a lot of good questions. There were also lots of good general questions and interaction at the end of the TUG meeting. Unfortunately, I had to catch a flight back to Atlanta and wasn’t able to attend the happy hour get together following the meeting.

There were a lot more people at this TUG meeting than my last visit. Tableau appears to be alive and well in Milwaukee with an active and engaged user group!

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

• Big Trends in Data 1980 to Now Workbook
• Data Interpreter START Workbook
• Data Interpreter FINISHED Workbook
• Forecasting Workbook
• Parameters Workbook
• Dashboard Discovery Workbook
• Superstore for TYD2 XLSX
• NST-EST2014-01 XLS

Here are a few photos:

I enjoyed visiting our Stillwater HQ and our Oklahoma City office. On Monday, I taught a class for computer science students at Oklahoma State University. The class is run by Professor Behfar Jahanshahi, who also has some other responsibilities.

Tuesday, I did a talk at the Stillwater TUG. This group specifically request the “talk you did in London” a couple of years ago. So, I did an updated version of that speech for a room full of people, adding some new Tableau features into the material.

On Wednesday, I journeyed down to Oklahoma City and did a 60-minute version of my 90-minute talk on predictive and discovery analytics using Tableau.

All of the talks were well received. What’s so fun about this is that eight years ago, nobody had heard of Tableau and it was very difficult to get anyone in Oklahoma to listen to a talk about visual analytics. That has clearly changed; everyone is interested.

Below are my slide decks from the presentations (be warned, the first is big) followed by the relevant files:

• Stillwater Big Trends Workbook
• Data Interpreter START Workbook
• Data Interpreter FINISHED Workbook
• Orders (Superstore for TYD2) TDE
• NST01 (NST-EST2015-01) TDE
• Superstore for TYD2 XLSX
• NST-EST2015-01 XSLX

• Big Trends in Data 1980 to Now Workbook
• Data Interpreter START Workbook
• Data Interpreter FINISHED Workbook
• Orders (Superstore for TYD2) TDE
• NST01 (NST-EST2015-01) TDE
• Superstore for TYD2 XLSX
• NST-EST2015-01 XSLX

Here are a few photos from Stillwater and OKC:

Today, I did a virtual talk with Anthem’s internal Tableau User Group. There were around 120 people in attendance. The slide deck and supporting workbooks can be found at the links below. I also mentioned a paper on the last 50 years of data science by David Donaho. As your Tableau Server deployment grows, check out our Power Tools for Tableau products. They help you manage, govern and standardize content on server.

• Big Trends How Much How Many Workbook
• Data Interpreter START
• Data Interpreter FINISHED
• Anthem Dashboard Talk Workbook
• Orders (Superstore for TYD2) TDE
• NST01 (NST-EST2015-01) TDE
• NST-EST2014-01
• Superstore for TYD2

The last time I was in Madison to give a speech, the high temperature was around 10 below zero. This time, it was a relatively balmy 28 degrees. I took the opportunity to walk around the city near the State Capital Building, the University of Wisconsin campus and Lake Mendota.

The hotel I was staying at had a weekend fundraising event planned, which included an outdoor icebar, an iceboat and other things on the frozen lake.

I had dinner the evening before with the Madison team leaders, including Pat McCormick, Abby Posey, Clare Huhn, Dan Mazzocchi and Matthew Van Straten. We talked data viz and the projects they were working on. This team represents the consulting, government, insurance and software industries. Special thanks to Clare for the ride on Thursday and Pat for the ride on Friday.

Credit Union National Association (CUNA) Mutual hosted the event in a nice venue. There were around three times the number of people at this event than the last time I spoke. I give this TUG team a lot of credit for putting on a quality event. The first hour was spent in a “Birds of Feather” session where people could ask questions about specific areas of interest. I then gave two different talks (2.5 hours) on predictive analytics and discovery with Tableau as well as publishing for mobile consumption. There were lots of good questions. The Madison TUG has their act together. If you live in the area, you should take some time to attend their next event in June.

Below are my slide decks from both presentations, each followed by relevant files:

• Big Trends in Data 1980 to Now Workbook
• Data Interpreter FINISHED
• Forecasting Workbook
• Parameters Workbook
• NST-EST2014-01
• Superstore for TYD2

• Portable Screen Sizes Workbook
• Mobile Talk Examples TYD2 Workbook
• iPhone 5s Example Workbook
• iPhone Test Automatic Workbook
• Ch09 Example Workbook for Figures 9-01-02 and 9-04-011
• Common Portables (Mobile Device Px Dims 2)

Next up, I’m headed to the home of InterWorks: Stillwater, Oklahoma. Enjoy these photos from Madison:

Yesterday, I drove a couple of hours down to Montgomery to deliver my 3rd talk on the tour. It was a small but engaged group of Tableau users (15-20 people). Montgomery has been the site of significant historical events so I left a little early and spent an hour walking around Dexter Avenue. This is the main street in town and the site of the State Capitol, the first White House of the Confederacy, the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church (Martin Luther King, Jr. was the pastor) and where Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956).

You probably won’t plan vacations around a visit to Montgomery, but if you are driving to Florida for a beach vacation, consider stopping in Montgomery to see these historic sites. This video explains some of the history of the Confederate States of American and Jefferson Davis’s speech on the steps of the current state capitol building.

Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. (among many others) helped make the Montgomery Bus Boycott a seminal moment in the United States Civil Rights Movement.

King became a national figure, and a few years later, he gave one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century in Washington, D.C. It was witnessed by over 250,000 people. It’s good to remember these events. Freedom comes at a price.

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

• Alabama CBP 2013 Workbook
• Big Trends in Data 1980 to Now Workbook
• Data Science Programs Workbook
• Data Interpreter Workbook START
• Data Interpreter Workbook FINISHED
• Forecasting Workbook
• Parameters Workbook
• Dashboard Discovery Workbook (Included as part of Chapter 8 materials form the new book)
• Superstore for TYD2 Data Set
• NST-EST2014-01 Data Set
• PythonRTableauDemo.zip

Up next is Madison, WI. Here are some interesting photos from my trip in Montgomery:

My second talk on the Tableau Your Data! 2nd Edition tour was in Houston at BMC Software’s impressive facility. Corresponding with this date was the official availability of the book on Amazon’s website!

I want to thank Robert Hanley, Director of Finance at BMC Software, for sponsoring the Tableau user group in Houston and providing a very nice venue (19th floor of the BMC office) for my presentation. An old friend from my working days prior to consulting (8+ years ago) showed up to say hello, as well.

I had 90 minutes to present “Predictive and Discovery Analytics Using Tableau,” which provided more time for introducing the background related to data visualization, big data and data science.

Around 125 people came for a room that was set up to seat 90. Following the event, I had dinner with InterWorks teammate Stephanie Kennedy. We talked about a number of topics, including the U.S. patent system, which lead me to review their website that night. The USPTO is trying to communicate their workload via dashboards. Unfortunately they are not good examples of best practices.

The slide deck and sample workbooks presented are available for download from the links below:

• Big Trends in Data 1980 to Now Workbook
• Data Science Programs Workbook
• Data Interpreter Workbook START
• Data Interpreter Workbook FINISHED
• Forecasting Workbook
• Parameters Workbook
• Dashboard Discovery Workbook (Included as part of Chapter 8 materials form the new book)
• Superstore for TYD2 Data Set
• NST-EST2014-01 Data Set
• PythonRTableauDemo.zip

Montgomery is next. Until then, enjoy these photos from Houston:

Dan shares his thoughts from the Minneapolis stop on the Tableau Your Data! 2nd Edition book tour.

The Tableau Your Data! 2nd Edition book tour got started yesterday at Cargill HQ in Hopkins, Minnesota. Cargill is the largest privately-owned company in the world with revenues exceeding $120 billion, and they have over 150,000 employees scattered across 70 countries. Check out the dashboard I built earlier this week to see a Forbes listing visualized with with 200+ of the largest privately-owned companies in the United States.

My talk, “Discovery and Predictive Analytics with Tableau,” was fun. I ran through a bunch of examples that the audience seemed to enjoy and gave away two free copies of the new book to attendees who tweeted something about the talk using #TYD2. You can view the slides from my full presentation below:

In addition to viewing the presentation, you can download all of the example dashboards and data sets I used below:

• Forbes’ Largest Private Companies Workbook
• Data Science Programs Workbook
• Data Interpreter Workbook
• Forecasting Workbook
• Parameters Workbook
• Dashboard Discovery Workbook (Included as part of Chapter 8 materials form the new book)
• Superstore for TYD2 Data Set
• NST-EST2014-01 Data Set

Next week I’m heading to Houston, Texas, and Montgomery, Alabama. Come and say hello! In the meantime, enjoy a few photos from Minneapolis.