It was just the last two weeks that I attended Tableau Datafest for the first time along with my fellow Dataschoolers and like any school kid going on their very first field trip, we’re all so excited and pumped up. Moreover, we’ve just completed two consecutive client projects the previous weeks with more than half of our cohort falling prey to the nasty flu (including our coach, Bethany) so having a break from training was really refreshing. And hey, we’re back to in-person events! So, before all the enthusiasm and hype dies down, I would share some of my experiences from attending the event.
1) New Features
Tableau announced some features they’re planning to launch in a key-note style.
- Tableau Cloud
- Data Stories:
- We’ve just covered PowerBI the same week and it’s interesting to see a similar feature in PowerBI adopted by Tableau. My first impression was that it seems to be a better version of what’s in PowerBI with how:
- It automatically updates every time you change your filter on your dashboard
- It has the option to adjust the verbosity of the insights which were automatically provided
- Personally, I found digging into the data and discovering insights to be the most fun part when creating Tableau dashboards but let’s see if it can persuade me to hand over that task to the computer’s hands
- We’ve just covered PowerBI the same week and it’s interesting to see a similar feature in PowerBI adopted by Tableau. My first impression was that it seems to be a better version of what’s in PowerBI with how:
- Augmented Analytics
-
- At a glance, it seems interesting, it’s like automated Machine Learning and can be handy if we’re just training the simpler models. A potential use case is if a company is thinking of trying to step up into the realm of predictive analytics but still exploring the idea and is not ready to hire a team of data scientists
- Up to a certain extent, it can still be good but it will reach a point where the performance may not be as good as more complex models with better hyperparameter tuning so probably not to be seen as a replacement for the human data scientists
2) Meeting People and Having Fun
It’s an in-person event so meeting and talking to people is the main thing to look forward to. Since I come with the other Dataschoolers, we were bound to have some company. But a great thing about attending this kind of event is meeting new people within the Tableau Datafam community or those you’ve known or interacted with virtually.
I met Frederic, we interacted virtually mostly before in Viz For Social Good events, but never in person. I also met Joon, I often saw his comments on LinkedIn posts. And I also got to meet Bold. I remembered looking at his vizzes and following his Tableau Public account when I just started my Tableau Public journey and have always liked his out-of-the-box approach to visualisation design so it was great to have a chat as we never interacted before.
Key Takeaways
1) Networking can be scary so just enjoy them
The word ‘networking’ has always been daunting and horrifying to me, being an introvert. Although my fellow Dataschoolers said that I talk a lot (probably a bit too much), I’m an introvert through and through – my ideal weekend is spending time alone in my cozy room and I’m easily overwhelmed by a large crowd. What I found was helpful is to not think that ‘I need to impress the person I’m talking with’ but rather see it as genuinely learning more about the person and having a good time.
When I come with people I know, it’s rather tempting to just stick around with them. But then, this kind of event doesn’t happen often. Although I must say it’s scary to approach other people, I often think about every possible worst scenario – what if the conversation ends up being awkward, what if the person found me strange and many other what-ifs. I noticed that when I do have those thoughts, what I feared most become a reality – it becomes awkward. I don’t always have great conversations but it’s fine.