Last week was the final stop of the Tableau on Tour conference – the largest data visualisation event in Europe. After visiting Sydney, The Hague and Munich, the tour wrapped up in London.
Tableau on Tour brings the best of the North American programme to cities all round the world, with a focus on sharing new ways to get more from data. It was two very intensive days of networking, hands-on learning, and keynote sessions from leaders in data analytics, and Tableau customers, experts and even builders.
The keynote speakers included Tim Harford, economist, journalist and writer of long-running Financial Times column, “The Undercover Economist” – and Kenneth Cukier, data editor at The Economist and co-author of “Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We Work, Live and Think“. The customer speakers were as varied as Bolton Wanderers Football club, Facebook and The University of Oxford.
Matt Francis, senior software developer at The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute – and active Tableau blogger, tweeter and video maker – was a particularly popular customer speaker. He talked about when to use data stories in his session; explaining that most dashboards are built for exploration and generally neutral – allowing a user to go on their own journey of self-discovery – but he outlined situations where you want to achieve something else with visualisations, e.g. when you want to make a case for change.
“Tableau allows people without an IT background to interrogate their data with an ease they have never had before, keeping this simple is the key to Tableau’s continued success.” Matt Francis, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
You can read a round-up of his session on Tableau’s blog and two minutes with him on Paul Banoub’s blog – a UBS data visualisation and Tableau evangelist. Also take a look at Carl Allchin’s blog, Data Jedi Ninja, for an excellent summary of the event – Carl is Barclay’s Data Visualisation Manager and a Tableau loving Data Ninja.
Tableau’s visual analytics software are a part of our Zen product suite for Telcos, and combine the necessary infrastructure for CIOs to visualise, analyse and action real-time problems, thereby identifying areas for profitability improvements and revenue opportunities.
Rob Green, MD at SysMech, said, “Tableau embeds high performance analytics and reporting into our platform, without the complexity of conventional visualisation tools, and the cost of traditional business intelligence applications.”
Dan Jewett, Vice President of Product Management at Tableau, added. “In the telecommunications industry, for example, Tableau is helping organisations to create a geographic analysis of a wireless network, avoid downtime, and evaluate expansion prospects and find hidden opportunities.”
We’re already looking forward to the next Tableau on Tour – for more data visualisation events take a look at Tableau Software’s upcoming conferences. Hope to see you at one very soon.