This post is about why I want to attend again the Tableau Conference.
What I should first clarify is why I like Tableau. Tableau was a life changing experience, not only because it gave me my first working opportunity in Switzerland, but also because it allows me to find my place in the world.
At last I could reconciliate my analytical mindset with my love of art. Don’t get me wrong, I am not pretending to be an Artist, I just have a detective mindset and I like answering data questions or presenting my findings on a clean and clear way. In general I prefer functionality to beauty. But functionality doesn’t mean that the dashboard should be ugly,
right ? 🙂
Reason #1 : Love is in the air – The Community
I have been working full time with Tableau for almost 4 years now, everything I learnt is thanks to this amazing community, always so eager to help and contribute but also thanks to the e-learning on the Tableau website.
On the website, you have access to training videos (how to), but also to some live or on-demand webinars where people share experiences, where great data visualisation authors speak about data visualisations, where Tableau Jedi will astonish you with some crazy visuals…
Last year, I got extremely lucky and I participated to not one but two Tableau Conferences.
First I won a visualisation contest in my company, and by doing so I got a ticket for the Tableau Conference in London. It was better than an increase of salary ( but please don’t tell my boss). Of course I was super happy to meet in person some of my models, people with whom I communicate or just follow in Twitter. I think that be inspired by the community should be the first reason why you should attend.
Reason #2 : Bring new ideas
Just being here amongst your peers, who share the same passion than yourself, will help you to grow, to motivate you again for a full year, you will find again the strong to fight against your stakeholders who wants you to use this green-orange-red colors in all of your dashboards, you will feel the energy in the air and bring it back home.
You will feel reenergize and you will back home with more eager to improve yourself and learn! The Conference blew my mind.. I learnt so much during the sessions or the discussion with others.
Of course it is also an unique occasion to learn the new planned features of our favorite software during the developer sessions !
Reason #3 : Because is it fun
The conference offers also a lot of opportunities to have fun : video games, bubbles swimming pool, or dancing floor during the Data Night Out. During the TC2018 in New Orleans, the party was in a football Stadium and they played live Jazz Music.
I particularly loved the catwalk meme and the Aligator chase.. I found some of them but not all of them… hourra to this amazing marketing team !
Reason #4 : Because it is time to pay back
I told you that last year I attended two Tableau Conferences. The second one was as a speaker. And it was a stressful but amazing experience. Stressful because English is not my native language , and to be honest I don’t like the spotlights. But everyone was so cheerful and welcoming that at the end, I enjoyed every minute of it.
Of course it was a lot of work, working in a Swiss Bank I am not allow to share any real work, so I had to invent the business cases and the data to be sure to have the approval from our Communication department. And because I really wanted to give a good speech, I tried to prepare a real good session, to be able to give back all the knowledge and love that the community gave me as a beginner.
Both conference were terrific experience. At that time, I passed through a difficult time during which I felt that I have nothing to bring to this amazing community but I learnt so much about the tool or even myself during the conference, that I felt energized again… so my last words will be :
See you in Berlin !
Rativiz 
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