Reflections on #Data24, Virtual Coffee Breaks, Coaching, + Literacy Training
Newsletter, May 2024
🌸 Happy spring, Women in Dataviz!
I hope those who attended Tableau Conference in San Diego are feeling refreshed and inspired. Brittany Rosenau was kind enough to agree to write a newsletter-exclusive recap for us.
Please stick around after reading her retrospective—this issue also contains some Slack community housekeeping, upcoming events, and a couple of excellent learning opportunities.
I hope to see you at a Virtual Coffee or around Slack this month!
Best,
Nicole
🪩TC Reflections
This year was my first in-person Tableau Conference. My first conferences were the virtual ones - so note that since I did not attend any conferences pre-2020, I have no nostalgia for those conferences!
For #Data22, I was most excited to meet all of my “online Tableau friends and heroes. I had a very different conference experience at #Data23 as an Iron Viz contestant, and this year for #Data24 I got to attend as a first-time Visionary and had no speaking commitments. Here’s my quick review!
🏨 Venue
I was nervous at first about a different location - Yes, I know many did not like Vegas as a city, but I did not mind it as most of my time was spent indoors at the conference anyways! It was easy to navigate, and I felt like I knew where everything was. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked San Diego just as much, if not more than Vegas. Because the San Diego Conference Center is so much larger, it never felt quite as packed as Vegas did (a plus in my book). There were plenty of hotels within walking distance, and San Diego has a lot to offer outside of conference. The lunch area was on the top floor of the convention center which had loads of natural light, and it was much easier to get access to fresh air.
🗝️ Keynote
No keynote will make everyone happy, but overall I was happy with the mix of immediate product announcements and teases of updates to come. Of course, my personal and the crowd favorite was Devs on Stage. They put on a great presentation, using a real world use case to show off all the different great things coming to the product, including viz extensions, more fonts, custom themes, and more. I would highly recommend checking this one out on Salesforce+! (If the 1:48 runtime is a lot for weekday viewing, Tableau Tim did a nice recap.)
🧑🏫 Sessions
This year I was really excited to go to sessions as I didn’t get to see many last year. Overall, I was really pleased at the selection—there were double the amount of community-led sessions, a good mix of first time and repeat presenters, and having many sessions presented twice meant that I could catch some on the second showing I didn’t catch the first time around. I saved many of the bigger sessions to stream later and prioritized some of the smaller sessions. There were many great sessions from the folks in this Slack, if there are some from the catalog that aren’t streaming I’d encourage you to reach out to see if they’d be willing to present at your local Tableau User Group!
📊Iron Viz
What would TC be without Iron Viz?! As a former contestant, I was incredibly proud of what all 3 were able to do in such a short amount of time, in front of so many people. It also hurts knowing that while everyone put so much effort in, only one can take home the trophy. This year the topic was much more lighthearted than previous years, with tv data provided by IMDb. Everyone did a fantastic job, I recommend checking out the official recap here.
🍸Data Night Out
Last but not least, after Iron Viz comes Data Night Out. I think San Diego had a much better venue to offer than Vegas - within walking distance of the Convention Center, outside with great weather, and plenty of room to spread out. As an introvert that turns on social mode at TC, I had a great time.
That’s all for this year’s recap from me - I hope to see many of you again or for the first time next year!
🧹Community Housekeeping
💌 Invitations to new members
We have a new, automated workflow for folks to request and receive access to our Slack workspace. If you would like to invite someone to Slack, please give them this link. (If you have other join links, please discard them as they will not work any longer.) There are two reasons for the change. First, we wanted to automate as much of our onboarding process as possible without spending a lot of money. Secondly, we wanted to include acknowledgment of the code of conduct as a requirement.
📱Social media
I’ve updated the join links here on Substack and on our social media. While we’re on the topic, follow us on Bluesky, Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter X. (There’s very little activity on X right now, and we will move off of that platform entirely in the coming weeks.)
📺 Slack channels
We’ve archived a few Slack channels and added a few, so please visit Channels ➡️ Manage ➡️ Browse Channels in the left sidebar to make sure you’re subscribed to the channels you want to participate in.
📆 Upcoming Events
📊 Flourish webinar: Unlock elections insights through interactive data visualization
Tuesday, 5/14, 11 AM - 12 PM EST
☕️ Virtual Coffee Breaks
Thursday, 5/16 with Nicole
Wednesday, 5/22 with Allison
A super-low-key, informal, absolutely-zero-pressure social event. Every sixth Thursday, 8 to 9 AM EST, and every sixth Wednesday at noon EST. The meeting links are on the Community Calendar.
🎙️Outlier 2024
Registration is ongoing for Outlier in Chicago and virtually, June 12-14. Learn more about the conference.
✨Opportunities
🌟 The Analyst’s Retreat
Bridget Cogley is doing a graduation sale on her coaching program, The Analyst’s Retreat. For the next six weeks, book a 45-minute session for 50% off. Reserve a spot here. Questions? Message Bridget on Slack or contact her via email.
📚 Become a Data Literacy Trainer
Be Data Lit is offering a Data Literacy “Train the Trainer” course. Join the waitlist on the website, request information via email, or reach out to Sarah Nell-Rodriquez on Slack.
💸 Support us on Ko-fi!
If you're enjoying the community and have the means and inclination, support us with a $3 monthly or one-time donation on Ko-fi to help cover operational expenses.
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