Tableau Conference 2023 - My Experience
As a data scientist, I use Tableau a lot to make interactive dashboards for my business stakeholders to consume key insights. I realized that while I use Tableau a lot, there’s still a lot for me to learn — and what’s a better way to learn than attending a conference about it? In this article, I describe my experience attending the 2023 Tableau Conference in Las Vegas!
Note: this article was originally drafted in May 2023, but finally published now in Feb. 2024!
What is Tableau/Conference?
Tableau is a business intelligence software for making interactive dashboards. It’s a great way to provide stakeholders with an interactive (and often pretty-looking) interface to data, whether live or static. Tableau, as an organization, has a great community, and hosts this conference every year, even after SalesForce acquired the company. The community very proudly refers to themselves as ‘DataFam’, and it was easy to see why, because the speakers and attendees at the conference were so vibrant and enthusiastic in their passion for data visualization.
Tableau Conference 2023
The conference was hosted in Las Vegas from May 9–11 this year. I was surprised to learn that there would be more than 8000 people attending this year. There were so many events to choose from, including talks, workshops, community meet-ups, vendor booths, Tableau Doctor, IronViz Showdown, Data Village, and more.
As a result, I really had to focus on what exactly I wanted to accomplish by attending the conference. For me, this was learning about the more advanced features of Tableau, and how to approach problems and solutions in Tableau. This helped me choose the most relevant sessions, and I will summarize my key learnings from each of these below.
My Experience
At the time of attending the conference, I was working on building a Tableau dashboard at work, which needed to perform complex actions, called ‘set’ and ‘parameter’ actions. These are functions for interacting with and passing data parameters to create interactivity in the dashboard. As a result, many of the sessions and workshops I attended were focused on learning about and using these set/parameter actions.
I also attended sessions about the art of data visualization and best practices, about using calculated fields, and even a Women in Data Strategy panel.
The session that amazed me the most was the IronViz Competition, where three competitors had 20 minutes on-stage to create a dashboard from scratch! The energy in the stadium was incredible, and as we cheered on the three contestants, seeing their dashboard progress appear on the big screen, it was very nail-biting and lots of twists and turns right until the end!
Key Impressions and Takeaways
In the three short days I attended this conference, I learned a lot and interacted with a lot of amazing people. Some of my positive impressions:
- Huge DataFam community!
- Lots of inventive ways to use Tableau.
- Future integrations with LLMs, AI, etc.
- Very commercial — lots of vendor stalls.
- Need to think differently when using Tableau.
- There is so much that you can get out of Tableau Conference — it really depends on your reason for attending.
Organizing large conferences is not an easy task, and I truly respect the organizers and volunteers who put in a lot of effort in making the conference a success. However, some of the things I wish they had done better:
- There were too many people, and not enough space in the session rooms.
- There were too many great sessions scheduled at the same time, so I had to miss out on a lot of these.
- Barely any sessions were recorded for later viewing.
In terms of my goal for attending the conference, which was to learn about using set and parameter actions, I definitely achieved it. I learned about different tools and methods to exploit set, parameter and dashboard actions to increase the interactivity and effectiveness of the dashboard. One of the ideas that was constantly reinforced was the idea of keeping the stakeholder in mind, and designing the dashboard to convey insights from the date as effectively as possible. Also, never be afraid to get creative!
Las Vegas + Nevada
This was my first time visiting Las Vegas, so I was very excited! I stayed at the MGM Grand hotel, and had the opportunity to explore the Las Vegas Strip on my days off. There were a lot of tourist-y attractions like M&Ms Chocolate Factory, Hershey’s Chocolate Factory, etc., but there were also a lot of other recognizable landmarks to see, like the Bellagio Fountain, Leo the Lion, the mini New York along the strip, and more.
I also had the chance to visit the Hoover Dam, where I walked across the Mike O’Callaghan Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge and got a spectacular birds-eye view of the Hoover Dam below me. I also visited the actual Hoover Dam, and learned about its history, construction and legacy, and got to see the power plant below the Dam.
Overall, I really enjoyed my time in Vegas (and by extension, Nevada). The landscape was beautiful, and it was great experiencing that part of the country, since it’s very different from the East Coast. Next time I’m in the area, I will visit the Grand Canyon so I can also check off Arizona on my travel list!
Concluding Thoughts
Attending the Tableau Conference was very worthwhile, as I got to learn more about Tableau and how to do cool things with it. I have a better understanding now about advanced dashboarding actions, and bringing the best insights through well-designed dashboards. Some further reading:
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