I went to the Tableau Conference— Here’s what I learned— Part 1

By: Anna Cave
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Data literacy edition.

This past week, Tableau hosted its annual conference completely online to make it accessible and free to anyone with a Tableau account. The conference took place over 3 days with 30-minute sessions on a variety of topics related to data.

The conference was incredibly eye-opening, and if you didn’t have a chance to catch it, the recorded sessions are still available on Tableau’s website. During the conference, I attended a few sessions on data literacy. 

The first, titled Data Literacy: Getting Started and Tips for Success was hosted by Joanna Aksiuto, Brian Kennedy, Sarah Nell Rodriguez and Peter Broer. The panel emphasized the importance of making sure everyone within an organization is data-literate to some level. In today’s age, where organizations are pushing to be data-driven, investing in education for your analysts is crucial to progressing the success of the organization. It’s more than just a good business strategy— it’s a way to effectively communicate, understand data in context, and have ability to explore information with creative and critical thinking. With data surpassing oil as the most important resource in the world, everyone in your organization needs to know how to use it. 

A second session, How to Increase Subscriber Engagement with Analytics with Archana Ganeshalingam and Gil Gani, emphasized the need to move from being technology-centric to being people-centric when it comes to analyzing data. Working with data shouldn’t be left to specialists, it should be accessible for anyone to interact with analytics using intuitive and powerful analytical tools. 

The third data literacy session, led by Yong Long Foo, Nairanjana Dasgupta, Nellie Marangou and Bergen Schmetzer focused on advocacy for data literacy. The panelists encouraged the audience to understand that data literacy is for everyone, though it may look different for a variety of people. Literacy isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution— it’s about adjusting to different levels for different needs. They noted that data literacy will be an ever-changing area of study since the field is constantly evolving, meaning we’ll have to adapt with the times.

Advocating for and implementing data literacy practices will take some work, but they are necessary to ensure that organizations and the people within them can reach their full potential.