Alex Jones

Having a background in using Excel to deliver innovative dashboards and data models for big public sector clients as a management consultant, Alex has a fostered a natural passion for working with data. Finding out that Tableau can exponentially increase the potential of the dashboards he delivers to clients, Alex is incredibly excited at the future prospect of a career marrying an activity he enjoys doing alongside providing key insights to clients.

Away from The Information Lab, Alex is currently training for a marathon in September, is looking forward to the hockey season starting again, and is a budding (amateur) bedroom DJ.

Blog Posts

Tue 14 Nov 2017 | Alex Jones

Setting up the 'Run Command' tool in Alteryx to regularly update a file on your server

Problem – I need to regularly update a file on our server that is based on a foreign server Recently with a client, I needed a way to update an Access database daily that was stored on a different server to our own

Wed 27 Sep 2017 | Alex Jones

#ReflectiveBlog - My DS6 Experience

#ReflectiveBlog Well, that’s a wrap – as they say in the movie industry – DS6 is officially finished and we are each of to our respective first client projects around the globe

Tue 22 Aug 2017 | Alex Jones

Dashboard Week – Day 4 – Waffle Nutrition

So, day 4 of #DashboardWeek consisted of Andy wanting to punish us more by getting us to pull nutritional data from the USDA’s website regarding a specific food product – I was landed with ‘Waffles’, a not so traditional dish in England but interesting nonetheless. The kick-off

Tue 22 Aug 2017 | Alex Jones

Dashboard Week – Day 3 – Chicago Transport System

The challenge. Belated blog post – as I’ve been away in the US – but on day 3 of #DashboardWeek, Andy tasked us with a city each to go away and provide some insight on passenger usage of their transit system. Fortunately, I got Chicago

Wed 09 Aug 2017 | Alex Jones

Dashboard Week - Day 2 - BEER!

It’s Tuesday already, and we are onto day 2 of Andy Kriebel’s favourite week – Dashboard Week – where he offers us up a data set set each morning for us to clean and produce a viz out of by the end of the day. Today’s topic – pick either beer or wine

Tue 08 Aug 2017 | Alex Jones

Dashboard Week is upon us...

The week that we have both been dreading and looking forward to in equal measures is finally upon us. Andy first thing this morning passed the infamous ‘Cup of Numbers’ round the group, for each of us to make our selection

Wed 12 Jul 2017 | Alex Jones

Week 4 Highlights from DS6

I took a hiatus from writing my weekly blog last week – as we penned no less than 5 blogs in a series Andy imaginatively calls ‘Blog Week’ – but, not to worry, I’m back with my big hitters from last week

Thu 29 Jun 2017 | Alex Jones

Reflections on #MakeoverMonday

Deep reflections on my #MakeoverMonday viz from this week. Eva and Andy are in Germany now, which was the reason for this week’s vehicle stats for Makeover Monday

Thu 29 Jun 2017 | Alex Jones

2 Killer Tips for those Starting Out in Alteryx!

Literally no idea how to do that… *writes out problem in plain English*… LIGHTBULB. Day 2 into our Alteryx training marathon – and we have quickly realized it is most certainly not a sprint

Thu 29 Jun 2017 | Alex Jones

What even is Alteryx?

This week brought with it the arrival of Alteryx training for DS6. For those not in the know, Alteryx is a piece of software that works wonders when cleansing data in preparation for importing into Tableau (or similar tools) for producing visualizations

Wed 28 Jun 2017 | Alex Jones

Week 2 Highlights from DS6

Welcome to the end of week 2 habitual blog post. Here’s a roundup of the best tidbits that I took on board: Presentations, presentations, presentations. We have completed a further 2 more presentations this week – that takes the total number to 3 now

Tue 20 Jun 2017 | Alex Jones

Week 1 Highlights from DS6

So, my first week at the illustrious Data School is up and, aside from now knowing how to make a pie chart, here is what have I learned: Introductions – “You need to get used to that…” One week in, three introductions down

Sun 18 Jun 2017 | Alex Jones

DS6 Expectations from a Newbie

Sitting in a hotel room in a rainy Kyoto I was nervously about to undertake my final interview and presentation for a spot on DS6