Like most who first come across the Data School, I'd barely heard of Alteryx, much less used it. A quick google search of 'Alteryx' told me that they aim to 'simplify and unify analytics and data science so you can turn your data into breakthroughs'. While I had absolutely no idea what that really meant, it didn't really matter. Having looked at the application process, the only thing on my mind at the time was Tableau.
After being assured during the interview process that we wouldn't require any knowledge of Alteryx at all before starting training, I wouldn't even look up Alteryx again until my first day. During the first day of training, we started by setting up our laptops and requisite software, so my true first impression of Alteryx was that it was easy to download and set up. A nice, solid start.
Day 2 was diving into the fundamentals of Alteryx with Robbin, and actually getting stuck into a workflow. We began to learn a bit about what each tool could do while trying to answer questions that might be useful to a business, and I was immediately impressed by how logical and (relatively) simple each individual step was. I thought it was going great until we had to do a workflow by ourselves and I got stumped immediately! We got through it by working as a cohort which was a fun learning experience.
During day 3 we consolidated what we learned on day 2, before learning some more tools. We followed this up by tackling some challenges set by Robbin, and even trying our hands at one of Alteryx's Weekly challenges, which my competitive side enjoyed. I finished the two days with my brain feeling pretty full and sufficiently challenged.
After two days of doing nothing but Alteryx, I get the impression I'll prefer it to Tableau, but the jury is out on that. Either way, I'm looking forward to getting better at both.