The last week I attended the #data15 conference in London: what an amazing experience!

First, I passed the exam for the certification of Tableau Desktop v 9 Qualified Associate, after only two weeks of extensive use of the product. The fact that this exam is supposed to be taken after at least five months of working experience gives a pretty good idea of the accelerated pace of our training!

Most of all, the conference was an incredible opportunity for:

1. Learning!

Here below the two knowledge-based sessions I liked the most:

• The art of filtering: It could seem an easy topic, but understanding when use filters (as well as when it is better not to…) and how to really use them, can make the difference in many situations;

• Optimizing your workbooks for performance: The most important thing I learnt from this conference is that Tableau users can be split in users that drag and drop, and users that know what is happening under the hood. Of course I am still in the first set, but you can bet I will make my business to jump into the other one as soon as I can!

Click on the image below to see three Tableau tips I learnt:

Click on the picture to have a look at the Tips!

2. Appreciating real-world Tableau best practices!

These two customer sessions really amazed me:

• Easyjet: Yes, using Tableau you can make pretty bar charts, meaningful sparklines, and surprising scatterplots. But what if the largest airline of the UK tells you how to track planes, explore safety routes for landing in mountain areas and analyse bird strikes with Tableau? Just ‘wow’.

• UBS: This Investment Bank not only uses Tableau for Business Intelligence and Analytics, but it even built up a Tableau Centre Of Excellence. At the conference, they ran a session on how to introduce both the product and the related mind-set in large organizations.

Eayjet client session

3. Enjoying the Tableau community!

The Tableau community is just amazing: it is young, hungry & foolish, and most of all it is friendly and passionate. Chatting with the speakers after the sessions, hanging around in the exhibitors’ area, joining people for coffees, lunch and beers, joking and having fun at the data night out really let a good conference make the leap to a great experience!

I am new in the IT sector, but I have never seen this level of passion and engagement before. At the conference, I saw Tableau becoming a common language for a huge Investment Bank, fun bloggers, a 7 years old girl making her homework, and other overwhelmingly diverse people.

A friendly and passionate community

Well, I really attempted to make the best out of it and now I have a lot of new friends, some new knowledge, a certification, and loads of curiosity to satisfy!