2 minutes with… Matt Francis of Wellcome Trust

Posted on July 11, 2014 by paulbanoub

Hello!

So we’ve been busy at Tableau On Tour – London. Great to see so many friendly faces and thanks to everyone who came to my talk and the London Tableau User Group.

In between sessions I managed to pin down our next ~~victim~~ subject of “2 minutes with…”.

In this edition we are delighted to welcome a big supporter of VizNinja – Mr Matt Francis (@Matt_Francis).

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is a charitably funded genomic research centre located in Hinxton, nine miles south of Cambridge in the UK.

VN: Hey Matt. How are you enjoying the conference?

MF: Great. Really enjoyed your session and had a lot of fun presenting my own about Story Points. I think that’s going to be a very popular feature.

VN: So who are you then and what do you do?

MF: Matt Francis, Senior Software Developer, DNA Pipelines where I am the lead Tableau author

VN: Tell me about your org

MF: A leader in the Human Genome Project, we are now focused on understanding the role of genetics in health and disease. Our passion for discovery drives our quest to uncover the basis of genetic and infectious disease. We aim to provide results that can be translated into diagnostics, treatments or therapies that reduce global health burdens. WTSI was part of the Human Genome Project which spent 10 years decoding one human genome (3 billion letters in length) We now have single instruments that produce 100 times that data in a week.

VN: How do you use Tableau?

MF: Since Tableau arrived two years ago it has spread out from our team into pretty much every area of the WTSI. It’s now used in labs to track DNA samples as they process through our sequencing facility, in Cancer and Mouse Genetic teams to analyse experimental data. It is used to report on IT systems and our Corporate, Finance and HR systems. In fact wherever there is data Tableau seems to be there.

VN: What has the impact been on your business?

MF: The speed at which we can now produce dashboards has increased dramatically so that now, providing the data is there producing a full interactive dashboard is a dream to do. People are able to ask questions of their data and get an answer in hours rather than weeks. Tableau Server has enabled us to share dashboards across the WTSI. We have lots of tracking databases spread across different machines and Tableau allows us to blend these datasources together to present a single datasource, something we couldn’t do before without a lot of behind the scenes coding.

VN: Who do you learn from in the Tableau community?

MF: Everyone. I’ve posted in the forums many time and been helped by a huge number of people. Twitter is great for help using the #tableau hashtag you get a wealth of help. I am constantly amazed by peoples generosity with their time to help fellow users out. That’s one of the real strengths of the community.

VN: In your opinion what should we be mindful of in the BI space going forward?

MF: Tableau works because is it quick, simple and powerful. The best visualisations carry that forward so avoiding the temptation to over complicate things is really important. Tableau allows people without an IT background interrogate their data with an ease they have never had before, keeping this simple is the key to Tableaus continued success.

VN: Could you give me an interesting non-work fact about yourself?

MF: When I’m not building vizzes I like to take photos. Mostly landscapes with the occasional portrait, I have two young models that don’t keep still.

Enjoyed that, thanks a lot Matt. Look forward to seeing more of your expert presentations at upcoming events.

Regards, Paul

2 minutes with… Chris Love of The Information Lab

Posted on March 31, 2014 by paulbanoub

Good day Tablites! I trust I find you well this morning? And if I don’t then go and play with 8.1’s DATEPARSE function, for it will bring you great joy.

It’s that time again, where we open the brown envelopes and decide, based on size and quality of bribe, who will be the next subject of the internet’s premier interview show. And this month’s deep pockets belong to..

Chris Love (@ChrisLuv) of The Information Lab

Chris has appeared on the blogging and social scene relatively recently but has already made a name for himself with some great analysis and comment. He’s also a big help to us here at ninja towers. Plus he bought the beers the last time we met up. He’s recently joined the fine folks at The Information Lab as an Alteryx expert, giving this 2 minutes with a more Alteryx flavour. As a side note we also love Chris’s photography and hope to pick up some tips.

VizNinja (VN): Good morning, how are you?

CL: I’m doing good, my first few days in my new role at The Information Lab have been a bit of a whirlwind to be honest so it’s nice to take a break and chat to you.

VN: So who are you then and what do you do?

CL: I’m Chris Love, an Alteryx\Tableau Consultant at The Information Lab, Tableau EMEA Partner of the Year. I’m also the current Alteryx Grand Prix Champion.

VN: People may not have heard of Alteryx, can you quickly explain what it is? and what does being the Grand Prix Champion mean?

CL: It’s hard to pigeon-hole Alteryx, it’s essentially a visual BI tool that can be used for everything quick data processes, e.g. data reshaping, through to geospatial processing like “Find Nearest” and “Point in Polygon”; it’s also got a fantastic reputation as an Analytics tool. I’ve been using it for 8 years now and I’m looking forward to showing what it can do to a wider audience through The Information Lab.

As far as the Grand Prix goes, every year Alteryx hold an event at their conference where ten of the best Alteryx users in the world compete with each other over a series of business problems. Each problem is a timed “lap” and this year the three laps took in an end to end process which involved taking raw data, reshaping it and then doing some K-means clustering before presenting a final report via pdf.

I can’t remember my exact time but it took under half an hour in total to do the entire process and I was lucky enough to gain enough points from my laps to come top of the leader board. It’s a unique experience, with a few hundred people cheering you on and watching your progress on big screens, and the added pressure of being in direct competition with others, it’s hard not to go to pieces and forget everything you know. I must say though that the prize of a weekend in Las Vegas and a drive in a Lamborghini at the Las Vegas Speedway made it all worth it.

VN: How have you seen Alteryx make an impact on businesses?

CL: Alteryx empowers people. Ordinary business users are often hamstrung because the data they need either isn’t accessible to them because it needs specialists to extract it, or the data is available in Excel or online but is in the wrong format. Even solutions like Tableau, which are so easy to use, still require data to be formatted in a certain way before it can be used. Alteryx changes that by providing a simple drag and drop interface which allows users to use a plethora of tools to import, transform and analyse data, and the ability to share the results locally in any format or via the cloud. I once presented to a team who wanted to automate a handful of reports – I was able to build out their solution in just two hours in the course of a demo – which sold it to them; the next time I met them they were batching over 10,000 reports daily. I was blown away.

VN: How did you first become exposed to Tableau?

CL: I must admit I had heard of Tableau but it wasn’t until Alteryx added the capability to write to .tde format that I became fully aware of it. As soon downloaded a trial then I knew I had something that complimented Alteryx perfectly, so I made it my mission to get myself a copy, which I managed, and I started learning it in my spare time using resources like the Tableau community, Blogs and Tableau Public. With Alteryx to help me format data I found I was able to build Tableau dashboards quickly and easily because I didn’t need to worry about blending and formatting in Tableau itself, and the spatial elements I was able to add through Alteryx received fantastic feedback from even seasoned Tableau professionals – which only encouraged me further.

VN: In your opinion what should we be mindful of in the BI space going forward?

CL: As Spiderman was warned “With great power comes great responsibility”. BI is changing, business users are being empowered but with that comes a sense of responsibility otherwise there will be a backlash from IT. As more users get the tools to build data and analytical processes then users, and software vendors themselves, have a responsibility to ensure that the answers that come out of those processes are still meaningful and useful. If I can build a regression model without any code then does it mean I should? It depends, for example, on whether I understand what overfitting is.

VN: Could you give me an interesting non-work fact about yourself?

CL: I’m a keen photographer, I don’t get out as often as I should but when I do I have achieved some pleasing results – I even had some luck displaying my photos in exhibitions and have even sold photographs to America. Have a look at my site.

VN: Thanks for your time, see you soon.

CL: No problem, anytime.

That’s it for this episode. Tune in next time for more adventures in BI. Ping me @paulbanoub if you fancy participating in a future episode.

Regards, Paul

2 minutes with… Emily Kund of National Bank

Posted on February 28, 2014 by paulbanoub

Hello!

Here we go again! And they said it would never last! They said I’d amount to nothing! And here I am with top BI talent literally fighting to get a piece of “2 minutes with” action. Woah there guys – form an orderly queue. Especially you @pgilks – you’ve already had a go remember?

This time we extend a HUGE welcome to Emily Kund (@emily1852) a National Bank Examiner at the Office of the Controller of the Currency in Washington, D.C. The opinions expressed below are those of Emily and not her employer.

Quite simply – she’s mega! Our current favourite blog is a must read.

VizNinja (VN): Hi Emily, how are you?

EK: Doing well, thanks for asking!

VN: So who are you then and what do you do?

EK: I’m Emily Kund. By day, I’m a National Bank Examiner turned Team Leader, responsible for reporting and analysis for a subsection of financial institutions, supervised by a bureau in the federal government. By night, I try to be an awesome mom to two wonderful, smart, crazy kids; Alex (6) and Katie (3).

VN: How did you start using Tableau? And how are you using it now?

EK: I tinkered with it a few years ago, just to see what I could do, but didn’t have any formal Tableau projects. Then, in 2012, I used it for my first project, which is now monitored by senior management! I guess it follows the saying, go big or go home! By the way, I had help from the Tableau guy in my office…that sucker was super complicated!! Now, I rarely develop visualizations for work. My role is to provide feedback on reports and analyses that the team produces and, along with folks in my division, develop and implement a reporting and analysis strategy.

VN: How have you seen Tableau make an impact on businesses?

EK: The biggest impact I’ve personally seen is that we are now exploring the data we have collected for so long. Because it’s fast and easy to whip up a basic workbook, we have better insight into our data. We can start asking questions about the data and refine our process for data collection and management. Further, it’s been pretty awesome to see data sources to come together into one workbook and provide users the ability to see what’s going on, at an aggregate and detail level.

VN: Who do you learn from in the Tableau community?

EK: You’re gonna run out of space. There are tons of people!!! I think the ones that immediately come to mind include:

Anya A’Hearn
Andy Cotgreave
Kelly Martin
Andy Kriebel
Matt Francis
Jonathan Drummey
Jewel Loree
Peter Gilks
Paul Banoub..you know him?
Dan Murrray
Ramon Martinez
Ben Jones

Allan Walker

EK: Even though that seems like a long list, it’s really just scratching the surface. The Tableau community really is extraordinary. And if someone isn’t on the list, my apologies, I’ll buy them a beer at the customer appreciation party!

VN: In your opinion what should we be mindful of in the BI space going forward?

EK: This is my biggest thing…I think it needs to be easier to use the data. Because my experience has been that the data hasn’t been gifted to me in just the right way, and I’m not a data person, that including the functionality in the tools to make it easier to work with the data will be huge! Tableau is making it easier for the user to blend data. I think that is a super important path to continue down. I’m a really big believer into turning data into information and initiatives such as easier data blending should make it easier for anyone to do just that.

VN: Could you give me an interesting non-work fact about yourself?

EK: I’m pretty random! In addition to loving makeup and reading, I enjoy a good game of (American) football! My favorite team is the Washington Redskins, who had a terrible season this year! Hopefully they can turn it around over the next couple of years and get another Super Bowl ring at some point in the not too distant future. A little trivia for ya…there are four teams in the NFC East (New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Dallas). Of those four, Philadelphia is the only team in the division to not win a Super Bowl! Of the other three teams, Washington has the fewest number of rings, totaling three. Oh, and I like working out–especially strength training. My most favorite exercise is the angled leg press, followed by squats, then single-leg deadlifts. Oh, and I like Wonder Woman…I have all kinds of Wonder Woman stuff in my office!

VN: Thanks for your time Emily!

EK: Thanks for having me. Hope to see you in Seattle!

Well that was a pleasure. Thanks so much to Emily for sparing the time. Tune in next time for more words of wisdom from the BI community.

Regards, Paul

2 minutes with… David Napoli of Colorado HealthOP

Posted on February 6, 2014 by paulbanoub

Hello! I trust you’ve all had a good week so far. Time to continue our series of interviews. Hope you’re enjoying them so far. We’re staying stateside for this one and it’s my pleasure to speak to one of the more active tweeters in the BI space and someone who writes from the heart.

That man is David Napoli (@Biff_Bruise) of Colorado HealthOP in Thornton, Colorado, USA.

Colorado HealthOP is Colorado’s first statewide nonprofit health insurance cooperative (CO-OP). Colorado HealthOP was established in response to the growing demand for feasible, affordable healthcare for individuals and small businesses throughout the Rocky Mountain region.

VizNinja (VN): Hi David, how are you?

David Napoli (DN): My alarm goes off at 4 am … that in and of itself should give you the answer. And just to be clear, tired is the answer – but I’m ready to give it my best, as always.

VN: So who are you then and what do you do?

DN: David Napoli, Dad and husband. What I do is always be present for my family and do what I can to add happiness to their lives. I just happen to assist in keeping the roof over our heads through my role as the Director of Performance Improvement and Strategic Analytics for Colorado HealthOP.

VN: How do you use Tableau at your place?

DN: As I came on board with Colorado HealthOP two months ago – mid October 2013 – and the organization itself has existed only for the better part of a year (we are a new nonprofit health insurance cooperative that was allowed for through the Affordable Care Act), analytics and the BI environment are in their infancy. Part of my new role is developing the company-wide analytics business plan and following through with the implementation of a select ‘BI suite’ of tools … of which Tableau and its data visualization/discovery/storytelling capabilities being aspects I wish to leverage to their full extent.

VN: What has the impact been on your business?

DN: I can only approach this question from the position of what I hope the impact will be to my business – and I hope that will be an improved quality of life for Coloradans, specifically the people who choose to become members in our health insurance co-op. What I envision is for Tableau to facilitate the exploration of the well-being of our members, the identification of Communities of Solution, the establishment of explanatory analytics around cost and quality transparency, and for Colorado HealthOP to become the spearhead in health care data visualization and storytelling of communities and members. That’s all. 🙂

VN: Who do you learn from in the Tableau community?

DN: Well, above everyone else, there’s this Paul fellow… 😉

I am beyond grateful for the insights that many individuals have shared and continue to share on Twitter, through their own blogs, discussions, and collective knowledge. I appreciatively stand on the shoulders of giants, and I retweet them in mass quantities to show my utmost respect – and frankly awe they have the determination to share, above and beyond their respective responsibilities. If I’m not running between work and my kiddo’s hockey and baseball practices, I don’t know where that time comes from.

VN: In your opinion what should we be mindful of in the BI space going forward?

DN: Above all else, please, PLEASE do not lose focus on the motivating reason – the purpose – of whatever the analytic/BI effort happens to be. One can get tunnel vision on specific facets of an exploratory or explanatory journey, such as the latest visualization technique – “I must do a slopegraph!” – or design – “I’ll put together a trellis-based dashboard with *100* graphs on one screen!” – but the mission of the individual/group/organization must be preserved and for whom the BI effort is performed – members, providers, and the health care community in my instance – must be encapsulated throughout every analytic undertaking. Also, slopegraphs *are* cool.

VN: Could you give me an interesting non-work fact about yourself?

DN: I am an avid road cyclist. I’ve ridden Ride the Rockies ten times since I moved to Colorado in 1996… and some day that hockey and baseball playing kiddo I mentioned above will probably trounce me up one of the climbs on that ride, and I will be the happiest person on the planet when that occurs.

VN: Thanks for your time David, see you soon.

DN: Thank you for this opportunity to share – I greatly appreciate it.

Okay that’s it for another episode. Tune in next time for more BI and Tableau adventures. And hey – let’s be careful out there….

Regards, Paul

2 minutes with… Kelly Martin of VizCandy

Posted on January 23, 2014 by paulbanoub

Hello everyone. I hope you’re doing well. Time for another episode in the top-rated, some say premier, some say foremost interview show on the web.

And this is a bit of an OMG moment for us here at Ninja Towers, for we are proud to welcome our first Tableau Zen Master to the show.

It’s the fabulous Kelly Martin (@vizcandykelly)! This is a real pleasure for us here. Kelly has been a tremendous help to me behind the scenes of this blog, offering continuous support and expertise as I’m sure she has been to many of you reading this. She was the original inspiration for me to begin expressing myself in the BI space, and I’m sure has done the same for numerous others.

VizNinja (VN): Thrilled to speak to you, how are you doing?

KM: Pretty good, although I could afford to lose a few pounds and I’m having a bad hair day. Too much information? Careful with those open-ended questions.

VN: How do you use Tableau at your organization?

KM: I am the whole organization @ VizCandy. It’s just me and the cat, and she’s not much help. I use Tableau all the time, exclusively. I don’t think I’ve made an Excel chart in 3 years. My focus is dashboard design, so that’s what I do for people – build them great dashboards in Tableau.

VN: What has the impact been on your business?

KM: I have been doing contract work off and on for 10 years while having a full-time position in different organizations. Tableau has enabled me to go full-time contract – that’s the business side. On the personal side, it has made me a happy analyst.

VN: Who do you learn from in the Tableau community?

KM: Wow. That’s a long list and constantly growing. There’s all the bloggers (pretty thorough list on Ramon’s site), then there’s the hundreds of tweeters, Viz of the Day, and the Community Forums. I check out the questions on the forums regularly. I’m not very good at helping people in that format (I don’t usually understand their question or problem), but I learn a great deal from the help other people provide. Sometimes I just go to Shawn Wallwork’s activity to read through the questions and answers.

I will say that there was one blog post by Steve Wexler ‘Hey, Your Tableau Public Viz is Ugly *and* Confusing’, that had the most impact on my work. When Steve first published this I thought he was directing it at me. It felt personal because I was guilty of many of the bad actions he was describing. After my internal defensive hissy, I worked at improving my design skills and I often present his post when talking to people about designing dashboards.

I love this blog as well, it’s fun and insightful.

VN: In your opinion what should we to be mindful of in the BI space going forward?

KM: In my experience, BI is usually a small team within IT which wrangles data sources into warehouses (or marts) and builds dashboards, which the majority of the organization uses to download data into Excel in order to conduct analysis relevant to their subject area or business segment/department.

IT used to be besieged with requests to ‘Just give me access to the data’ and the same thing is pretty common now with BI. Some organizations have put BI teams into Finance, Operations, or Marketing, etc., but the majority of analysis within those departments is still conducted by the Excel analysts not in the BI team. High level KPI dashboards and scorecards built with complex stack BI solutions only prompt more questions about what is going on. BI, reliant on those solutions, are not able to respond in a timely manner and nor should they. They can’t possibly know the business or subject areas as the Excel analysts do.

With Tableau, I think BI could transform itself into a data service team, supporting Self-Service-BI throughout the whole organization. I did a Prezi on this last year http://prezi.com/4bi24d44yid1/self-service-bi/.

VN: Could you give me an interesting non-work fact about yourself?

KM: You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl.

VN: Thanks for your time, see you soon.

KM: You bet. Thank-you, and I look forward to connecting at the next TCC!

Ok that’s it for this one. Delighted to have our first Zen Master in the can. Thanks also to all those that are still waiting to have their interviews featured and have shown interest in this series. We’ve got a couple of very vocal bloggers lined up, some faces that will be well known to many of you.

Until then stay safe, and if anyone needs a shoulder operation, I can recommend an excellent surgeon….

Regards, Paul

2 minutes with… Peter Gilks of Slalom Consulting

Posted on January 6, 2014 by paulbanoub

Good morning all, I hope I find you well.

It seems that “2 minutes with…” is proving to be quite the premier interview show on the web. We’ve been literally inundated with requests to take part. I might have to employ some additional ninjas to deal with the admin.

We’re switching continents for this episode… He’s an alien. He’s a legal alien. He’s everyone’s favourite Englishman in New York…

It’s Peter Gilks (@pgilks) of Slalom Consulting in NYC.

Founded in 2001, Slalom Consulting are an American business and technology consulting firm and were named as one of the best 50 companies to work for by Forbes in 2013.

Here at VN we are big fans of Peter’s work, in particular his cool Tableau Public vizzes. This recent one will roll back the years for you hardened video gamers. Peter is also a vocal tweeter and has been very helpful with his feedback about this blog and other topics.

VizNinja (VN): Hi Peter, how are you?

Peter Gilks (PG): I’m very well thanks, despite just getting back from seeing the Chicago Bulls lose at Madison Square Garden.

VN: So who are you then and what do you do?

PG: Peter Gilks, Data Visualization Consultant at Slalom Consulting, New York. Slalom are Tableau North American Alliance Partner of the Year 2013.

VN: How did you start using Tableau? And how are you using it now?

PG: I started using Tableau about 4 years ago when I was working as a customer insight analyst at Barclays. At first it was just a great a replacement for coding SQL and draw charts in Excel, but I soon realised the scope of the product and I was hooked! Eventually the product grew within the company and we were lucky enough to get a Server which opened up the possibilities of pushing Tableau dashboards out to colleagues and customers. These days I’m spreading the love to other organisations, big and small, as a Tableau consultant at Slalom.

Tableau Public has also become something that I’m passionate about. I have my own blog which I run as a hobby and I try to do creative things with data. But I also love reading other folks blogs and get a kick out of seeing Tableau Public dashboards embedded in news sites. Where as I mostly make vizzes on fun topics, things like the recent dashboard showing fatal shootings of children in the US that was featured on NBC News really show how powerful data visualisations can be.

VN: How have you seen Tableau make an impact on businesses?

PG: There are a few big impacts I see Tableau making. One is the huge increase in efficiency for business and data analysts – which in turns leads to another that is the discovery of insights which is enabled by the ability to ask and answer questions quickly. Another major impact is the engagement with data from people who would otherwise be disengaged and making more ‘gut’ decisions. I think the aesthetics of Tableau really help draw people in, and enable them to make new discoveries and better decisions.

VN: Who do you learn from in the Tableau community?

PG: The Tableau Community is really one of the best-selling points of the product. It’s such a friendly, welcoming bunch and I enjoy reading various blogs, which are quite diverse in content. I also love the way that Tableau appreciates and encourages the culture of knowledge sharing through things like the Zen Master program. And the Tableau Customer Conference of course is the highlight of the year. Your blog has also been hugely helpful (and fun).

VN: In your opinion what should we be mindful of in the BI space going forward?

PG: Specifically in relation to Tableau we should as a user community be willing to help keep the company moving in the right direction through open discussion and constructive criticism. For the BI industry in general, I think expanding the field beyond IT and involving people with other skills and views is the key to success. Lets make BI an enabler for creativity, not a barrier.

VN: Could you give me an interesting non-work fact about yourself?

PG: I’m currently getting into home brewing – there is a dry hoppy IPA in the fermenter right now.

VN: Thanks for your time Peter, see you soon.

PG: No problem, enjoyed it.

Hope you enjoyed our latest episode of the interview show that’s taking the internet by storm. I’d recommend that NBC, BBC or Al-Jazeera get in touch quickly as our rates are going to rise.

Regards, Paul

2 Minutes with… Paul Chapman of easyJet

Posted on December 11, 2013 by paulbanoub

Ah good day to my Tableau disciples. Peace be with you. May your day be free of exploding 3D pie charts…

I’d like to introduce you to the first of a regular series of short interviews, entitled “2 Minutes with…”. The more alert of you will have worked out that this is where I spend 2 minutes with an interesting person in the BI area and ask them a few questions relevant to Tableau and viz and all that. I then document what they’ve said and we all look on in awe as to how clever they are. They then slip me a backhander and we all emerge as winners. Lovely.

First up is Paul Chapman (@cheekie_chappie) of easyJet.

Founded in 1995, easyJet are a British airline carrier and one of the pioneers of the “low-cost” airline boom of the 1990’s. They’ve seen very rapid expansion since formation and have always been characterized by their use of innovative marketing techniques, not least in their battle with rival low-cost operators. Check this interesting BBC documentary for some insight.

VizNinja (VN): Good morning Paul, how are you?

Paul Chapman (PC): Fine thanks, nice to talk to you again.

VN: So who are you then and what do you do?

PC: Paul Chapman, Finance Manager for Business Intelligence @ easyJet

VN: How do you use Tableau at your organization?

PC: I am leading our Tableau programme, which we have had in the business for about six months now. We started with a proof of concept scheme of 10 desktop users with a server in a box under a desk, which has now increased to 25 desktop users, which represent each key pillar of the business and a 16 core server across two physical and two virtual machines.

VN: What has the impact been on your business?

PC: We are still looking at the art of the possible with Tableau and getting our desktop users up to speed with the fundamental and advanced training sessions, but the proof of concepts have highlighted some innovative ways in which we can visualize our data and make current reporting significantly more interactive for the end-user. We have also set up an internal Tableau user group, which shares suggestions, ideas and best practice across Yammer and at our monthly catch up meetings. The training has also been recognized by HR and added to the individuals training records which is also important in ensuring they are being recognized for the time and commitment they are giving to the tool.

VN: Who do you learn from in the Tableau community?

PC: I follow multiple blogs and twitter users, there are too many to mention individually but suffice to say that 85% of the people I follow on twitter and 100% of the blogs are Tableau related! The Tableau Public viz of the day is also a fantastic resource (as are the Tableau books by Dan Murray and George Peck.

VN: In your opinion what should we be mindful of in the BI space going forward?

PC: Making sure that you don’t run before you can walk. Tableau is only one part of the whole BI journey for us. We are also defining the ‘Analyst of the future’ and trying to fix our underlying data warehouses and source data as well. Another key task is defining visualization best practice and guidelines and even the colour palettes we should use.

VN: Could you give me an interesting non-work fact about yourself?

PC: When not flying planes I also enjoy taking long runs through mud, fire, water, ice and electricity – normally in fancy dress as well!

VN: Thanks for your time Paul, see you soon.

PC: You’re welcome, always a pleasure.

Hope you enjoyed the first episode of “2 Minutes with…”. As always, feedback is invited. If you’d like to be the subject of a future edition then give me a tweet and I’ll send a Ninja over.

Regards, Paul