Kicking off data17 with data myth busting, platform innovations, and more

Data rockstars from around the world descended to Las Vegas this week to kick off the data event of the year. The 10th official Tableau Conference (can you believe it?!) hosts an incredible group of more than 14,000 passionate attendees, some of them 10-year veterans, participating in 400+ learning sessions that will help them take their Tableau knowledge to the next level. Miss the full keynote?

Tune into Tableau Conference Live (TCL), where you can live stream the remaining 2 Tableau Keynotes and 11 of our most popular breakout sessions.

CEO Adam Selipsky jump started Conference by expanding on Tableau’s vision to empower entire organizations to see and understand data. This starts with delivering a platform with the depth and breadth of capabilities needed to integrate data into the fabric of your organization and realize the value of Tableau at scale. Adam also spent some time dispelling data myths, including artificial intelligence’s replacement of the analyst the fallacy that there can be one, perfect source of truth.

And that was just the start!

Sherri Benzelock, VP of Business Analytics Transformation at Honeywell, helped Adam bust the myth that governance means “no.” Instead of ushering in a “Wild West” environment with self-service, she pointed out that they already had the Wild West through Excel downloads and email. Introducing Tableau gave the analytics team tools to improve insight and control.

Chief Product Officer, Francois Ajenstat, riveted the crowd by highlighting the upcoming Tableau platform innovations. This includes Hyper, a new in-memory data engine technology and Tableau Server on Linux. Francois also announced the availability of Tableau 10.5 beta!

Hyper—Tableau’s new technology for faster extracts now in public beta

Conference attendees previewed Hyper, seeing firsthand its ability to slice and dice half a billion rows of data in sub-seconds (you read that correctly). With improved extract creation and query performance, Hyper helps customers have the freshest data, even for large and complex data sets. And that’s not all! Hyper has improved transaction throughput by better leveraging modern hardware. This means during peak usage times like end of quarter, your Tableau deployment will be able to better handle spikes in your Tableau Server workload.

Bring third-party functionality into Tableau Dashboards with the Extensions API, now in developer preview

Other platform innovations included a developer preview of the Extensions API. Developers can now create dashboard extensions that enable customers to integrate and interact with other applications directly from within Tableau. Customers can access the full functionality of third-party applications without ever leaving their dashboard. If APIs get your heart pumping, we have even better news! You can test drive the API with our developer preview here.

Project Maestro coming in Beta in Q4

Last but not least, Tableau’s keynote highlighted the innovative data prep product, codename Project Maestro, which will help more people quickly and confidently transform their data for analysis in a visual and direct way. What does this mean for you? With Maestro everything is inherently visual, so you can understand the domain of your data. Maestro automatically shows errors and outliers in data and employs fuzzy clustering to help users with the common, repetitive tasks like fixing spellings errors or reconciling entities across data sources. And if you know Tableau, you know Project Maestro. With a common calc language and a streamlined publishing experience, it’s easy to switch between data prep and analysis. Project Maestro will be available in public beta this quarter. Sign up for updates here.

Elissa Fink, our dynamic Chief Marketing Officer, capped the morning off with a bit of nostalgia as she fondly looked back on a decade of Tableau’s data rockstars coming together. She also focused on the inspirational selflessness the Tableau community exhibited immediately following the recent tragedy in Las Vegas. “It has been incredible to experience the growth of this conference over the past decade, seeing our community come together in the name of data and innovation year after year. In fact, we saw extraordinary things out of our community last week, when they rallied together and created #data17donates to help those affected by the recent events in Las Vegas,” said Elissa Fink, Chief Marketing Officer at Tableau. “I look forward to finding strength in our engaged and mission-driven community this week.”

#Data17Donates

Tableau will dedicate the conference to the victims and their families, first responders, and the heroes that worked tirelessly in the aftermath of the shootings. During the conference, Tableau will be raising funds for the National Compassion Fund to support the victims and their families. Make sure to follow #data17 for all additional coverage and check out #data17donates to see how your fellow data family is giving back. And because we can never say it enough: thank you to our amazing community. We can’t wait for all of this week’s activities!

This is just the beginning. Make sure you mark your schedules for the keynotes, customer sessions, interactive trainings, and more, that speak to you. The data lovefest is beginning, and you don’t want to miss it.

• Join the conversation with #data17.
• Check out our recommendations for the week.
• Tag along online with Tableau Conference Live.
• Get all the Tableau Conference details.
• IT at TC? Check out this roundup of sessions.

This week, you’re going to gain new analytic superpowers, get certified as Tableau experts, party with your people, and walk away better connected and ready to master your data.

Note: Many of the capabilities and products discussed in this blog post are not currently available and may not be ready on time or at all. We advise customers to make their purchase decisions based upon features currently available and upgrade to the latest version of Tableau to enjoy the latest capabilities.