Top 10 Community Conversations of 2012

As the Community Manager at Tableau I get to see and take part in lots of really cool conversations in the Forums, Groups, Ideas and Viz Talk areas. Every once in a while though, a topic or thread stands out as something truly special. Here is my personal top 10 Community Conversations for 2012:
Dustin Smith

As the Community Manager at Tableau I get to see and take part in lots of really cool conversations in the Forums, Groups, Ideas and Viz Talk areas. Every once in a while though, a topic or thread stands out as something truly special. Here is my personal top 10 Community Conversations for 2012:

▶ Grow Your Own Filled Maps - Richard Leeke kicked off this discussion in February and 10 months later it's still going strong.

▶ Placing Subtotal on Top or Left - Or as I call it "An Epic Discussion on the Usefulness of Text Tables."

▶ Tableau Calculation: Quantile (version 2) - You know you're doing well when your calculation discussion starts attracting Tableau developers to the conversation.

▶ Utilization Rates Over the Course of a Day - Ever wondered how far a little custom SQL can do go?

▶ Is 7+ able to refresh old firebird TDE? - What happens when you mix an extract question with some calculation optimization experimenting along with some passionate Tableau users? Mind boggling genius, that's what.

▶ I need to create a Tableau chart connected to Oracle DB and refreshable every time when it’s reached from the Web page - Had to give some love to an awesome Tableau Server discussion with some great commentary by Dimitri Blyumin and Tableau's own Russell Christopher.

▶ Scheduling Gannt Chart - A little data shaping with some custom SQL and a lot of support from Jonathan Drummey makes this thread a testament to the power and kindness of everyone involved in the Community.

▶ Hexbins for visualizing millions+ data points - Okay, this one for me is truly cool. Essentially a "I wonder if Tableau could do...." question pops up and before you know it Hexbins start appearing in Tableau.

▶ Color Coding by Column instead of entire row - Parameters controlling the colors of columns??? What is this wizardry?!

▶ Re-creating a formula in Tableau - Alex Kerin and Joe Mako help reverse engineer a Business Objects query with the help of some table calculation awesomeness.

Honorable Mention: While not a single topic discussion on its own, Shawn Wallwork's Forum Digest Weekly posts have been amazing collections of some of the coolest stuff happening on the Tableau Community recently and are definitely worth reading!

Honorable Mention II: Andy Cotgreave has been posting collections of relevant, innovative and interesting Tableau-related content from the entire web recently which I always end up bookmarking.

Obviously this is just a smattering of 10 really cool conversations that I like. Got some from the last 12 months you think should be up here? Leave a comment and let me know.