I have already posted last year that i think Tableau absolutely rocks
At the time I wrote that I loved tableau because:
- Tableau is changing student’s life (at the University I used to work for) – it also allowed me to connect and inspire the new generation of data professionals
- It is a great software – I can use my curiosity and found out what is hiding in the data
- I like the company values and I LOVE the Tableau community (see post)
- I like the support Tableau provides to Education sector (free for students, staff…)
I really think the community makes Tableau stand out. A number of community activities are led by data enthusiasts and love to share their data passion and get people improve their data skills.
A recent MBA Tableau test drive I delivered prompted me to compile a small list of activities students could get involved for learning. Makeovermonday, Iron Viz quickly came to mind but thanks to a call out to the community again and a shared Google Sheet, I realised there was many more.
So here is it, this is a list of Tableau community (mostly) led activities you can get involved to either learn or build your dataviz brand.
Name of project |
Twitter # |
Contact detail |
Frequency |
| Community led projects | |||
| Makeover Monday is your weekly learning and development appointment with yourself and hundreds of passionate data people. For free! | |||
| Make Over Monday | #MakeoverMonday | @TriMyData | Weekly |
| Workout Wednesday is a set of weekly challenges from Tableau Ambassadors and Zen Masters | |||
| Workout Wednesday | #WorkoutWednesday | @Lorna_Eden, @AnnUJackson, @LukeStanke, @CurtisHarris_ | Weekly |
| ThrowbackDataThursday provides a data set for you to explore, along with details on the provenance of the data source. | |||
| Throwback Data Thursday | #ThrowbackThursday | @TThrowbackThurs | Weekly |
| Tableau Tip Tuesday is exactly what it says on the tin, a Tableau Tip every Tuesday. Andy and Lorna take it in turns to each record a video tip along with the Tableau workbook to allow people to learn | |||
| Tableau Tip Tuesday | #TableauTipTuesday | @Lorna_Eden, @VizWizBI | Weekly |
| Iron Quest is a monthly community-led data visualization project which follows a similar format to the Tableau Iron Viz feeder competitions. Participants have a calendar month to source a suitable data set and then design, build and submit a data visualization. | |||
| Iron Quest | #IronQuest | @sarahlovesdata | Monthly |
| TheSDGVizProject is a monthly challenge. For the next year and half, each month, the 3 of us (Vinodh, Jacqui, and Brian), will be leveraging data from the World Health Organization to build data visualizations focusing on one of the 17 goals. We will also be sharing this data with the community, so you can join us on our SDG journey. | |||
| #TheSDGVizProject | #TheSDGVizProject | @BMooreWasTaken | Monthly |
| The #SWDchallenge is a monthly challenge where you can practice and apply data visualization and storytelling skills. | |||
| SWD Challenge | #SWDChallenge | @storywithdata | Monthly |
| ProjectHealthViz is a monthly project to visualize healthcare data. The objective is “to tell the stories of our health” and bring people together on a common humanizing theme of health. Data is posted monthly to data.world and folks share their vizzes on social platforms using the hashtag and entering their submission into the submission tracker. Lindsay then writes a blog about the visualizations each month. | |||
| Project Health Viz | #ProjectHealthViz | @ZenDollData | Monthly |
| Sports Viz Sunday is an initiative to encourage the creation and sharing of sports themed visualisations. | |||
| Sports Viz Sunday | #SportsVizSunday | @SimonBeaumont04 | |
| Tableau Prep | |||
| PreppinData Challenge is a weekly challenge to manipulate a data set that Carl Allchin and Jonathan Allenby provide on their website | |||
| PreppinData | #PreppinData | @Datajedininja @jonathanallenby | Weekly |
| Not for profits | |||
| Data for a Cause is an initiative that connects data visualization professionals with non-profits to help bring attention to social and environmental issues. | |||
| Data for a cause | #DataForACause | @OlgaTsubiks @dataforacause | |
| #VizforSocialGood helps mission-driven organizations to harness the power of data visualization for social change. | |||
| Viz for Social Good | #VizforSocialGood | @datachloe | |
| Tableau led | |||
| Iron Viz is a data visualization contest, giving you the opportunity to compete with data rockstars from around the world. The winners of a series of qualifier contests advance to the championship, a live competition at either Tableau Conference Europe or Tableau Conference. | |||
| Iron Viz | #ironviz | Three per year | |
| Not Tableau but good data challenges | |||
| Every month, DataViz Battle will challenge you to work with a new dataset. These challenges will range in difficulty, filesize, and analysis required. If you feel a challenge is too difficult for you this month, it’s likely next round will have better prospects in store. | |||
| DataViz Battle | @DataIsBeautiful | Monthly | |
| Every month, DataViz Battle will challenge you to work with a new dataset. These challenges will range in difficulty, filesize, and analysis required. If you feel a challenge is too difficult for you this month, it’s likely next round will have better prospects in store. | |||
| #Viz2educate | #Viz2educate | Monthly | |
| Each month, create vizzes on global education syllabus topics as resources for teachers worldwide. | |||
| Real World Fake Data | #RWFD | Monthly | |
| Create business dashboards using provided data sets for various industries and departments. | |||
| Diversity in Data | #DiversityinData | Monthly | |
| An initiative centered around diversity, equity & awareness by visualizing provided datasets each month. | |||
The Google Sheet link can be updated online.
