The Tableau conference is a magical time of year when nerds come together for some informative fun. It's a great conference to build networks (in person and the graph varieties). Attendees seem to have a buzz about them and are super excited about what they're going to do post-conference, after listening to the amazing speakers from the week. And I'm no different. Instead of a conference recap, I'm looking forward to some viz goals.
Current Commitments
To provide some context, here's what my life looks like right now:
- Fully employed in a non-data viz job
- Momma to two awesome kiddos
- Fitness competitor
- Pretty Strong Smart Founder
- Mrs. Maryland US Continental
- Junior League Member/Volunteer
- Tableau Fringe Festival Founder
- Tableau Wannabe Podcast co-host
- GovTUG Advisor
- DC Data+Women Co-organizer
- Data analytics workshop presenter/organizer
Viz Goals
1. Curate data viz diversity resources.
Based on my table's discussion at Fanalytics17, there was less emphasis on the author and more focus on the content when we were perusing the Tableau Public profiles. To that end, our discussion focused more on ensuring we have a pipeline of diverse authors. We discussed ways to accomplish that, but what really popped out to me is that we need one place to go to in order to find diversity resources. Our time is valuable and if there are presentations or solutions that are being implementing, we should have those available to us. To that end, I'm looking at the ways I can best curate these resources so that community members can go into their local areas and get a diverse group of students interested. Stay tuned as I build this out (or facilitate it). Depending on how robust the solution is, I would like to have the initial resources available by the end of October (year-end at latest).
2. Provide leadership and mentoring resources for the Tableau/Dataviz community.
If you know me, you know that I love leadership and mentorship. Not only do I love it, but I have a keen interest in helping establish and support a culture of leadership in tech and dataviz. I need to put some additional thought around what this looks like so that it's more of a SMART goal. With respect to mentoring, my mentor match viz is available to help facilitate mentorship. However, I would like to refresh it so that it's a meaningful resource for members of the Tableau community. For the next couple of months, I'll be thinking through what changes to make to the mentor match viz eco-system, with changes being implemented in 2018.
3. Enter Iron Viz feeders.
The information I gleaned from this conference on women (or lack thereof) showing up for Iron Viz resonated with me. Why? Because I have this guiding principle to get the skills, show up, go up. Women are not showing up for Iron Viz (and therefore, not being selected). That assertion is based on my recollection of the data presented by Brit and Chloe during the data+women meet-up at conference on Monday afternoon. I believe they indicated that 45 women entered. That number feels low Regardless though, we know that there are quite a few very talented women in the Tableau community and I believe (though I'm going from memory), that there has been one woman make it to the stage...Anya A'Hearn. So, while I put on my thinking cap about how I can support others, I also had a gut punch moment. I am not showing up. I intended to show up this year and enter, but I didn't have a lot of time and didn't immediately have a story I wanted to tell with the subjects. Intentions though, are not showing up. So my goal is to enter the Iron Viz feeder contests. Because if women en masse show up, there is an opportunity to be selected.
What About You?
What goals do you have after attending the Tableau conference? Let me know! There's a community of support waiting to help you achieve your goals!
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