I often have to suppress a question while I listen to pitches for BI “solutions.” I want to interrupt and ask, “Hey, isn’t most of what you’re saying just bullshit?”
I’ve found an exception. That voice didn’t even make a peep Sunday as the three-day Tableau Software user conference unfurled in Seattle. Last night at a reception at the Edgewater Inn overlooking Puget Sound on a rare sunny day, I listened to Tableau staff tell me about their visualization software. Not once did I feel that restless need for more air.
They’ve got something good, really good. The quick stories I heard, sometimes barely, in cocktail-party shorthand ring true: for example, the heavy-hitting analysts who’ve been combing through rows and columns suddenly find they have a lot more time to plumb the data; the anti-terror people who can examine not just a handful of factors at once but a dozen or more; the consultant who feels he’s “stealing” from clients who demand Excel-based solutions who would benefit much more from Tableau; the anti-fraud guy who bought the software on his credit card and within a few hours found something so alarming he had to alert his boss.… Read the rest “User conference with a view”