As Stephen Few delivered his keynote address at the recent Tableau customer conference in Seattle, he suddenly broke his rhythm to look at someone in the audience. “Is that Howard Dresner?” he wondered, surprised.
It was. Howard is the man who as a Gartner analyst in 1989 revived the term “business intelligence,” and he’s one of the industry’s patriarchs. He holds a seat on the TDWI faculty, and he founded Gartner’s business intelligence event.
In that world, Tableau is still an insurgent. Tableau usually bypasses IT buyers on its way to data analysts, who only want to soak insight from data and then show others the results. Many Tableau users are veterans of miserable, lockstep interfaces procured by those IT buyers and made by IT-facing vendors. That at least partly explains why Stephen Few’s evisceration of the Business Objects interface seemed to delight just about everyone in the audience. Even Howard called it “wildly entertaining.”
Two mornings before, Tableau CEO Christian Chabot had started the fire. In his Monday morning keynote, he made allusions to Apple’s “1984” ad, then went into Tableau 6 — using FAA data on another variety of Big Brother: the airlines on which most of the crowd had arrived in Seattle. Both keynotes were as much fun to watch as the wild flames of a bonfire or a public execution.
Now and then, though, I had to check the exits. My inner skeptic always questions such fervor. I subscribe to no guru, no preacher, no righteous political philosophy, nor any movement that’s “green,” “red,” or “blue.” When you glimpse the underside, they’re all too ugly to bear.
But, again and again, I’ve seen that this is not any of that. The Tableau crowd is simply a bunch of people who’ve found a good, honest tool that responds the way good tools do. They have fun listening to the keynotes, but most Tableau users themselves are about as fired up as chess enthusiasts or weekend car mechanics. They’ve adopted something that’s logical, responsive, and economical, in which the simple interface encourages experimentation and learning.
One of the only signs of celebration was giddy tweeting. I suppose that was hard to take for some. One BI biggie — perhaps speaking for the Ministry of Truth — grumbled in a tweet from far away that there was “no silver bullet,” but most Tableau users don’t follow him and don’t care. Others, such as Howard Dresner and Microsoft lead for BI strategy Bruno Aziza both showed up to see what it was all about.
The conference was sold out. Total paid attendance was around 700 — more than twice last year, which was significantly higher than the first year. Most user conferences, in fact, declined this year and last. This year’s total was also in the same range as TDWI World Conference in San Diego, held just two weeks earlier, and not too far away from the 1000 or so that Howard Dresner says Gartner often attracts.
At this rate, says CEO Christian Chabot, the conference will be forced out of Seattle next year and possibly longer. The only space that will hold a larger crowd than this year’s would be space mashups within an easy walk of each other, and that’s not available next year. Tableau is already looking at San Francisco and other cities, even Las Vegas.
One user, now back home in Lithuania, pondered the future: Giedre Aleknonyte, a data analyst at a phone carrier, said “You know how people say they’ll ‘Google’ to find out some information, even when they don’t actually use Google? Maybe someday when we want to analyze data we’ll say, ‘I’ll just tableau it.'”
Great observations Ted!!
I really think that something special is happening here. The passion displayed by both the conference attendees and the entire Tableau team was almost overwhelming.
As Pat pointed out, “Easy is Hard”; and Tableau is making it easier for “The Business” to quickly get to the insights they need to run the business, articulate better questions, and make better decisions.
Great synopsis Ted. It is great to be part of such an innovative community.
As a previously disillusioned BI professional who spent more time with the DBA than the business I was unimpressed when our CTO returned from New York with a copy of Tableau, the next BI Big Thing.
This didn’t last long when I realised I could use it as a coud solution to solving business problems and there was no DBA needed.
I have just Tableau’d some data (thanks Giedre) for a pitch next week, what to do with the rest of the day?
Before Stephen’s speech I had recognized him [Howard Dresner] in the second row near the front but couldn’t place the face with the name. So, I walked over to say hello and ask who he was. He told me and I thought – that’s cool – someone from the BI “establishment” is here. I also thought nobody will really care. The audience for Tableau (for the most part) comes from people who know nothing about BI, don’t care about data structure, and generally from folks that don’t really care about how the information happens – only that it’s available, flexible and easy to use. They are more interested in the end result than how we get there.
The BI bigshot may have been on to something about Tableau being “no silver bullet.” I think (speaking personally and not as a representative of the company) that “silver bullet” thinking is what leads to BI packages becoming overblown and convoluted; and that a result of trying to do so many things they get extended to the point where they cease being really good at anything.
I think our vision at Tableau steers well clear of this, and that we’d rather do what we’re good at doing and extend that as it makes sense rather than trying to become the monolithic solution to all of everyone’s business analysis and intelligence problems. Kinda more the useful, handy $60-100 Swiss Army knife rather than the $1200 one which has every attachment imaginable (and then some!), but is too unwieldy to carry or use.
Good point, Vanya. Thanks.
Excellent points Ted. It is very odd that any product, especially one about data analysis, can excite so many people. People who have long analyzed data and many who have avoided it before Tableau seem to have the same opinion, they really enjoy using it.
Perhaps a recent training attendee from Australia summed it up best, “I am not sure whether to laugh or cry when I think of all the time I wasted before Tableau.”
Tableau is successful because it has focused on what questions the average person can answer while using their tool rather than the standard BI features and IT plumbing. It has those covered, but they are not the driving force behind their extreme success.
All the best,
Stephen McDaniel
Hi Ted,
The switch from being a product name to a verb might be the biggest compliment that a product can receive, and is testament to the product’s success. In fact, this discussion is quite familiar.