Building the Perfect Beast – My #Tableau Story

Introduction

Today was a very special day for me. I was invited to give a presentation at the Austin office of Tableau software. I was given one hour to present “My Tableau Story”.

When Jason Bondoux of Tableau invited me to give this talk about a month ago, I’m not sure that he understood what I was capable of delivering with respect to “My Tableau Story”. When I arrived, I warned him that I could ramble for hours about Tableau. I assured him that I could unload eight years of insights and experiences, as needed!

With a room full of people present, I unleashed a flurry of stories, crazy ideas and Tableau insights that might have shocked a few of the people present. As I fought back emotions a couple of times, I unleashed the beast that has been building inside me for years. I felt like I was starring in Don Henley’s album “Building the Perfect Beast“.

This experience was a lot of fun and it was great to see such enthusiastic Tableau employees. I really appreciated the opportunity and I will always remember this experience.

The Presentation

In honor of this event, I made my first Prezi presentation. That was fun to do, too. I used the Prezi to pace me through the 45 minute jabber session. Maybe one day I’ll publish the Prezi when it is more polished.

I Almost Did The Presentation Another Way!

When I awoke this morning, I thought about doing something completely different than just using the Prezi. I thought about simply reading specific articles that best describe my Tableau journey.

The best articles that describe my journey are now a year old. They are still amongst my favorites. In the three-part “Tableau Data Zone (TDZ)” series, I try to explain how I feel after having traveled years to get to the “TDZ.” I think these articles give some insight into my feelings about Tableau software.

Since I have never read any of my articles out loud, I thought it would be a good idea to practice reading what I wrote. With this crazy idea in mind, I sat up in bed early this morning and decided to read all three articles aloud. I turned on my telephone voice recorder and captured the experience as I read the articles.

When I realized that the recordings took too many minutes to play for an audience like this, I decided to not use these today. I also came to my senses and realized that it wouldn’t be a good idea to simply read to an audience. I am sure everyone would have been put to sleep before the first article was over!

The Audio Files

I’m not a podcaster, nor am I a video blogger. I’ll leave those activities to the more talented people. However, since I captured myself reading the TDZ articles, I just felt like sticking them in this article in case I ever want to use them.

These recordings are not pro-quality. They have reading mistakes included, as they were not edited. There were just recorded without practice, the first time through. They have background sounds created as I moved around. As my buddy Joe Mako recently informed me, we all suck the first time we try something. I am OK with that!

I like these recordings because they capture my voice reading my words. I can’t remember doing something like this before. Special emphasis was given to how I think the words should sound. For each of the three articles, you can click on the audio player to listen to these articles. You can click on the pictures to go to the written version of these articles.

Thanks for listening and/or reading!