14 June 2013
A few months ago, during a marketing round table, The Information Lab team wanted to communicate just how fast and easy it was to use Tableau Desktop. Ideas were thrown around leading to bringing a speed challenge to the Tableau Customers Conference 2013 in London, which took place last week.Working in a company that not only loves the Tableau product but is also inspired by it, we weren't happy with just noting down times but instead had a customised 'Top Gear' style scoreboard built. But how would people do?We tried it out internally and started seeing times of 90s, 80s, 70s, a big internal high five when a sub one minute build was reached. Just before the conference though...Andrew Ball hit 26 seconds! And guess what, he recorded it! (we promise this is in real time, don't blink)
Now Andrew will be the first to admit he had some practice and we expected people doing it for the first time would probably get into the sub 90 second range after a couple of goes. But what happened in the grand final on Wednesday lunchtime stunned us all.The stage was set, dramatic music playing and a giant clock ticking away the seconds as the crowd gathered to watch the Sebastian Vettels of the Tableau world battle it out in a two round elimination final. The results:3rd | Richard Lee | 56 sec |
2nd | Dominic Chandler | 50 sec |
1st | Robert King | 38 sec |
So their high pressure final run times were all under 60 seconds. Impressive right! How about knowing the winner, Robert King had only be using Tableau for 2 months! Even better....the 3rd placed Richard Lee....2 days!We couldn't have predicted that but it is a true testimony to the power and ease of use of Tableau and for us an exciting experiment that has inspired us all.Congratulations to Robert, hope you enjoy your Sonos music system, and we of course are looking forward to seeing you all at TCCEU14.