We had an incredible time at the Tableau Conference held in Las Vegas earlier this month.

With over 200+ sessions, hands-on trainings, Iron Viz, Data Night Out, and keynote speakers from top brands, it was a transformative event for everyone seeking to take their career or businesses to new heights with data.

One of the highlights was witnessing our very own Senior Data Engineer and Tableau Visionary, Anya Prosvetova, present her thought leadership session titled “Your Path to Becoming a Data Developer.” She delved into Tableau’s developer tools and APIs, sharing invaluable insights.

Joining us were two other esteemed team members: Mina Ozgen, our Principal Analytics Consultant, and Tim Ngwena, our Lead Analytics Consultant. Their experiences and insights are detailed in this blog post.

Read all about their incredible journey at Tableau Conference and get inspired!

Anya, Sr Data Engineer & Tableau Visionary  

As a first-time attendee at the Tableau Conference 2023, I enjoyed learning about new features directly from the Tableau engineering teams and connecting with a diverse data community. The event provided a spectacular opportunity to be inspired by various presentations and share my personal journey in the talk titled “Your Path to Becoming a Data Developer.” I was also fortunate to be invited to speak alongside the Tableau engineering team at the “You can do WHAT with Tableau APIs?” session, where I demonstrated how these APIs could extend data integration and governance capabilities within Tableau.  

Participating in the keynote and hearing about new developments, particularly regarding Embedding functionality, was also interesting. The updated version of Embedding API (previously known as JavaScript API) was released last year. It streamlined the integration of Tableau visualizations into external applications. Introducing the Embedding playground at Tableau Conference represents the next step in enabling more users and organizations to jump-start their embedding journey and share their data with a broader audience. The concept of Ephemeral users also caught my attention, as it offered a flexible solution for granting temporary access to embedded Tableau visualizations without requiring full user licenses. 

Tim, Lead Analytics Consultant & Tableau Visionary 

Interesting, as always, to see where Tableau is heading with its platform. It was great to see Tableau decoupling parts of its platform and making more native parts of the platform available to developers. This implementation could allow developers to build creative solutions on top of Tableau. This, coupled with recent changes to embedding and backend cloud and server improvements, make Tableau a compelling platform-neutral analytics platform.

I was also intrigued to see how the net new technologies land with users and businesses, especially Tableau GPT. LLM-based technology is still very new to most users, so bringing that into a business context will be an exciting journey for many customers. 

Mina, Principal Analytics Consultant & Logistics Lead  

Despite having been to European Tableau conferences, like Anya, this was my first US Tableau conference, which did not disappoint. The scale and volume of people attending were almost overwhelming. Still, some moments made the Tableau community feel small and familiar. After knowing them online for over six years, I finally met various people from the community in person (legends like Cesare Picco, Flerlage Twins, Britton Staniar, and more).     

My top highlights were meeting and talking with the dev team (led by Thomas Nhan) on the semantic layer. I was excited to see the future developments in this aspect of the product. Some other highlights included meeting with logistics Tableau users on their use cases and healthcare clients on theirs and meeting some of our clients to discuss their current state and challenges. 

Catherine, Senior Analytics Consultant 

I had an absolute blast at Tableau Conference 23! There were many engaging sessions, and I learned great tips and tricks that I’m excited to put into practice. However, the highlight for me was meeting so many community members. The Tableau community is lovingly known as the #datafam, and you could feel that sentiment throughout the conference. I spoke with those I usually see on Twitter or featured as viz of the day. And I talked to those who were first-time attendees, and we bonded over shared experiences. Coming from Tableau Conference, I’m excited to learn and practice within the TableauGPT and VizQL offerings and develop my presence in the community.