S3 E4: Analogue: Kent Marten, Lead Product Manager, Maps and Spatial Analysis for @Tableau

0:00Hello and welcome to season three, episode four of the Datum Podcast.

0:03Ravi, how are you doing?

0:05I'm doing well, thank you.

0:06I'm here in sunny Seattle.

0:08Apparently this that's weird.

0:10um scenario to be in given that it's apparently always wet here, but it's not.

0:14And um I've spent about about a week here now.

0:18I'm here till Friday for um for some tableau things basically

0:22Good stuff.

0:23Good stuff.

0:24Um and so today is actually our first analogue episode, isn't it?

0:28It is, it is indeed.

0:29So analog for those who

0:31Who don't remember this, we actually came up with this last year where we wanted to speak to devs, we want to speak to uh people that actually build products and just understand what they do and how they do it, um, the ways they get there, the product cycles, all these things.

0:45Um so I'm delighted to be in the room this time with uh Kent Martin.

0:50He's our spatial guest.

0:52Hey.

0:53Hey who expected that one?

0:55He's our spatial guest.

0:56And um Kent, do you want to explain why I said spatial and what do you do?

1:00Sure.

1:00Well first I want to say thanks for having me on.

1:02Ravi, Tim, I know we've crossed paths every so often at Tableau Conference, but it's a pleasure to have this more intimate setting here on your podcast.

1:11Uh yeah, people say I'm a spatial guy or the maps guy because I am a geographer and I've worked on and with mapping technology and GIS software and

1:23uh spatial analytics uh products uh my whole career.

1:27So happy to be on the show and and talk about all things related.

1:30I guess the big the big thing um that's come out yesterday I guess is

1:35Buffer, which is a new type in in Tableau.

1:38I mean th I guess my question for that one is how excited do you get when something you've built or spent some sort of lead time on actually goes live?

1:47You know, it's always exciting.

1:49You know, it's I mean it's not like you know, birth of a child exciting.

1:53Like it's you know, like let's be real, right?

1:54Like there's there's monumental achievements in life.

1:57And then there is delivering something in which you've put a lar a lot of hard work in.

2:03Uh you know, you've worked closely with a large number of peers.

2:07Like nothing is ever just an individual solo effort and it's like easy.

2:11Right?

2:12Things are inherently complex.

2:14You know, engineering teams, uh, you know, all of the context of development

2:20Uh, you know, Salesforce acquires Tableau.

2:23We have Tableau Conference and the Salesforce Dreamforce Conference.

2:27We have everyone's got vacations.

2:29I mean just I there's a million things that are happening

2:32And you're like, I just want to build this feature to help the people understand location and how it impacts their work.

2:38And then you do it and you deliver it and it feels great.

2:42Um, you know, last night I you know I was checking Twitter.

2:46Uh you know, I I check Twitter more than I check email or these other things, right?

2:50Um

2:50But I'm checking Twitter and I could I was waiting for the notification, right?

2:53Like there's an email notification and there's a tweet notification.

2:56And you know there's these things that like they're gonna be so close together, right?

2:59Um and as soon as it happened, I was like, you know, sometimes I already have a tweet drafted, I'm waiting for the date, because sometimes it gets pushed back a little bit or you don't know exactly when.

3:07Uh but it's a moment of anticipation.

3:09So uh I live that anticipation uh whenever there's a release and it's always exciting to bring uh new features to people, so it's it's fun

3:16Awesome.

3:17Do you do you have a sense of like how um how hot the feature's gonna be and then how the community reacts in in response, right?

3:25You know, I have a sense, right?

3:27Like with some features it's it's just too easy.

3:30You know, like dynamic parameters or viz animations which also released with the buffer release.

3:36Um you know, obviously buffer, the most important of the three features I'm talking about.

3:41But long-awaited dynamic parameters and Viz animations and certainly bringing uh you know the play button.

3:49To server and tableau public, like those things you you know are gonna be hot.

3:53And people are gonna be showing stuff off.

3:55People are gonna be building and sharing all that content.

3:58The thing with a lot of the mapping stuff

4:00uh that we work on is that you know I I had a number of people respond to my tweet uh which was basically saying like hey buffers are out there distance driven analysis you know it's now easy

4:11And people are just like, oh my God, I've been waiting for that.

4:14Or this is the thing I'm going to work on tomorrow.

4:16This is the most important thing in my work.

4:18Because if you work and care about location,

4:20I mean, this is the thing that is helping you get through all of the roadblocks to this type of analysis, right?

4:27Like it just makes it so much easier.

4:29So, yeah, I think there's definitely a segment of people who

4:32You know, this is their job, this is the way they think about problems.

4:34And obviously location is this pervasive thing and context for almost every business and every type of organization.

4:39So you know it's everywhere.

4:41Um but there are people who who care about it and they know how important it is.

4:45It's always nice to hear that voice come out and be like, hey, I know you built this for me, which is great.

4:50But yeah, yeah, I wasn't expecting a big pop for buffer because some people are just going to be confused by the name.

4:56You know, you're like, dang it, you know we have to call it buffer because you should.

5:00And that's the standard.

5:01And that's what we all call it in the geospatial world.

5:04And it's okay to educate people a little bit.

5:06You don't have the most you know if you don't have the most intuitive name

5:10It's okay.

5:10You can you can s use the right word uh because people are smart and they can learn it.

5:15Um yeah, I wouldn't want to call it you know anything ridiculous, crazy ten syllables or something like that, but um yeah, buffer, it it'll make its impression over time.

5:24What would you have called it instead?

5:26You know, I was trying to think of something smart off the top of my head and I came up with nothing.

5:29Because there's no better name.

5:31But if if you know what are you gonna do?

5:33Like just the concept of buffering

5:35Um you know, you might use a phrase, like within a distance type of analysis, right?

5:41And and I like the this catchphrase

5:43Distance driven.

5:44I mean trade area, would that be one that you'd you'd call it?

5:47You know if it's a trade area really means something, like you are trading the goods.

5:52When when you want to understand sort of if I'm within a mile of a hurricane path, I don't want to call it oh well check the freight areas, guys, for the hurricane.

5:59You know, that's a bit rough.

6:01Um but if you come up with a better idea, you let me know.

6:04And if you know your ideas prove creative enough, maybe we'll bring you into this and we'll help you do some naming

6:08Well uh yeah uh you know, uh a month and a half ago I wrote this blog post about uh transitions versus animations and whether you know what what they should be called.

6:17So it's actually a very passionate sort of area of of the product, right?

6:21Because

6:21what you name it really does dictate how well people discover it and then also secondly whether people understand it or not, right?

6:28Well it it does.

6:29It does, but I you know I I'm pushing back a little bit saying, um I mean even if you're a new user to Tableau, right, and someone's like, hey man, don't worry, you can do that with dynamic parameters.

6:39Or hey, just go use the set action.

6:41It's like, you know, if you don't know the vocabulary even, like that's a non- you know, you can't just jump right into that.

6:47Um with spatial stuff that you know the spatial uh functions

6:53the spatial predicates that you know we have built into Tableau, intersects, buffer, distance, make point, make line.

6:59I mean some of them are are really like, you know,

7:01It's it's written in plain language, right?

7:03Like make line.

7:04That's gonna make a line.

7:05Yeah.

7:05Um you know, so you kind of benefit from some of those standards.

7:08But yeah, I I'm not so concerned about like intuitive understanding of like

7:12the top of the headline like clickbait type thing, right?

7:16Like it doesn't need to be one word, you captured it all.

7:19People will read a a second sentence, I hope.

7:22Yeah, yeah, to your right, to your right.

7:24I have to say, just just touching on sort of feature releases, um, you know, I think in the last uh I think two years there's been a really strong cadence in terms of the spatial features.

7:33sort of coming through.

7:34Um just before the podcast, I kinda joked with Ravi how you guys are making point, make line, just making shit happen, right?

7:40So it's it's kind of it's it's it's been amazing.

7:43And so just talk a bit about that.

7:44Like

7:45Um what does it take to kind of get that momentum and get that kind of uh airtime in the product?

7:49Yeah, maybe I can I I'll take a little step back and you know tell you about some of the history of where I came from and uh you know sort of like this release and cadence of features.

7:59uh that we built.

8:00When I came to Tableau, there there was uh a mapping team that was really focused on the geocoding data and building and serving map tiles.

8:10We built our own map service in-house

8:13And so that was the primary objective of the team, right?

8:16It wasn't any sort of front-end visualization, analytical, geospatial features at all.

8:22And the team had recently built, I think, MapSearch was like the big thing.

8:27And MapSearch is wonderful.

8:30You can just type in something and it goes there.

8:32Um but it's it's not what I would call the most important thing that needed to be built, right?

8:37And we started to build a vision for what needed to happen in the future and lay some groundwork initially and then build on top of the groundwork.

8:44So at that time, spatial wasn't a type in Tableau like numbers and dates and strings, right?

8:50And we needed that to be a type so you could work with it efficiently.

8:53and it could do the type of analytical things that you wanted to do with it.

8:57And you could read native spatial data sources, right?

9:00So once we built out sort of a vision, which was around, well, you can't do spatial analysis if you can't see spatial data.

9:08Right?

9:09Um well let's let's build the data, right?

9:11This is like a pillar.

9:12Um connect to spatial data.

9:13And then we thought, well, there's then there's the analytical operation.

9:16Once you have a spatial type, I mean well, what's the leap to get intersects and a spatial join to work?

9:22Because that allows spatial aggregation, right?

9:24And then you have to think about the whole time, like what are these common scenarios that people care about?

9:29They care about proximity analysis, right?

9:30This kind of distance-driven stuff

9:32Uh and that's really why we built make point, make line, distance, and buffer.

9:36All of those things in concert allow you to work with data that comes in common forms.

9:41Which kind of comes full circle back to like common spatial data sources, which is just latitudes and longitudes in an Excel spreadsheet, right?

9:47Now you can do spatial join between a CSV file and an Excel spreadsheet.

9:51You can't do that in other places.

9:53It just makes it so flexible.

9:54Um but I also say about sort of the cadence, you know, there's a there's a balance to be struck between building and innovating new things and really delivering new novel features.

10:03versus well you have to maintain things you have to uh you know the people that requested features on the on the tableau ideas site in 2012 they weren't thinking we were going to get to intersects

10:13you know, in twenty sixteen or seventeen, right?

10:15At the time they're thinking, well, can you make uh geocoding a little easier?

10:18Or there's some data that's missing, or can I have a new selection tool?

10:22Or

10:22You know, I'm not trying to say those are narrow or shorter views, but certainly that's trying to help them solve the problem right in front of them.

10:28So, you know, it's it's kind of hard to build up

10:32A strategy that allows you to both accelerate innovation, maintain some of the customer requests in that trajectory to supporting existing customers.

10:41Uh but you know you deal with the trade-offs and I think we've done a good job.

10:44Yeah, so I I mean my question to that is when do you say the technology is not there yet versus here's a great idea when you're actually mapping that out like

10:53At what point is it technology first, or how long does it take us versus we just need to get this done and we should spend time on that?

10:58You know, this is this is uh this is a pivotal question, right?

11:02This is like the the crux of the hard problems to solve, right?

11:05How do you know when to build something?

11:08Um I will say that there are times when when you you know you can have a little bit of intuition here, right?

11:14You generally know how the code is is laid out, like the structure of the code, and where something would fit into it

11:22And you know how and this in the in like the UX paradigms that could surface it and expose it to people so that they can click a button or drag a drag their mouse.

11:30Um

11:32There is something to be said about the collaboration between user experience, UX and research, engineering, and product management.

11:41and and really understanding the requirements and use.

11:44When you really have a good understanding about what customers need, and you have a

11:48Fairly good, but it doesn't need to be completely thorough.

11:51Understanding of how you can move forward and build and know that you can solve the problem, right?

11:55And you have a user experience that you believe fits in with or

12:02presents a new and sort of exciting and engaging way, um, then you know you're already on good footing there, right?

12:09But it's those moments where you're like, hey, we know exactly what to build.

12:12And you know, the engineering team might say, well hang on, that might require a one year refactoring of the core part of the code.

12:20And you know, VizQL doesn't know how to how to handle that right now, and we're gonna have to figure out how that's gonna work, right?

12:26Like

12:26You know.

12:27Okay.

12:27Yeah, yeah, yeah.

12:28I I guess that double taps into a second question, which is what is the difference between a dev and a product manager and a user researcher?

12:35A dev, a product manager, and a researcher.

12:37Um

12:39Well, I'm a product manager.

12:40So my job is to be the primary customer advocate, someone who gathers requirements, understands the use cases, understands both the use case for the user, the user goals

12:49And the business case, the business goals and how the supports and is aligned with our strategy as a company.

12:55A user researcher and an engineer, they need some of those things as well.

12:58They want to understand why we're doing something.

13:00Uh, but that's like the product manager needs to unlike needs to really own.

13:04You know, the what and the why, right?

13:06What it is and why we need it.

13:07And the engineering team really needs to understand the how like own the how, right?

13:11How are we going to build this?

13:12How are we going to achieve it?

13:13How can we execute and deliver this efficiently?

13:16And then of course the design team needs to really think through and also understand the user experience needs, like things like how often will something be used.

13:25might change the way you design a user interface around that, right?

13:28Um but do sort of a deeper dive into research to really help validate and and really become a partner sort of in the inception phase.

13:36of of building out um a feature and and the requirements that you're going to build for that feature.

13:41But research is sort of a partner along the way, along with design.

13:44Yeah, so I think that answers it.

13:47So thanks for that insight.

13:48I think it's it's really fascinating because as I guess as a consultant but as a user of your product, um we very much sort of have a completely sort of different perspective.

13:57So just just from your perspective

13:59Once you've shipped a feature, how how do you then sort of uh keep in touch with how people are using it, right?

14:06Because sometimes you might ship something and people might not use it how you expect it, right?

14:09No, totally.

14:10Um I think for me

14:12I I I'm definitely willing to use all channels available.

14:15So, you know, I'm active on social media, people know me, they ping me.

14:19I'm active on the Tableau forums, you know, our community forums, people post things there, and I answer questions or I read the questions

14:25And I see what the feedback is there.

14:27I work closely with our Tableau field and the sales team, and I get feedback directly from them, you know, as the proxy for customers.

14:35Um you know, so uh everywhere that I can get information I'm looking for it.

14:40Uh and then you know Tableau in some ways uh collects usage data.

14:44uh so we can understand some some patterns uh that have emerged within the product, right?

14:49Uh but you know usually and and I do feel this way like fairly strongly, although not like

14:54you know, strongly held or I I have a strong opinion uh about this, but loosely held because I do feel like we get it right a lot here.

15:02Like, you know, this is a professional software factory, right?

15:06And and

15:07And I and I do feel like we have the culture that hasn't forced us to push things out prematurely.

15:12Um you know, we might talk about the delay to get to some of the features um or when they were you know asked for and why did it take so long.

15:20But I know that we've spent the time and effort uh certainly within the mapping features is I can speak exactly to it because I'm one of the owners of the area.

15:28And that is, you know, we don't see a lot of defects.

15:31We certainly don't get a lot of like strong complaints.

15:34And when we do, we're responsive to that.

15:36I I can say one recent example was

15:38Um in the 2019.

15:403 release, we released the spatial function distance, right?

15:43But that particular function uh was it would materialize

15:48When you created an extract.

15:49So when you went from live to extract, it materialized the calculation.

15:52Right.

15:53Which means you cannot use parameters or uh LOD calcs.

15:57Like it's limited.

15:58uh to what you can do with something that is materialized.

16:01I can't say that word, Tim.

16:02I don't know how you're gonna fix that.

16:04But um you know, and we got feedback immediately.

16:07Like people are trying to

16:08parameterize and and do interesting things with distance and I had to say, you know, we tried to s ship an incrementally valuable thing here.

16:16But we realized that, you know, it it wasn't probably meeting the bar for like even the common advanced uses.

16:23And you know, we immediately worked on

16:26Uh bringing that along with buffer to be like sort of fully functional any data source anytime is going to work the way you would expect it to work.

16:33Uh you don't have to think about managing the data source in any way, right?

16:37Um and so we you know we did that with and that was really driven from a lot of feedback both from known people in the community but also people that were just uh posting comments in in the in the right forms.

16:47Good, good.

16:48I it's it's funny because as a consultant I I I I tend to call the similar thing technical debt, where basically you want to give the client uh what they want, but you also don't want to leave them with something that's going to in you know three months time break or you know

17:01be impossible for the thing.

17:02Yeah, technical debt is such a you know it has negative connotation with it, right?

17:06I we know like to say we're gonna need to fast follow here.

17:10Um you know we're we're gonna need to to bring this one home.

17:13Like we you know like we we've started it, we need to finish it kind of thing.

17:16Um it's it's tricky to find that balance sometimes.

17:20But I'm curious though, like Tim, like how how have you like what are the best ways for you to give feedback?

17:26Like how do you how do you expect to give feedback if you see a problem

17:28Well what do you do when that happens?

17:30Yeah.

17:31So it's funny because uh uh uh typically what I try and understand is am I seeing a problem or am I misunderstanding sort of what I'm looking at, right?

17:40Because um

17:42If I if I think about my own background, I didn't come into sort of analytics from a traditional database background.

17:48So half the time, most of the things I see are data issues or

17:52or data structural issues or I'm asking something too complex of the software that I just don't understand sort of what's going on.

17:59So standard thing, go to super source sales.

18:02Recreate the problem.

18:03If you can recreate it, great.

18:05Um the second thing I then do is share it.

18:07So I ask other people because you know, before you put a

18:10put your hand up and say this is a problem, you kinda wanna double check your right, right?

18:13You don't wanna I don't I don't email you and say, hey, this is this sucks this then you turn around and go, uh

18:18Did you uh did you enable this one little feature?

18:20And I'm like, don't so you just want to kind of validate with other people who kind of know what's going on.

18:26And then the last thing is

18:27You know, take a picture, take a video.

18:29Um I started doing this more in the last year, um especially with Tableau Prep, where I just take annotations of what I'm trying to do and I just literally annotate the screenshot because

18:39One thing I've realized is when you try and describe something in text, uh this this this uh terminology thing that we talked about earlier comes up

18:46Uh whereas you could be using the wrong terminology.

18:49Secondly, the person could be thinking of it differently to how you are articulating it.

18:54And then lastly, you could just be completely missing each other.

18:57So

18:57Just a screenshot annotations means everyone's looking at the same thing, and if they don't understand it, they are asking you off the same context

19:05And then from there we're just just the back and forth.

19:07Just good good communication lines and you know.

19:09I think the seventy percent of the time it's just me misunderstanding the tool or misunderstanding how something works.

19:17You know, as we build new features and as we you know collaborate and work on the quality of a feature and uh you know make sure it's it's ready for production.

19:25You know, anyone who finds an issue for something that we think is done or working right, you know, again, it's not like, oh, you don't just log a defect immediately.

19:33It's hang on, let's let's check the version of the build.

19:37Let's uh check with the person who's working on that particular area.

19:40Let's make sure we can check a different platform.

19:42Is there something specific or check a different browser?

19:44You know, like

19:45Do all the things to sort of break it down.

19:47And you know, every once in a while you're like, well, why don't you go back a version?

19:51Go back to version nine.

19:52Yeah.

19:52You know, go back to version eight.

19:53It's like, oh wait, that's always been there.

19:56Let's have a new conversation.

19:57You know.

19:59Yeah, exactly, exactly.

20:00And you know, I think some people sometimes perceive an issue uh when there there hasn't actually been one.

20:06So

20:07uh they'll just simply kind of I've seen this a couple of times where uh someone will remember a feature in the past differently when nothing has changed if that makes sense.

20:16You could open the an older version, everything works fine.

20:18And so there's also that sort of confirmation bias where people are absolutely convinced that something has changed, when nothing has changed.

20:24But you change the version number, so therefore you have to go through this like cycle

20:29Literally getting them side by side.

20:38Hey, this isn't working.

20:39And you're like, that's not released yet.

20:41And you're like, oh, I thought we released that.

20:44And you're like, no.

20:45He's like, can you can you get that done soon?

20:46And you're like, ah no, no, I know the feeling, gosh.

20:53Um

20:54So yeah, no, it's a re it's a really interesting kind of uh sort of problem of space that I think you you you you um sort of have to deal with.

21:00Um just stepping back

21:02Sort of when do you get sort of your work done?

21:04And I don't mean that in a sort of a flippant way, like when do you work and stuff like that?

21:08But you mentioned sort of all these other challenges around product marketing, you know.

21:12acquisitions and all this sort of other sort of atmospherical sort of activity going on.

21:17When do you sort of carve out time in your day to kind of you know really put your head down and uh you know solve problems?

21:23You know um

21:25You know, I can be pretty direct about this.

21:27I mean I I feel like I spend all day and and this is a good thing solving problems.

21:33Like

21:33That that that is why I come to work every day, right?

21:36I don't I don't come to work thinking like, oh, you know, today's gonna be a day where we don't solve problems or things are easy and there are no problems.

21:42It's like no.

21:43Everything is a problem and I'm constantly trying to work towards solving them.

21:47Some of these problems are huge and run across functions and departments and organizations

21:51And some of these problems are are simple.

21:53Some of these are technical problems.

21:55Some of these are sort of soft personal problems, right?

21:58Like

21:59Any number of these things because everything that you do is looking to you know everything that I do is about just being more efficient, right?

22:07Like and and this isn't just about like the work, it's also about

22:10You're having fun.

22:11You know, like I definitely took this time out of my day to join this recording because I was like, that's fun, you know?

22:17Um and it served a couple of

22:19you know, quote unquote, you know, problems, right?

22:21Like I I want to balance out sort of these engaging, uh, sort of evangelical, interesting opportunities um with you know working with and meeting with the team.

22:32you know, multiple times a day, different teams, you know, uh working on different things.

22:36So, you know, for me, I could have said

22:39Uh well I get in in the morning and I and I try to respond to the emails that I flag, but I can never keep up.

22:44And then uh well of course I gotta check Twitter before I go to a daily meeting um and make sure no one said anything bad about me.

22:49And then, you know, I I start to get hungry at ten 'cause I ha you know, I'm I'm a I'm a big guy and I eat a lot and I have metabolism and I just I need to.

22:56And then it's like with all that going on, how are you doing anything?

22:59But the mindset

23:00It's just really about solving problems, recognize an individual problem, and then try to solve it, right?

23:06And understand the scale at which you need to solve the problem and then go for it.

23:12Good, good.

23:13It's it's it's fascinating because, you know, uh fr from a from a consulting point of view, um, problems tend to be kind of

23:21far and few between.

23:22Most of them are, you know, technical if you're working in the product, but the rest are purely communication and client facing, right?

23:28So um do you ever sort of have that uh

23:31uh you know, uh sort of difficulty transitioning from the different types of challenges.

23:36So you might have a technical problem, then you go to like a a people problem, because as you mentioned, people are doing lots of different things.

23:41How do you sort of switch in and out of those spaces?

23:43Yeah, you know, I think everyone handles this

23:46type of situation and like the notion of like context switching and and you know people have different skills you're asking me how do I do this and and

23:54And what are the the different challenges?

23:56Um I think this is something that I'm actually fairly good at.

23:59Like I just recognize a a problem or the type of problem and I I assess it and compartmentalize it appropriately and then deal with it directly.

24:08Um, you know, I'm I'm a proponent of constant, you know, frequent direct communication.

24:15So I embody that spirit.

24:17So if there is like uh you know a disagreement problem, it's like, hey, what are we disagreeing about?

24:21Tell me your perspective, let me understand where you're coming from.

24:24Let's get on the same page, right?

24:25It's not like go through back channels or try to figure out, well, is that an assumption?

24:31Um, you know, it communication is so key to all these things, right?

24:35I was talking with uh my boss earlier today, and we literally had this conversation, which was, you know, no one's ever complained about overcommunication.

24:42No one uh you know communication doesn't close doors, it only opens doors, right?

24:46And so I agree with you when you're like me, most of the time it's about communication, making sure you're aligned on the same page.

24:53And you know, that's that's

24:55you know if communication is the thing you're trying to work with and and use to solve these problems, it it doesn't really matter if it's a people problem or or a technical problem or whatever it might be, like working with a different team.

25:05Right.

25:05You just know that, oh hey, wait, we're not on the same page.

25:08And you go through the same exercise, you know, mentally to like how would I do this?

25:11Oh, I need to make sure they understand.

25:13I need to make sure I understand them, etc.

25:15Yeah.

25:16Cool.

25:17Cool.

25:17Right, I'll uh change the tone a bit just make it a little bit more lighthearted now.

25:21Um I we didn't really ask this at the beginning, but how did you how did you get into mapping?

25:25Mike, what kind of led you to mapping?

25:27Yeah, well I could tell a few stories.

25:29Um I can say I've always been interested in maps.

25:32Like it's just there is something about the world as you see it and understand it that, you know, gravitates to a lot of people, right?

25:38I'm not the only person.

25:39Uh I sometimes tell people too, right, like

25:42You know, when you read a children's book, like if you have a if you have kids or you know kids in your life, um and you read them a book, you know, how often do you see a map in the books?

25:50And I would say very frequently you see maps.

25:53Um but you know you don't see Sankeys in the in the children's books, you know, and you don't see uh uh even a bar chart mostly.

25:59Um you know you see maps, they're they're there from the beginning of life as this thing that you learn about.

26:03Like it's so important.

26:04Um and so, you know, for me, you know, I went through high school and and into university and I always tried to take a number of different ranging, wide-ranging subjects, right?

26:13Um, you know, I liked math in high school, but I always took geography and history.

26:18Um

26:19I when I went to university, I said to myself, you know what, I want to study something completely different that I haven't had a chance to study yet.

26:24I didn't go into math or science.

26:26Uh I wanted to learn about environmental governance and policy because I felt like that would be a need in the future

26:31as we look at the problems we face as it relates to climate.

26:34But I realized that some of the content was a little bit redundant as I went through the years of my education.

26:39And I didn't feel like I was learning and and figuring out new things.

26:42Um, but at that time I had this interesting opportunity to go and live with my mother in the British Virgin Islands.

26:49Now my mother had moved from where we lived, which was in Toronto, Canada, moved from Toronto to the Virgin Islands to take a job as a healthcare consultant in the Caribbean.

26:57So coming from the Canadian healthcare system and trying to bring some of that goodness, you know, to the British Virgin Islands healthcare system

27:03And so I said, Yeah, I'll go down there for the summer.

27:06Uh but I told my mom I can't come down there if I don't have a job.

27:09And she helped me apply to get a job with the town and country planning department managing a spatial database and building maps

27:16using uh Esri's Arc View product.

27:19And that was the the first time I'd ever done this.

27:21They basically put me in front of a computer and like, hey, can you work this out?

27:24And I was like

27:25It's just maps and and tables of data.

27:27It's like, yeah, I'll play around with this.

27:29So for three months I built maps that looked at new types of construction.

27:32I built some larger maps for display about, you know, the islands.

27:36And really got hooked on the notion of GIS.

27:38And so I went back to school and I said, oh, I want to add another major.

27:42I want to do geography with this GIS emphasis.

27:44So I got right into it.

27:45And then one of my professors later on, uh before I graduated, you know, I talked to him, I said, hey, one time, you know, you worked for this company, Esri, this the company that makes all the software that we're using.

27:54How'd you do that?

27:55Right.

27:55And he's like, well, this is what I did.

27:57I went to the University of Waterloo, which is where I was, and then I graduated and went to a postgrad program on the east coast of Canada at a small college called the Center of Geographic Sciences.

28:09Cogs.

28:10And it's in this small town, Lawrence Town, in Nova Scotia.

28:13But it's a world-renowned surveying school.

28:15They do a lot of like you know ocean survey type of stuff.

28:18Right.

28:19But they also have a GIS program and remote sensing program.

28:22So I said okay yeah, if I go there, um, you know, like then I'll have the skills.

28:26He said, No no, Ezri recruits from there.

28:28Like they're gonna go there

28:29Every year.

28:30Oh wow.

28:30And I was like, oh great, because I'm good at interviews, man.

28:32Like if I just go, I'll get an interview.

28:34And I'm that guy where it actually worked out.

28:36I went there to get a job with Desries.

28:39They came and they said, Yeah, we're gonna hire you.

28:41So I moved from no you know, Nova Scotia basically

28:43Down to California where their headquarters is, and I spent over nine years at Esri working on their core desktop product called ArcMap and their uh more recent 2D, 3D product called ArcGIS Pro.

28:56And then after 10 years, um, you know, I sort of from there I'd really built up this uh knowledge and and sort of like my passion was already there around mapping and location and how important it was.

29:06Right.

29:06Uh and

29:07While I was at Esri, you know, I really understood just the variety of use cases, like just the um, you know, ubiquitous nature in which people were working with and trying to solve location.

29:19uh problem.

29:21Right.

29:21So um I kind of captured all that and when I saw this this opportunity at Tableau to really uh make it self-service and easy, you know, because what I just described to you was

29:31uh you know a four and a half year uh co-op degree program, uh nine month boot camp in uh Nova Scotia in the winter, which I will say was difficult.

29:40Right.

29:41And

29:42You know, and then after that I went to Esri and realized I didn't know anything.

29:46Right?

29:46So it took a lot.

29:49And I wanted to come to Tableau and help build tools.

29:52that allowed anyone to really work with and understand location data, geography, administrative data, and how to make sense of the world.

30:02Amazing.

30:03Amazing story.

30:03It's it's so fascinating to listen to people like yourself talk about sort of their background.

30:07Because a common thread that I I keep seeing come up is

30:10People just take a chance and try something out, try something new.

30:13They realize they have a passion for it and boom, you know, th they're doing what they love now.

30:17You know, Yeah, no, it's it's amazing how many like dominoes were lined up and you know, I just knocked the first one down when

30:24You know, I went down and and took that first job and was like, oh, and I and it was like like that.

30:28It was like I'll do this forever.

30:30You know, like that's fine with me.

30:31Right.

30:32Um and you know, of course it's it's a little bit different, right?

30:35I th I thought I would be an analyst.

30:36I didn't know I I was gonna get into software development, right?

30:40Like that's kind of radically different.

30:42Um but then I thought, well no, no, I'm I'm building the tools that people use and it's a it's a really interesting, you know, it's a really interesting job

30:50That's pretty awesome.

30:51Um I guess my next my next question to you is um you're in this sort of amazing opportunity where you can bring people closer to some of the you know features you've seen through your career.

31:01But at the same time, the space is evolving and moving forward, right?

31:04So how do you how do you stay in touch with the innovative sort of space in in mapping, right?

31:10Whilst also keeping an eye on what's still quite hard to do for the everyday user like me, who's not a spatial

31:16uh expert on sort of bridge those two gaps.

31:19Yeah, I mean how do you keep your finger on the pulse of everyone's needs and where the world's gonna be and how do you predict where it's gonna be in five years, ten years?

31:28Right.

31:28Um it's a challenge.

31:30I know that uh what's what's interesting for me is you know, working in a technology company.

31:36Uh that's kind of you know on on the bleeding edge, right?

31:39And you know, coming from where I came from in my background, again, like these are companies that have really tried to push the envelope and really been in that sort of that cutting edge.

31:48Um

31:49You know, and now we're looking at you know the influx of uh AI-backed, ML-backed capabilities, right?

31:56Like smarter

31:57features, things where you can press a button and get an answer already for you and it's the right answer, right?

32:03And you know you often hear this phrase, you know, moving from what or where.

32:07to why, right?

32:08Like why there and and so forth.

32:11And um y you know, I think the interesting thing here is

32:16There are going to be people who who just need the building blocks, right?

32:20The people who understand the space and and they they like the Lego, right?

32:23They just want to build themselves if you give them the right

32:26blocks and the right tools.

32:28Right.

32:28And then there then there is, and that's still people who use you know tools, self-service tools like Tableau, right?

32:32Like I'm not saying that this isn't that kind of tool.

32:35But there are still going to be uh a more uh sort of novice, sort of like base user who just is not gonna come with any of the background in terms of uh you know

32:47you know, spatial analytics one, but like just data visualization best practices, data literacy sort of concepts, right?

32:53Right.

32:53And yeah, and it's like

32:55How do you how do you really cultivate that?

32:57It's you know, the product is one part of it, but I really think it's an alignment and like a larger mission of our whole, you know, of our organization, the one that I work for, uh, but just like the data community, like

33:08Everyone who's in this, the the the knowledge workers of the world and the in the data uh community of the world, right?

33:13Um you know, we have to move

33:15People forward and organizations forward by cultivating these data cultures and uh data literacy and like those kinds of things, right?

33:23Um

33:23Right.

33:24So I I I know I'm kind of veering a little bit from sort of your original question, but I do think you know I I I have you know so I have a I have thoughts about this, which is which is good, right?

33:34I have I have I have a way in which I see the world and and who we need to help.

33:37uh solve problems.

33:39And then I had to look at what's available, right?

33:41Like what are the ways in which we could solve these problems and what are the the real needs of these particular segments, right?

33:46And if we look at

33:47sort of the modern approaches or the new technologies that are emerging and how best to employ those to serve these audiences.

33:54Um, you know, well we can do that.

33:56It's not it's not an unsolvable problem by any stretch.

33:59But I also think everything we do in that space is it's tending to benefit everyone else that was already here.

34:06Right.

34:07And it helps.

34:08The hard part is

34:10when it comes to like in in some cases people are kind of married to the way they do things or you know there's insecurities about change, right?

34:17And even or you know, and there's and there's trust issues.

34:19You know, someone who has a established methodology

34:22who knows how they did it and and knows they've used that tool for a long time, you know, their skepticism when it comes to what you want me to use a new tool and that tool's going to tell me the answer?

34:30Yeah.

34:31You know

34:32So I always say like, you know, pick the tool that's right for you, pick the tool that's right for the job, explore it, use it.

34:37But you know, you should never be so married to one particular set of tool or or you know you should have a large toolbox, lots of tools.

34:45Right, right, perfect.

34:46Yeah, no, it's it's very true.

34:47I think um we have a data school here in the UK and um we we teach Tableau Nortrix sort of exclusively in the curriculum.

34:54But uh one thing we always encourage people to do is once they go out to, you know, their clients and placement, uh, we try and encourage them to kind of see what they can do outside of Tableau and Altrics and and and and stuff and Tableau prep and

35:05Bring that back into the product because there's things that other technologies can do that you know Tableau inherently can and probably won't want to do because it's not in the sort of problem space that they're trying to solve.

35:15Um so it's always a sort of a good way to

35:17to sort of fortify your skills as it were or understanding of of the world as it were.

35:21Well yeah I mean if you think about you know customers have problems today.

35:26Like

35:27And many problems in the world, you know, are urgent, right?

35:30Like whether whether a business depends on it or it's solving a public health issue.

35:35I mean

35:36These things aren't the things that you need to wait on or you want to wait on.

35:40And so if you don't have a set of tools, right, like uh an arsenal of things you can go to, then you know, you're probably not gonna be able to solve everything that comes at you, right?

35:50Right, yeah exactly, exactly.

35:52You need a Susami knife of sorts, right?

35:55Good stuff, good stuff.

35:56Okay, um yeah, I guess I guess my last question for you is what's your

36:01What's like your pet peeve?

36:02What do you see in a workbook?

36:03What what do people send to you asking for that you look at and you just go, oh no, you know, like you know it that's that's hard.

36:12I I I thought you were gonna ask

36:14What is my pet peeve in life?

36:15And really really catch me off guard.

36:18But I'm gonna tell you that anyways.

36:19You know what my pet peeve in life is?

36:20Is when someone goes to hand you something, you know, they go to hand you something and they let go before you've grabbed it all the way.

36:26And then it drops.

36:34Don't watch the British team then.

36:36But when it comes to

36:39uh you know data visualization and maps.

36:42Um you know you you see this at times and and I can point out this one sort of more common example, right?

36:49Um it's funny, like everything we were talking about today, like I was just talking about recently, which is you know, maps lie.

36:56They lie all the time.

36:57Yeah.

36:58And it's because of you know you're you're looking at a very complex 3D world

37:03uh you know 2D space on a screen with a number of pixels, like there's only so many things that can be accurate.

37:08Um so how people sort of

37:12Take advantage of that, right?

37:13Like if you lie with a purpose, like you know, you see this, you know, ridiculous administration in the White House

37:20showing showing maps of like their electorate and their constituents like how are you gonna impeach this and the whole country's red?

37:26It's like, yeah, because nobody lives in those places, but they are large areas.

37:30And I can kind of normalize and rationalize myself.

37:34Um and when you look at that with sort of a a different view, right, proportionally, um, it's obviously a radically different and more accurate picture of the world, right?

37:44And so it's a pet peeve when I see uh obviously that's a that's sort of like a you know, a politically motivated thing is is bad.

37:51Yeah, that affects you know

37:53how democracies function.

37:54So that's a pet peeve Tim.

37:56That's a real strong pet peeve right.

37:58Um when someone, you know, says like

38:01Uh like I have a map of the states of a country or the provinces of a country.

38:05Um and you know they they color them in a certain way and they're like, hey, like look, but there's a lot of red there.

38:09It's like, well, you know

38:10Just because that's the biggest area, it's the same issue, right?

38:12Like it's not so serious as affecting all of democracy, but it it might affect their business and how they think about moving forward.

38:18Um so you know, I I'd love for people to sort of better understand

38:22the right visualization type.

38:24Um but it's it's not like a wild pet peeve where I'm like, God again um unless it's someone who's you know out to thwart the the democratic values of a of a nation or the world.

38:33But yeah, that is a

38:36Awesome, awesome.

38:37Well yeah, okay, great.

38:38That's uh it's it's pretty it's pretty fair as well, actually.

38:42I think um I I have that sort of

38:44View with a lot of with a lot of sort of different chart types you use.

38:47Sankeys you mentioned earlier on a classic.

38:49Everyone wants them, but no one understands them

38:53There's so much research on that.

38:54It's it's a classic one.

38:56Um right, I think I'll I'll hand it over to you if you've got any questions for me before we

38:59Before we drop off.

39:00Um Ravi's not here, so I'm gonna face the full bridge.

39:05Um I mean Tim, like yeah, I I mean I'm uh a maps and spatial guy, but this doesn't need to be uh so much about maps and spatial, but

39:13Um, what what is it that you'd like to see from the data community?

39:16You know, I'm not talking about the Tableau product or anything like that, but like what would you like to see the data community sort of rally around and promote and do better?

39:26Um as you look at this here.

39:27Right.

39:28Um I think the number one thing for me has to be um people.

39:33I think there's a there's there's often uh there's often an outcry for

39:37diversity in the in the community.

39:39And uh typically people rally around the most uh sort of visible sort of forms of diversity, whether it's gender, ethnicity, and so on and so forth.

39:48Um but what there isn't enough of is sort of a rally around sort of diversity that's not visible, if that makes sense.

39:55So diversity in terms of the type of content.

39:57So something I'm doing a lot is videos.

39:59So, you know, I'm dyslexic.

40:00I ha I hate reading stuff

40:02Um I hate writing stuff, so that's why I don't write many blogs.

40:06Um and so, you know, I'm trying to do my part to to to to put more video content out there.

40:10But likewise you think

40:11Uh people kind of all come from different sort of places and I think as a community we can all do a bit more just to sort of um pay attention to the different forms of diversity that don't often get a look in, whether it's different ways of thinking.

40:23maybe introverts as as it were, because you know, Twitter community's very extroverted uh i by its nature.

40:28That's to that's just Twitter for you.

40:30Um but there's, you know, great people doing great stuff on the forums that

40:33you you you don't you don't really come across unless you you're yourself kind of going through the forums and and kind of seeing that.

40:38So I think more of a s I I guess self awareness of that um I think would be

40:42would be something I'd ask everyone.

40:44I I don't really think there's a feature because every every everything that's feature based tends to be very specific to certain use cases.

40:51So the very sort of organizational or sort of corporate if that makes sense.

40:55No, that's a that's a great response.

40:57Um yeah, Tim, I I mean I I could ask you questions all day like you know what do you what do you think about what do you think about Ravi being a Zen master?

41:05Um

41:06I was gonna say like we didn't even touch on this.

41:12I started this podcast and now the brilliant.

41:17Basically, honestly, the guy, honestly.

41:21No, it's great.

41:22It's great news for him.

41:23Um well deserved as well.

41:24Like he's done he's done a lot of great work um in the community.

41:27More than

41:28More than I think most people recognize.

41:29And that's the same with all Zenmasters, right?

41:31They've they've all put in work in in lots of different ways and that's that's why they've been recognized.

41:34So hats off actually too.

41:40And you know, how hard it is, right?

41:42Like there are it's not like there's just, you know, ten or just thirty nominees.

41:46There's there's seventy, eighty, hundreds.

41:48Um and yeah, there there really is like an attempt to, like you said, um for some of the more obvious uh sort of uh

41:56uh ways we look at diversity, to to to promote a diverse group and and to really understand and represent that in the class of Zenmasters

42:04Um, but like you're saying, like with Ravi, it's it it you know, some of the things that he understands and he's promoted, uh whether you know through Project Griffin or

42:12Um, you know, understanding sort of the administrator's view and just having a different take on things is also sort of unique and and and sort of elevates you, right?

42:22Um and I like I really like that that is happening, right?

42:25It's a really hard conversation, a really hard evaluation process.

42:30Um but when you look at the class, I mean I don't think you can really argue it.

42:34Um, you know, given the the sort of breadth of skills and geographies and ranges of of of what people bring uh to the table.

42:43So it it's it's a yeah, it's an interesting thing.

42:46It's a good class.

42:47It's a good class.

42:49Perfect.

42:50Okay.

42:50Um I think that's that's it.

42:52Uh th thank you thank you so much for your time.

42:54Uh I'm sorry Ravi had to

42:55You know, Zen Master now just setting off to this and that.

42:58Literally I I haven't stopped receiving messages from him going, Oh, now I'm doing this.

43:03Now I'm doing this.

43:04Look at this.

43:07Hey, I'm gonna be late, I got this other thing.

43:09You're like, dude, your life

43:15I'll catch him soon.

43:16I did want to say thank you guys for having me on.

43:19Thank Rabby for me, or if I see him in person, I will do so

43:22I appreciate the time on the air and being able to talk about some you know fun stories and not just about Tableau or the things that we work on, but uh digging in a little deeper.

43:31So I look forward to uh the next analog episode that comes out

43:35Absolutely, absolutely.

43:37Okay, that's the show.

43:38Um if you want to catch the episode uh notes, you can head on over to Datum Pod and uh catch season three, episode four.

43:47Ravi can't be with us at the end of this podcast, so I'm gonna have to close this out solo.

43:52Uh we'll be getting back to our usual format doing a bit next time.

43:57um very soon and in our next episode we'll sort of do a roundup of this episode.

44:01All right, take it easy.