# Vlog #8: Journey Home, roundup and reflections (Tableau conference 2016) #data16

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2016-11-27
- **Format:** Video · 15 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Community, Industry trends
- **Tools:** Tableau (embedding, formatting, server)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/vlog-8-journey-home-roundup-and-reflections-tableau-conference-2016-data16
- **Watch:** https://youtu.be/VICN03Vldjs

This is the eighth and final vlog from my trip to Tableau Conference 2016 in Austin. I pack up my Airbnb, travel back to Colchester, and then reflect on the event with help from my dog Toby, sharing what I'd love to see Tableau focus on next and my thoughts on the future of the vlog itself.

## Key takeaways

- Reading other people's conference write-ups and revisiting recorded sessions afterwards adds perspective you miss while you're caught up in the event itself.
- Tableau needs a proper onboarding experience to win over users coming from tools like Excel, since the product philosophy isn't intuitive to newcomers.
- Breaking Tableau into developer SDKs would let people use individual parts, such as the visQL rendering engine, and embed them in custom web and mobile contexts.
- Half-finished features like text formatting frustrate when a complete workbook style-sheet system would deliver far more value in one go.
- There's a genuine place for a vlog in the Tableau community because the product's liveliness is hard to convey in written form alone.

## Chapters

- 0:28 Packing up and leaving the Airbnb
- 1:34 The long journey home
- 3:48 Reflecting after the conference
- 5:05 Catching up on missed sessions
- 6:04 Wishlist: an onboarding experience
- 7:23 Wishlist: developer SDKs
- 9:45 Wishlist: finishing features properly
- 11:53 The future of the vlog

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/vlog-8-journey-home-roundup-and-reflections-tableau-conference-2016-data16

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena