Chapter 14. How to Keep Growing Your Skills

That's it! You are now all set to use Tableau in a professional environment. Starting with connecting to your data, building your data source, then your first visualizations and Dashboards to publish all your work in a secure and online environment. But there is still a lot to discover and many ways to become better at using Tableau. 

In this short chapter, we'll speak about:

• The Tableau Community
• Tableau Public
• Community projects
• Ambassadors, Zen Masters, and Iron Viz

Let's start with the reason Tableau is the best tool for data visualization: the Community.

The Tableau Community

Tableau is an excellent tool for many reasons. But there are a lot of great tools for data visualization. If you ask me why Tableau is better than the others, my answer would be, the Community.

When I started using Tableau, the Tableau Community Forums helped me a lot. No questions are left unanswered, and you'll find a lot of people eager to help you. Don't hesitate to ask any questions here: https://community.tableau.com/community/forums.

The Community is all about sharing. There are many events where the Tableau Community gather to share. The Tableau User Group (TUG) is a regional event (check whether there's one near your area!) where senior users meet new users and discuss new features, tips, use cases, and more. It's also a great place to share pizzas and beers!

Don't be sad if there is no TUG near you; there are many online events, such as the Fringe Festival, organized by the Tableau Community: http://www.thefringefestival.rocks/.

Of course, there are also two major...

Tableau Public

Tableau Public is software, similar to Tableau Desktop, that you can download and use for free with some limitations: you need to publish your work online in a public environment, and you don't have access to all the connectors available in Tableau Desktop.

Tableau Public is, in fact, much more than that.

Tableau Public is like a social network, but while people are sharing pictures of their cats and kids on Facebook, you can only find the best visualizations available in Tableau Public. As we are data lovers, here are some figures: 250,000 Tableau Public users have published more than 1,000,000 Workbooks, generating more than 1,000,000,000 views. 

On the Tableau Public website, you can find a Viz Of The Day section on the homepage (every day, a new Workbook is promoted by Tableau: https://public.tableau.com/en-us/s/), and many Featured visualizations in different categories (Greatest Hits, Sports, Social Goof, and so on). You can find a list of the current Featured Authors,...

Community projects

This section is all about growing your Tableau skills. There are many projects created by the Community for the Community. Participating in those projects doesn't engage you in anything, you can only learn and become better. For the majority of those projects, people interact through Twitter, so I advise you to create an account to follow those projects. 

Here are some Community projects:

• Viz For Social Good – #VizForSocialGood by Chloe Tseng: This project gives you the opportunity to work for non-profit organizations such as UNICEF and the United Nations. There is a new project almost every month, with a deadline to respect. You can register as a volunteer to be informed of new projects. At the end of every project, the non-profit organization chooses one visualization to feature on its communication channels. As Chloe says:

We help mission-driven organizations to promote social good and understand their own data through beautiful and informative data visualization.

Viz For...

Ambassadors, Zen Masters, and Iron Viz

When you start in the Tableau Community, it may be hard to know whom to follow. Tableau has decided to help you by recognizing the investment and spirit of some people in the Community.

Ambassadors

The first set of amazing people are the Ambassadors. They are split into four groups:

• Forums Ambassadors: They are there to your questions in the Forum
• Social Media Ambassadors: They are the social network gurus, follow them to get all the news
• User Group Leader Ambassadors: They help the Community meet in real life by organizing the Tableau User Groups 
• Tableau Public Ambassadors: Check their Tableau Public profiles and be ready to be blown away

Find all the current Ambassadors here: https://www.tableau.com/tableau-ambassadors.

Zen Masters

The second set of amazing people is the Zen Masters. They are the faces of Tableau Community. They passionately dedicate a huge amount of time to help everyone excel in Tableau. They not only create great visualizations, but they...

Summary

This chapter, even though it's not technical, is really important. This chapter is the key to continuing your journey with Tableau. This chapter is also my tribute to the Community who kept pushing me higher and higher over the last three years since I started using Tableau. 

Even if you don't plan on sharing a lot or getting involved (which is understandable), keep in mind that the Community Forum is the first place to go if you have any questions regarding Tableau. Even though I tried my best to explain all the concepts in this book, no books or training sessions can cover every use case you will encounter in real life. Also, if you're searching for resources, blogs, inspiration, or webinars, you'll find it on Tableau Public or through the Community Projects. 

Thanks for purchasing and reading this book. I truly hope that you've learned a lot and that you'll use Tableau with the same passion I do.