Tableau Magic / A Second Year of Magic

In life, I believe that the most interesting and fun journeys are not carefully curated and planned, but journeys with a loose direction and coupled with a sense of adventure and freedom. With that said, it is amazing that this month we are celebrating our two year anniversary at Tableau Magic. Yes, I cannot believe that it has only been two years.

In this article, we will go through some fun statistics, give you insights into what is coming soon, and my thoughts about the coming few years.

Magic Statistics

Tableau Magic started as a website but has expanded to various platforms (with various uptake); here is a list of top-line statistics over our two years; it is amazing to see the growth.

Tableau Magic Website https://tableau.toanhoang.com	Page Views: 637,703 Unique Page Views: 443,433 Users: 155,329 Number of articles: 204
Tableau Magic YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/tableaumagic	Subscribers: 946 Number of Views: 21,994 Number of Videos: 48
Tableau Magic Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/TableauMagic	Likes: 2,400 Followers: 2,507
Tableau Magicians Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/tableaumagicians	Members: 7,147 May 2020 Posts: 173 May 2020 Comments: 826 May 2020 Reactions: 2,079 May 2020 Active Members: 5,857
Tableau Magic LinkedIn Company https://www.linkedin.com/company/tableau-magic	Followers: 6,323 Employees: 6
Tableau Magic on Twitter https://twitter.com/Tableau_Magic	Followers: 1,989 May 2020 Impressions: 22.1k May 2020 Engagement Rate: 1.4%
Tableau Public Profile https://public.tableau.com/profile/toan.hoang#!	Followers: 1,227 Published Visualisations: 156
Tableau Magic on Udemy	Enrolments: 1,245 Average Rating: 4.6 Total Minutes Watched: 79,520

Adam Mico deserves a lot of credit for the work he puts into the Tableau Magicians Facebook Group as well as the new equivalent on LinkedIn. Given how the various groups are growing, we have also welcomed Pawan Sachdeva as a moderator and innovator.

TOP 10 TUTORIALS

Here are the top 10 tutorials for the last two years:

Tutorial	Statistics
Index Calculation	28,458 views (4.46% of views)
Creating a Radial Bar Chart	17,884 views (2.80% of views)
Creating a Sunburst Chart	14,579 views (2.29% of views)
Tableau and Python Introduction	11,992 views (1.88% of views)
Creating Radar Charts	10,892 views (1.71% of views)
Tableau JavaScript API Introduction	9,446 views (1.48% of views)
Tableau Desktop Quiz 1	6,791 views (1.06% of views)
Creating a Web Data Connector	6,704 views (1.05% of views)
Data Densification for Tableau Drawing	6,475 views (1.02% of views)
Tableau QT: Curved Lines	6,392 views (1.00% of views)

Direction

While I have a list of data visualisation tutorials to write, I have been doing this for 2 years and want to add a few other focus areas.

MORE VIDEO CONTENT

I have been experimenting with video content for the last 6 months and have been building our YouTube presence; the Tableau with Music series has done pretty well and I have received a lot of positive comments. I have also experimented with the creation of a long-form (1-hour) video and I have received a lot of requests for more.

As such, over the next 18 months, you can expect more long-form video tutorials, more spoken video tutorials, as well as interviews and thought pieces. I also purchased Doodly Enterprise, so I will be experimenting a lot more with video content.

Note: I have decided to publish my Tableau Extensions Course, currently a work in progress, onto YouTube for everyone to enjoy.

BEYOND BESPOKE

If I asked people to describe Tableau Magic, most would probably say bespoke (custom, fancy, unique) data visualisations in Tableau; while this is the popular content, I have also written various series covering SQL, creating Tableau Extensions, exploring Tableau APIs and more.

Over the next 18 months, I want to write more articles and share knowledge on the following topics:

• Business Intelligence: I want to talk about topics like data warehousing, big data, consulting, project deliver and other topics that will help the Tableau community better deliver Tableau projects.
• Tableau Server: I want to share my knowledge to assist people in learning more about the enterprise side of Tableau, how to configure, manage and administer a Tableau Server. There is a lot of information already out there, but I will be writing some end to end tutorials as I feel that the current gap between Tableau developer and managing an enterprise solution can be intimidating.
• Tableau Prep: preparing data will become more of a key skillset for everyone working in Tableau, and while learning Tableau Prep is a step in the right direction, I want to talk more about ETL, ELT, creating effective data warehouses and other topics related to the movement of data.

This will hopefully be a good complement the current content on the website.

SERVICES AND MENTORING

Tableau Magic was incorporated in the UK last year and we have been quietly delivering professional services to various clients; we are looking to carefully expand our team in order to support more clients in leveraging data in a transformative manner.

My key focus over the next 18 months is not fast growth or quick expansion, but to ensure that we can continue to deliver to the highest standards possible; this means bringing together amazing minds into our family and to continually challenge and nurture.

I will also be opening a mentorship scheme towards the end of the year, so even if you are not employed by Tableau Magic, you can still benefit from our collective infrastructure, knowledge sharing, mentoring and work on one of our community projects. This will be remote, and we will be soon opening applications for our first cohort.

Final Thoughts

Recently, I received an email about the Tableau Magic Domain expiring and if I wanted to renew? This actually posed an interesting question for me. Given that I have had a good run, should I continue or not? If I was to put this question to the readership, I am sure (presumptive) that the answer would be a resounding yes, however, I did have a long internal debate about this.

Over the last 6 months, I have invested approximately 50 hours per month to create content, and while this number at first might not seem too high, it is more than an average working week (per month), so the question is why continue? To answer this question, know that there is not a single day that goes by that I do not receive emails requesting support, or tagged in a post by an enthusiastic Tableau Developer, or have a discussion with someone around their new Data Visualisation ideas. The part of me who is the teacher really values this, and by sharing knowledge, I truly think we enrich those around us.

As such, I have renewed the Tableau Magic Domain for 3 more years, and therefore, fingers crossed, by the time I have this next internal debate, we will be celebrating our 5 year anniversary.

I do want to leave you with this final thought. In a previous life, I trained many Salsa dancers and teachers, quite often without a fee. I often said the following to my students:

“Knowledge is hard to come by, and good knowledge does not come cheap. I want you to remember that I am giving you my knowledge for free, my time for free, helping you for free, so when the day comes, do remember this and think about doing the same…“

Kind Regards,
Toan