Tableau Hosts Largest-Ever Gathering of Data Enthusiasts, Showcases New Product Innovations at Tableau Conference-ish

SEATTLE, Oct. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Tableau Software, the leading analytics platform, today kicked off the 13th annual Tableau Conference, aptly named Tableau Conference-ish, the first virtual instance of the world's largest analytics event. Featuring a new online-only format, Tableau Conference-ish brings opportunities for more than 145,000 registered data enthusiasts to learn, network and share best practices, and be inspired by thought leadership sessions.

2020 Demonstrates the Power of Data
Adam Selipsky, Tableau President and CEO, opened the conference welcoming Tableau's global community and reflecting on the power of data to spark change and provide direction in a year marked by unprecedented challenges; 2020 made every person a data person. Selipsky also introduced special guest speakers including Kelly Jin, Chief Analytics Officer for New York City and Dr. Michael McAfee, President and CEO of PolicyLink to share how data guides their organizations.

"2020 has proven we are all truly data people. As we experience a year of multiple crises, there is no doubt all organizations today need to be digital organizations," said Adam Selipsky, President and CEO, Tableau. "Today, the ability to make decisions based on data is imperative to any organization's ability to adapt and evolve with a sense of urgency. The combination of Tableau and Salesforce accelerates our ability to empower our customers by delivering a complete data picture with speed; something our customers critically need in today's uncertain environment."

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and the public have come to rely on data to make decisions about going to work and school, visiting family or friends, the safety of their neighborhoods, even where to shop and eat. Visualizations like those on Tableau's COVID Data Hub helped everyone understand the impact of the pandemic by providing access to the information people needed to make the best choices for them, their families, and their communities.

"The New York City Mayor's Office of Data Analytics transforms data into insight to understand what is happening, why it happened, and what we should do about it. This work has never been more important than in COVID-19 response and recovery," said Kelly Jin, chief analytics officer for New York City. "The Tableau team have been force accelerators – providing critical assistance to the City during the early days of the pandemic in building data visualizations to help us monitor key indicators, such as hospital utilization, to inform better and faster decisions. I am pleased to join Tableau in a dialogue about our collaboration with a global audience at Tableau Conference."

Data's Role in the Fight for Racial Justice
To empower changemakers with data and resources for advocacy, Tableau is joining forces with PolicyLink, a national research and action institute advancing racial and economic equity, in a partnership encompassing several initiatives.

This partnership includes a $1.4 million donation of Tableau software, services, and funding to support advocates and community organizations who will drive action at every level, local to national. This is the largest grant to date under Tableau's $12 million Racial Justice Data Initiative (RJDI) announced in July. The new partnership expands Tableau Foundation's equity work  to empower localities to make data-driven decisions around prejudice, violence, and inequities facing Black communities across the country.

Through the partnership, PolicyLink will play a lead role in helping to build the forthcoming Equity Data Hub hosted by Tableau Foundation. PolicyLink's National Equity Atlas is already considered America's most detailed report card on racial and economic equity and a resource that equips movement leaders and policymakers with data and strategies to advance racial equity and shared prosperity. The collaboration will make it possible to create Tableau visualizations and dashboards by integrating Atlas data with their own data in a powerful, persuasive new way.

"In this moment of racial awakening, data is critical to our understanding of how to move forward and craft solutions that actually work, and this partnership with the Tableau community is going to give us those tools to revolutionize our data capacity," said Dr. Michael McAfee, President and CEO of PolicyLink. "The data community has the capability to join with the racial justice movement to ensure that calls for justice manifested in our streets gets translated into public policy that designs a world where everyone can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential."

Uniting a Community of Data People
This year, more than 145,000 data enthusiasts registered for the virtual conference to connect with other data people, share best practices, and learn about next-generation analytics.

Throughout TC-ish, data leaders at PepsiCo, Credit Suisse, Lockheed Martin, Indeed.com, American Airlines, NASA and other leading organizations will gather to share how data helps them navigate digital transformation and drive impact. Fan-favorite sessions will also make their virtual debut – "Devs at Desks" will offer demonstrations of the latest-and-greatest Tableau product features from the desks of the people who built them. And Iron Viz, the world's largest virtual data visualization competition, will pit visual storytellers against each other in a data showdown, with contestants seeing who can transform raw data into the most engaging and insightful Tableau analysis in just 20 minutes.

And no Tableau Conference would be complete without an all-star lineup of guest speakers and this year may be our most exciting line-up ever. Musician and philanthropist John Legend will join Ebony Beckwith, Chief Philanthropy Officer at Salesforce, for a fireside chat about philanthropy, education, and the importance of data in understanding societal issues and how we move forward as a community. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com will be speaking about the science of data analysis and using that analysis to make predictions, and Netflix Vice President of Inclusion Strategy for Product (and former NFL player) Wade Davis will join to discuss data's impact on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Tableau Continues Product Innovation and Gets Smarter with Einstein Analytics
Product innovation is on display throughout TC-ish with new AI, collaboration, analysis, IT and data management capabilities that will make Tableau even more engaging, powerful, and secure for everyone.

New collaboration features include Slack integration to encourage sharing across an organization by informing people of important changes and making it easier to explore those changes in live dashboards. New centralized row-level security features will ensure that the right people have the right level of access to data. And automated data quality warnings will automatically communicate data freshness to help everyone in an organization get more value from data they trust.

Tableau also shared plans to bring together Tableau and Salesforce's Einstein Analytics. By combining the best of Tableau and Einstein Analytics, customers will have access to the broadest and deepest analytics platform on the market. In addition, Einstein Analytics will be renamed to Tableau CRM, and continue to provide the best analytics and AI experience in the Salesforce CRM workflow.

Tableau and Einstein Analytics will come together through a set of product integrations that will provide a more seamless experience for joint customers. At the conference, Tableau showcased the first such integration, Einstein Discovery in Tableau.

Einstein Discovery helps companies democratize data science across their organization with AI-powered analytics that enable business users to automatically discover relevant patterns based on their data – without building sophisticated data models or engaging teams of data scientists. Planned for the first part of 2021, Einstein Discovery in Tableau enables real-time predictive modeling and recommendations capabilities across the Tableau platform.

Tableau will retain and build upon the current capabilities customers have come to depend on in Einstein Analytics and Tableau, while continuing to innovate and unify going forward. Einstein Discovery in Tableau is just the first in a series of planned integrations.

To learn more about Tableau CRM, formerly Einstein Analytics, visit: https://www.tableau.com/products/tableau-crm.

Tableau Gathers Partners in Global Summit
Tableau Conference also featured the largest Global Partner Summit yet, bringing together more than 1,500 decision makers of the company's system integrators, value-added resellers and technology partners to discuss partner priorities for the next 12 months and the next focus areas for the Tableau Partner Network (TPN). Global Partner Summit gives partners an opportunity to hear about Tableau's priorities, strategic direction, and product roadmap directly from Tableau leadership, as well as to connect with their peers to share knowledge and best practices.

Launched in September 2020, TPN provides partners with a clear, consistent framework that allows Tableau to reward partners more precisely for the value they deliver to joint customers. This program showcases the diversity of Tableau's partner ecosystem, providing three tracks aligned to distinct partner business models – Reseller, Services, and Technology. This year's Summit focused on the criticality of building capacity and capability, focusing more deeply on co-selling with Tableau, on educating Tableau partners on how to successfully transition into the Tableau Partner Network, and what to expect in the coming months.

About Tableau
Tableau helps people see and understand data. Tableau's self-service analytics platform empowers people of any skill level to work with data. From individuals and non-profits to government agencies and the Fortune 500, tens of thousands of customers around the world use Tableau to get rapid insights and make impactful, data-driven decisions. See how Tableau can help you by downloading the free trial at www.tableau.com/trial.

SOURCE Tableau