Questions in dataviz – why this blog?

“You should do a blog”, they said.

The blog will be about data visualisation – to do with my skills, experiences and nuggets of wisdom, most specifically in using Tableau. Well, the Tableau community is huge, friendly and helpful, so I’m delighted to become more a part of it in starting this blog. But what can I add? If this blog only contained new and exciting things I could add that nobody knew about, it would probably stop right here. In fact, it would have stopped before it started. I’ve got nothing.

I’ve been in the data industry a long time – longer than some of the experts in my field and fellow bloggers have been on the planet. But not the data visualisation industry – this is something I am dipping my toe into professionally and correspondingly taking a great interest in outside of my career. So I’m not young, eager and quickly taking in everything there is to know at great speed. I’m more … think of what it’s like when your dad has a new bit of technology and is trying to keep up, but really … well, you know what I mean. I’m more like that. I think I’m going to have a lot of questions. And “but what can I add?” was already the first. There’ll also be an opinion or two, garnered from my experiences in processing, reporting and general immersion in data before my late arrival into data visualisation. If I can start a discussion or contribute to a topic then I’ll only be too glad (whether that answers a question or leaves more unanswered).

I want each post to include a visualisation so at the risk of peaking too early, here’s the visualisation I’m most proud of. Click on the static version below to take you through to the interactive version. And when you do – please check out the question mark which I hope gives as much credit as is due to the influence of this visualisation – a Game of Thrones viz by @adamemccann

So, I’ve started the blog. More of my frustrations, questions, opinions, attempted visualisations and occasional good bits to come.