Hello!
If you’re receiving this, chances are you know me through Questions in Dataviz — whether through the book, the website, or something I’ve shared over the years.
The website has been up for 10 years, and this is the first update I’ve sent from here. But recent months on the website have been quiet. There are a number of reasons for that: not least redundancy, setting up as a freelancer, and a serious major health setback.
Over the past few months I’ve been working on several new projects that take some of the ideas behind Questions in Dataviz – curiosity, creativity, asking better questions and communicating data more effectively – in some new directions.
Three of them in particular have reached the point where I’d love to share them with you, and two of them involve collaborating with the best in the business! There’s a new website, a creative data visualisation workshop (scroll down for a unique discount code), and a new Tableau and AI learning community. The alternative title for this could’ve been “What do a website, a workshop and a collective have in common?”
So, here’s what I’ve been up to…
1. I have a new home on the Internet
My new website incorporates everything I do and highlights some of the freelance services I can offer. Neil Richards Data brings together the different strands of what I do: data visualisation, data and AI fluency, storytelling, training, consulting and, of course, Questions in Dataviz.
More than anything, I wanted the site to reflect how I think about data and how I can offer my services to clients who need them. I’m interested in helping people become more confident with data – not simply by learning another tool or memorising another set of rules, but by becoming more curious about what their data is saying and how they might communicate it.
There will be plenty more appearing there over time. For now, have a look around and let me know what you think. Be sure to sign up for updates since new updates and newsletters are most likely to come from there as well as here.
Note that Neil Richards Data doesn’t mean the end of Questions in Dataviz – it will just incorporate that along with everything else I’m involved with in the field. But Questions in Dataviz is going strong, and I owe you more posts, readers!
2. Put down the laptop. Pick up a pen
On Tuesday 3 November, I’m really excited to be running something rather different with information designer Sophie Sparkes in London. It’s called From Questions to Creation, and there won’t be a dashboard in sight.
Most data visualisation training starts with software: which chart should I use? How do I build it? Which tool should I use?
We’re starting somewhere else. Where do creative ideas come from? How can we look at data differently? And what happens to our thinking when we step away from the screen and actually make something?
We’ll spend the morning exploring ideas, inspiration and creative approaches to data visualisation. Then, in the afternoon, everyone gets to make a physical visualisation themselves, using media including, but not exclusively restricted to, canvas, pens and craft materials.
No artistic ability or dataviz experience required. Curiosity definitely encouraged.
It’s a small group – a maximum of 15 people – and you’ll leave with an actual piece of data visualisation you’ve made yourself.
Tuesday 3 November 2026
Cockpit Bloomsbury, London
Early bird tickets are £295 until 18 October, including materials and lunch. But there’s a unique discount code for subscribers to the newsletter: use code CREATIVITY for an extra £95 off.
3. The Insights Collective
I’ve also been exploring what happens when we don’t put the technology down I’ve joined forces with Steve Adams of VizDJ to create The Insights Collective — an ongoing training community for people who want to keep developing their Tableau skills while understanding what AI means for the way we work with data. Together, we are the grAI Team!
This is tool dependent, and sits at almost the opposite end of the spectrum from our creative dataviz workshop. Tableau is changing, AI is changing even faster, and the problem is finding enough time to keep up with both. The idea behind The Insights Collective is that we do that exploration for you – we go down the rabbit holes so you don’t have to.
Through live sessions, practical workshops and an expanding library of training content, we’ll explore what’s changing, what actually matters, and how you can put it into practice. And we build a community where we can help everyone on their individual journeys.
It’s not simply about chasing every shiny new AI feature. It’s about becoming more capable, confident and curious about how these tools can help us do better work. It suits people who have reached a certain level in Tableau but who never learned the AI stuff. Or people who are being asked to incorporate AI features but don’t have the time to retrain themselves.
So what connects all three?
It might seem slightly contradictory that I’m simultaneously running a workshop telling people to put down the laptop and a community helping people understand some of the most advanced technology appearing in our industry. But data visualisation is a broad church, and both of these fit comfortably within the field.
I actually think they’re two sides of the same thing. AI can generate, Tableau can calculate, software can automate, but somebody still needs to ask the interesting question. Somebody still needs to recognise the unexpected pattern. Somebody still needs to decide what’s worth communicating, and somebody needs to decide how to communicate it.
And somebody still needs to be curious enough to ask: what if we did it differently? Recently Vidya Setur gave a talk to a Tableau User Group in London where she stated that the key driver of AI is curiosity. Curiosity has always been the key driver of my talks, presentations, and the Questions in Dataviz book. These elements are the territory I’m particularly interested in exploring at the moment, but the underlying theme of anything I do is curiosity. As proven by the man who signed up for a massive crochet dataviz project before realising he couldn’t crochet!
Thanks for reading. Hopefully I’ll see some of you online, at a workshop, or somewhere in between.
Neil
Questions in Dataviz | Data Visualisation | Data & AI Fluency