Not Quite #TableauFamous — Reflections from Tableau Conference 2026

There’s something uniquely surreal about walking through the halls of Tableau Conference. It feels like a kaleidoscope of familiar faces, brilliant minds, hallway conversations, caffeine, dashboards, and absolute chaos.

I joke that my name is known in the community, but I’m not exactly “#TableauFamous” like Andy Kriebel.

That said, Andy and I had a chance to chat during the conference, and we may have something interesting coming soon. Stay tuned.

Pre-Gaming with Data + Tacos and Data + Women

This year I helped set up the Data + Tacos event the day before Tableau conference with Luigi Ciccari and others. It was Star Wars themed and packed!

The second event was the famous Data + Women event. I volunteered to check people in because I wanted to meet all of the famous faces in the Tableau world. It was a fun way to say hi, I was the girl in the strawberry sweater and lightsaber skirt that put on your wrist band! Thank you Serena Roberts and the Flerlage twins for letting me do that!

Sessions, Stories, and Trying to Make Data Modeling Funny

My first presentation of the week was Future Proofing Your Tableau Data Model with David Kelly. Data modeling can easily become one of those topics people intellectually know is important while emotionally wanting to escape from. Somehow, I think we managed to balance practical advice with enough humor to keep people engaged.

David is incredibly knowledgeable, and presenting with him was genuinely fun. It was a session with audience headsets and sadly, it wasn't recorded.

I loved to see the support from my co-workers Sharina Craycroft, Alex Anguiano, Scott Eaton and Kirby Mitchell. I called out Scott for his brilliant session on documentation to help promote his knowledge on the topic. Hopefully he won't hate me later for putting him on the spot.

Later in the conference, I co-hosted a Hands-On Training (HOT) session with Tore Levinsen focused on Tableau templates. This was my first time doing a session like this. I stepped in for Steve Adams, and we presented an abridged version of the session Steve and Tore originally recorded for DataFam Europe back in December 2025.

There’s always a different energy in HOT sessions because people are actively building alongside you. It becomes less about presenting and more about collaborating in real time. Also Tore brought Norway chocolate to give out to participants. I LOVE European chocolate.

Finance Meetup and the TC Nightly Fun Endurance Olympics

On the final day, I hosted a Finance Meetup alongside Tim Cady, Will Perkins, and Brandon Ohlaug. I only entered the finance space in June 2025, so it was especially valuable hearing how others approach analytics challenges in that world.

One of the best parts of Tableau Conference is realizing how many people are navigating similar problems, even across completely different industries.

What I still don’t understand, however, is how people have the stamina to keep going until 2 AM every night between karaoke, meetups, dinners, and after-hours networking.

I was exhausted due to jetlag, getting older...whatever... by 9 pm. I'm jealous of the Karaoke pics and other events I missed. It is important to take time so you don't burn yourself out at the conference. You also can't physically be everywhere at once.

Proud Moments and the DataFam Community

One of my favorite moments was seeing Will Sutton speak during the keynote. I collaborate with Will and Louis Yu on the #GameNightsViz project, so watching him on that stage was genuinely exciting.

I also loved reconnecting with long-time contacts like Sam Bachelor, Zach Bowders, Lindsay Betzandahl, Vince Baumel (and his lovely wife Angie), and Chris Williams, along with many other familiar names from the #DataFam community.

But honestly, some of the best moments at Tableau Conference happen completely outside the scheduled agenda.

There were a lot of missing faces this year from the community, I missed seeing Annabelle Rincon and some others that were not in attendance.

The Achilles Coffee Incident

At one point, I was having a really lovely conversation with someone new I met named John at Achilles Coffee (I didn't catch his last name! :( John if you are reading this message me on Linkedin). Everything was going great until I somehow managed to get runny egg from my breakfast sandwich all over myself mid-conversation.

Naturally, this happened at the exact moment Andy Kriebel walked over to say hi.

John took pity on me and grabbed napkins while I tried to recover what little dignity I had left.

These are the chaotic moments nobody puts into conference highlight reels, but honestly, they’re part of what makes Tableau Conference memorable.

Why the 1:1 Conversations Matter Most

As much as the sessions matter, what I value most about Tableau Conference is the one-on-one conversations.

You exchange ideas. You share advice. You learn how other people are solving problems. You reconnect with people you’ve only known through Slack messages, LinkedIn comments, or dashboards on Tableau Public.

Those conversations are meaningful in a way that’s hard to describe unless you’ve experienced it yourself.

There’s also always an internal struggle during the conference schedule: Do you attend sessions to support coworkers, Ambassadors, and Visionaries you know personally? Or do you chase entirely new ideas and innovative topics?

Usually, the answer is both — while fast-walking between events.

The Session That Blew My Mind

One session I did manage to attend was 10x Your Tableau Workflow with AI and Claude by Sam Fife.

It completely blew my mind.

Sam downloaded a dataset from Kaggle, published it to a Tableau project, and added filters using voice-to-text prompts with Claude — all through vibe coding workflows.

Watching someone combine AI-assisted workflows with Tableau development that seamlessly felt like seeing the next era of analytics happening in real time.

The session was recorded and is available on Salesforce+. It’s absolutely worth watching.

Final Thoughts

Every year I leave Tableau Conference both energized and completely drained.

You learn new techniques. You reconnect with friends. You meet people who inspire you. You accidentally spill eggs on yourself in public.

Most importantly, you remember that the Tableau community has always been about more than dashboards.

It’s about people.

Thank you to all of the people at Tableau that make this event happen. It's no doubt a huge amount of work and they do an awesome job every year! Especially thank you to Rain Ortega, Britt Staniar, Pooja Khanna and Alyssa Jensen!