The Data Viz Community and Resources to get you Started

 

This article is recycled from the blog I wrote at the data school (also included as one of the resources for learning tableau), although slightly updated. But in building the blog from scratch, it really is the best place to start. So here it goes…..

I still consider myself relatively new to the data visualisation scene. It has, after all, only been 6 months that I have been using Tableau and Alteryx. Whilst I still have a long, long way to go, I have learned a lot at my time at the data school (and on my first placement). Now, while the training I received from the Information Lab, was second to none, one of the things made me really love the data viz world, is the data viz community. The Tableau community in particular is incredibly warm, welcoming and ready to help you learn.

If you aren’t already, get on twitter and get on tableau public. Twitter has lots and lots of ‘lists’ to show you good data viz people to follow and on tableau public, aside from showing off your own work, you can find people whose style you like, follow them and have a constant source of inspiration!

Here are a few of the websites, blogs and books I found that really helped me gets started and ones that I have found later on in my journey that I wish I had found earlier.

Staples:

• A great place to start with tableau is on the tableau website itself, where they have some easy to follow introductory videos which you can work along side with some sample data: http://www.tableau.com/learn
• The Tableau Public gallery is always a great place to find inspiration: https://public.tableau.com/s/gallery – The great thing is you can download the workbooks and give it a try yourself!
• For a regular source of data to play with sign up to this newsletter: https://tinyletter.com/data-is-plural
• For lots of practice and great advice, try #MakeoverMonday: http://vizwiz.blogspot.co.uk/p/makeover-monday-challenges.html – and make sure to tweet your tableau public links with #MakeoverMonday!

Websites and Blogs:

http://www.thedataschool.co.uk/blog/

https://thedataduo.com/

https://learningtableaublog.wordpress.com/

https://eagereyes.org/

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/

http://flowingdata.com/

http://www.thefunctionalart.com/

http://www.theguardian.com/data

http://helpmeviz.com/

http://junkcharts.typepad.com/

http://www.visualisingdata.com/

http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/

http://paintbynumbersblog.blogspot.co.uk/

http://vizcandy.blogspot.co.uk/

http://duelingdata.blogspot.co.uk/

http://www.ryansleeper.com/

http://vizwiz.blogspot.co.uk/

Books:

• ‘Storytelling with Data – a data visualization guide for business professionals’ by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic – book review soon to come!
• ‘Golden Rules for Great Business Charts – 50 practical tips for business professionals’ by Laszlo Zsom
• ‘Now you see it – Simple visualization techniques for quantitative analysis’ by Stephen Few
• ‘The Truthful Art’ by Alberto Cairo

This is of course, just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much help out there on the interwebs to get you started and so much to keep challenging you through your data viz learning experience.

Hope this helps!

Amanda