# Exploring DataDevQuest, Comunidatos and the DataDev community with Cristian Saavedra

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2025-04-03
- **Format:** Video · 66 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Community, Tool strategy, Career
- **Tools:** Tableau (embedding, extensions, hyper api, metadata api, parameters, pulse, rest api, vizql data service)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/exploring-datadevquest-comunidatos-and-the-datadev-community-with-cristian-saavedra
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq5wkUcP0eI

I sit down with Cristian Saavedra to explore the Tableau DataDev community, his 20-plus year career in data analytics, and the projects he leads. We dig into Comunidatos, the relaunched DataDev User Group, and the new DataDevQuest challenge, and we unpack what it really means to be a 'developer' in the Tableau world.

## Key takeaways

- DataDev work differs from dashboard building in mindset: it's about automating, freeing time and building reusable solutions using the REST API, Metadata API, Hyper API and extensions.
- Editing a Tableau workbook's underlying XML directly is far faster for bulk changes like swapping a connection schema than reworking it in the application.
- DataDevQuest offers beginner and intermediate challenges with step-by-step solutions so you can learn a specific API technique on a real problem in roughly 30 minutes.
- Comunidatos exists to break the language barrier for Spanish-speaking data people, growing from a virtual talk into local chapters across Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica and Buenos Aires.
- Tableau is better understood as a philosophy about putting decision-making power near the problem-owner; the same APIs (Hyper, embedded JavaScript, VizQL Data Service) now power Salesforce and other products.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Name, heritage and introductions
- 2:18 How Cristian got into Tableau
- 4:26 Big data then versus now
- 6:21 Data warehouse heritage and mentors
- 9:06 The journey into DataDev
- 15:40 DataDev versus Tableau developer
- 21:06 Comunidatos and the Spanish community
- 26:22 Relaunching the DataDev User Group
- 29:58 Inside the DataDevQuest challenge
- 43:56 The future of Tableau APIs and philosophy
- 51:16 Dashboards versus apps
- 55:16 Closing advice on learning DataDev

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/exploring-datadevquest-comunidatos-and-the-datadev-community-with-cristian-saavedra

---
just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena