# S4 E1: Byte: 2020 in review and the year ahead

> 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:** 2024-04-22
- **Format:** Video · 68 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Industry trends, Tool strategy, Community
- **Tools:** Power BI; Tableau (ask data, cloud, data modelling, explain data, metrics, public, server)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/s4-e1-byte-2020-in-review-and-the-year-ahead
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS_KCgnFhww

In the season four opener of Datum, Ravi and I catch up after a couple of lost recordings and then dig into the big questions for data and analytics in 2021. We debate why I make videos rather than write books, where Tableau sits within the Salesforce ecosystem, and how the viewer, explorer and creator roles need rethinking.

## Key takeaways

- Video and blogs win on accessibility and measurability over books: YouTube hosts and streams content for free, and you can actually track which segments people watch and find useful.
- The big 2021 prediction is a 'reckoning' over whether analytics is a first-class business function or, like IT, a service that supports the core business — and Tableau is increasingly being positioned to serve a wider ecosystem.
- Tableau has never shipped a flagship feature built specifically for the viewer, despite viewers being the largest and most expensive part of an enterprise licence; features like Ask Data and Explain Data hint at where viewer-first products could go.
- Tableau's user base has fractured into distinct groups — IT integrators, creators, viewers and governance-minded CIOs — and Tableau should split teams to solve for each, the way YouTube serves viewers and creators differently.
- The Gartner report's value isn't its quadrant position but the rare chance to discuss objectively whether Tableau meets its customers' needs, since no analyst can be a true expert across every non-standardised tool.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Intro and the lost tapes
- 2:47 Life updates and Zen Master
- 4:17 Books versus video and blogs
- 10:22 Tableau community and data repository
- 12:57 Tableau Online versus Server
- 15:13 2021 prediction: the reckoning
- 18:10 Analytics in the Salesforce ecosystem
- 22:20 What the Tableau viewer is paying for
- 28:46 Generations of Tableau users
- 31:48 Building for the question-asker
- 38:22 Platforms, aggregators and APIs
- 44:03 Redefining viewer, explorer and creator

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/s4-e1-byte-2020-in-review-and-the-year-ahead

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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