Tableau Conference 2025 Preview: This one matters!

0:00Alright.

0:02It's time to talk about Tableau Conference.

0:04Oh, depending on when I launch this video.

0:05This time next week, the keynote will be taking place or will have taken place and

0:12I've titled this video The Elephant in the Room.

0:14I will explain the context for that in this video.

0:17I think it's it's probably one of the most important Tableau conferences in a long time.

0:23That is probably one of the elephants in the room.

0:26But it's also important to set some context.

0:29It's also important to maybe follow up the whiplash video I made last um

0:33last couple of weeks ago and um really touch on I think my expectations for conference as well.

0:38So um yeah this is another one of those videos.

0:41There's a timestamp below, no editing, just me, camera.

0:44As ever, let's get stuck in

0:46So, um, conference is coming up.

0:50There is a lot to touch on, um, but there is not enough time to cover all of it.

0:56I couldn't start this video without mentioning the video that Action Analytics have just made on their channel.

1:02I'm looking at it, what I'll do is I'll grab some uh screenshots.

1:06and I'll put them in this video.

1:08You'll probably ask, well Tim, why have you blurred out the screenshots?

1:11And it's quite simple.

1:12I want you to go and watch the video.

1:14If I show you the screenshot

1:16you'll get a large percentage of the value with that actually going to watch the video.

1:20So I want you to go and watch the video because I think it's a great context setter for the conference.

1:26If you haven't got however long this video is to find out what's going on.

1:30This video in 20 minutes encapsulates what I think everyone should be paying attention to at the Tableau Conference.

1:36And I I couldn't have put half of the points better myself.

1:38I would have rambled.

1:40Um the graphics in this are great.

1:41There's some really good points and actually

1:43You can figure out what audience you're part of and go to conference with some really sort of focused perspective.

1:50And I think that's super important for this conference for lots of reasons.

1:53So please, please go and watch this video.

1:55It's the best thing I've watched this week related to Tableau.

1:59Um, you know, you know, th lots of people will write stuff, lots of people will post stuff.

2:03Um I I think video has um

2:07Whenever people make videos, I I always find sometimes it it's quite easy to dismiss because it's not written format and it's not the format that most people maybe like to consume.

2:16But there is so much value in this video that I think if it was a written post, everyone would be sharing it.

2:22So please go and watch this video, it's super super important.

2:25Um

2:26The things I liked from this video are I think the way they set the product landscape.

2:31It's given me another idea for another video which I'll talk about later.

2:34It's set the context for the target audience for conference really nicely, which I think is super, super useful.

2:40They've set out some of the possible outcomes for conference, which I think is again super super important.

2:45We'll touch on some of them in this video.

2:47And then at the very end, they talk about the keys.

2:50um to success what should a product in today's landscape be doing for users in order to keep them happy and again it set this out really really beautifully I can't stress it enough

3:00Go watch the video.

3:02Now, another bit of housekeeping.

3:04Um, when I made the whiplash video, something really strange happened, which is about a week after I made the video

3:11I learned so much more about, I guess, the situation, uh, that the video almost to me immediately became out of date.

3:20And this is sort of a weird thing where

3:22A lot of people said to me, Well, if you hadn't made the video, we wouldn't have had this conversation.

3:26And so uh in a really sort of positive way, I want to say thank you to everyone who's reached out.

3:31I had everyone from developers inside of

3:34um Salesforce all the way to former executives of Salesforce or Tableau in this particular case reaching out to me to share their perspectives and share their context.

3:43Some of it off the record, some of it on the record.

3:45It was a really, really eye-opening experience

3:47And I really value that feedback and and and part of part of why I do what I do is because I take that context but I I kind of use that context to make

3:57what I share with you more useful and more um sort of concise.

4:01A lot of people will say, hey Tim, why don't you talk about this, this, and that?

4:04And I think it comes from a place of respect really.

4:07You know, these perspectives only are forthcoming

4:09if people understand that you respect where they come from and the context they have.

4:14What I then do with that context is really important for how I then communicate.

4:18content in this videos and uh how I sort of structure what I do.

4:21So I want to say thank you to everyone who reached out, who spent at least 30 minutes in some cases, more in other cases just sort of walking me through some context that I missed, some context I should have highlighted.

4:33and um things that I will definitely watch out for going in the future.

4:36I'm I'm not going to go through all the details, but I think the comments pretty much sum up um enough of the the important things.

4:43And um for all the things I missed, I'll definitely bring them up in the future again as I cover different things, some in this video, some in another video.

4:50But what it has taught me is that I need to take

4:54a little bit more time um collating specific types of thoughts and specific types of opinions with not just evidence but with some additional sort of

5:05context to really drum the point home.

5:07I wouldn't change any of the points I made in that video.

5:09I'm not saying that.

5:10What I am saying is I think I needed to dig deeper into some of them.

5:13And I think the best way I'm going to be able to do that is through something I'm planning, um a post-conference, um essentially something written that I think will support this kind of stuff.

5:22much much better than maybe a video will um but this is all to say thank you for the feedback thank you for getting in touch I really really appreciate it and um yeah

5:30We've got we've got some interesting things we're gonna do with all of that advice.

5:34Um stay tuned um and you'll find out what that is.

5:37Okay, now why on earth did I choose the title I chose for this video?

5:42Elephants in the room

5:44I actually think there's multiple.

5:45This is this is one of the most important, most consequential conferences for so many reasons.

5:51And the thing is they're all unrelated, but they're related in some way or form because of the conference that's coming up.

5:58Um

5:59it in in an in in another way, the the the best way to put this would be to think of um each of these scenarios being uncomfortable truths that the conference

6:10needs to address but might not touch on, if that makes sense.

6:13So, you know, no one sets out a conference to answer the question around whether or not the the the products, you know, the product landscape is it having a d an identity crisis as an example.

6:23I'll come onto this in a in a minute.

6:25No one sets up a a conference to, you know, try and win your trust about the product roadmap.

6:31No one sets your, you know, conference agenda with um

6:36you know, this narrative around the impossible choice Salesforce has to make between their vision and the heritage of Tableau.

6:43No one sets out a conference

6:44No one designs a conference to answer those kinds of questions.

6:47Conferences are designed to do a couple of things.

6:50First and foremost, they're actually a massive sales vehicle for Salesforce or Tableau

6:55They're d designed to bring sales salespeople and the customers and product managers and product developers into the same room so that essentially anyone who's planning what they're going to achieve this year or next year

7:09with the product in mind can come see that vision and align with that vision and say yes okay I have confidence in order to do this that big renewal we've got coming up we have the confidence in order to be able to renew and continue the relationship

7:21In other cases, some people come to conference to learn what the relationship has to offer and they might start new relationships with Salesforce or Tableau.

7:29In other cases, if you're me, if you're many other analysts at the conference, you're coming to learn, you're coming to understand what has the product got for me in this sort of upcoming year

7:39uh for me to be able to deliver on my goals and the expectations people have on me.

7:43So for lots of different reasons, whether it's certification, sales

7:48uh customer maybe you're just um someone who follows the industry really really closely and you're monitoring everything that's going on there are so many competing interests at conference

7:57Each of those will put you in an audience.

7:59An audience is going to be looking for very specific messaging.

8:02And so one of the big challenges of a conference is actually getting all of those messages across

8:07And that's typically done in the product keynote and then the subsequent sessions that that follow.

8:12Some of them are product sessions, some of them are

8:14you know, you know, keynote sessions or standout sessions.

8:17Some of them are r fun things like um iron veers where we get to see what people can do with the product in a short amount of time.

8:23There's so many different vignettes that sort of

8:27uh congregate at a tableau conference and this conference is I think one of the most important conferences in a long long time and I just want to sort of set out

8:37I think five challenges that Salesforce has to meet in this conference and and I think how they handle each of these

8:46will really decide how people walk away from the conference.

8:49I think um in the video that I called out at the beginning from Action Analytics, they have sort of four possible outcomes.

8:55Those four

8:56Four possible outcomes are, you know, absolutely on point.

8:58Again, I'm not gonna tell you what they are because I want you to go watch the video.

9:01I'll put a link in the description and in the comments

9:03go watch the video but the four possible outcomes are absolutely on point um so let's let's look at the first one the first one is what I call the product identity crisis this this is this is a bit of a dramatic name but hey this is youtube I have to do something to make it

9:18Sound interesting.

9:20I don't think there is an identity crisis in the sense that the products don't know what they are and what they do.

9:25What I do think is there's a little bit of a confusion going on in the community around

9:30what the products are and what they do.

9:32So much so that I think even small things like product naming is confusing everyone in terms of um setting expectations of what the product can do, but then also just um just being really hard to keep up with

9:44When there are so many things changing so quickly, it can leave people a little bit lost.

9:48And my the last video I made, Whiplash, was

9:51entirely squared on that very point.

9:54The feeling that you have after all of these changes.

9:57It doesn't mean any of the changes were bad or good.

9:59It just means you have this feeling afterwards, this sort of

10:02um you know, uh harsh feeling after there's been so many changes in quick succession that it leaves this um really sort of uh sort of strange effect after the math where even if you want to keep up, it's not

10:17It's not a nice experience to be to be part of.

10:19So when we talk about the identity crisis, I think the first thing to just call out is that

10:25At this conference, Salesforce has to really understand that not everyone gets their product naming.

10:32It doesn't matter how organized or how how many workshops, all of that stuff, like

10:38Honestly, analysts do not care how much effort you put into the naming if they don't get the names and if the name is not clear

10:46Um, it does not matter.

10:48The stuff will not land.

10:49If you're watching a keynote um presentation on stage and they say, Oh

10:54you know use the tableau plus license to go and get this nice tableau pulse feature and this will be available in tableau cloud and also by the way you also get

11:04data cloud with tableau semantics.

11:07A sentence that makes absolute sense, but I guarantee you so many people, so many people will not get that sentence at all.

11:16their brains will just will just explode because they've not been dialed in as dialed in as I am on this channel about the different product names and

11:24That in itself will make it harder to follow the product messaging.

11:28It will then make it much much harder to then understand

11:32Wait, I heard this thing called Tableau Semantics.

11:35Does that mean this is going to be available in the data model?

11:38And the irony is someone will say to you, well

11:40Kind of yes, but what they're thinking is not the same as what you're thinking.

11:43So all of this just leads to what I think is a real sort of mess in terms of just understanding the message that's being put across to you and understanding where it sits

11:53This then gets amplified with the number of sessions that are going on.

11:56One of the things I'm looking out for at the conference this year is just to see

12:01how much of Tableau's own messaging or Salesforce's own messaging is actually correct in their own content because so much changes so quickly that it's quite common to see

12:14Salesforce themselves calling this with deprecated names, old names, or even uh messaging around direction that I know has changed, but just hasn't sort of

12:23Filtered down.

12:24So that will be a super interesting thing, something that I think everyone should be paying attention in uh paying attention to.

12:30Um

12:31There is also this what I would say as part of this identity crisis this issue of abandonment and this issue just really comes around because um what I would call tableau core customers, people who've been using the

12:44uh you know the uh I'm gonna call it legacy again.

12:49Well to me it's the appropriate term because this is this is how it's presented in my opinion.

12:54Um

12:55Everyone who's been using what would well what we'd call Tableau Core or the legacy products, so the desktop, server, prep, all of that stuff.

13:03The stuff that's been around for 20 years and has been building for a long, long time and continues to develop

13:08going forward, it is not the same as the thing they've called Tableau Next, the the the vision for Tableau.

13:14And I think this all comes around for a very simple reason.

13:17This time last year

13:18We were told that Tableau were working on something bold, something big.

13:22They told us what the four things that we'd said we keep having issues with and they were gonna bring something new.

13:28And the way that was communicated was in such a way that everyone felt that

13:31Yes, Tableau have heard me, Salesforce have heard me.

13:34They are going to really take on these four big challenges.

13:36They call it the fourth wave of analytics.

13:39And

13:40That has come about, but the thing we now have is running in parallel to the things we thought

13:48we're gonna get fixed.

13:49So that's what creates this sort of sort of juxtaposed a little bit.

13:53You've got the new stuff coming through, you've got the

13:56um old stuff which is not changing but also getting enhanced and being added and so the messaging is that these are running side by side but everyone thought coming into this that

14:04this was going to be sort of one new revised platform.

14:08And so people don't want to be left behind.

14:10They don't want their product to get left behind.

14:12So again, lots of people will come to conference trying to discern where the focus is.

14:16Is the focus on the new stuff

14:18Or is the focus on the stuff that people use and are passionate about?

14:22Now that doesn't mean that that balance is going to be as it's presented.

14:26When you're marketing, you kind of have to play your hand a little bit

14:29and bias towards the direction you'd like your customers to go.

14:32It doesn't mean that's where most of your customers are.

14:35So what I expect to see at conference is a strong bias towards Tableau Next

14:39Tableau semantics, data cloud, but in reality, the majority of the people at the conference won't be heading in that direction.

14:46They might not have even considered going in that direction.

14:49and they just might find starting to think about that stuff really really hard.

14:53So I kind of bucket that all into what I would call the identity crisis.

14:57Just people trying to figure out what product they're using, where it's going and where Salesforce's focus is.

15:03in that whole entire product suite.

15:05I think that's a really really key point.

15:07The next one is the um the let's call it the Salesforce Integration Challenge.

15:14Salesforce acquired Tableau now over five years ago.

15:17This is this has been an acquisition that's existed for a long time.

15:21And

15:22I think people were sort of waiting for that moment when Salesforce would imprint itself

15:29onto the Tableau product suite.

15:31And initially we thought that was happening with some of the really really early changes that came about.

15:37We saw things like layoffs, we saw things like restructuring, we saw

15:42the whole Tableau Executive changeover um pretty much almost entirely.

15:47Um you know from from a from a product perspective I started noticing a lot more

15:52uh product managers and individuals coming over from what I would call Einstein analytics or Salesforce CRM analytics um over to the Tableau ecosystem.

16:01And this thing always sort of um stuck out to me which is whenever a Salesforce employee sort of takes

16:07tells you their history, they always tell you how long they've worked at Salesforce.

16:11And um it it started to become very, very clear very quickly, um, to me at least, when

16:18um product managers or yeah anyone who'd worked in the tableau ecosystem would say, hey, I've been at Salesforce for seven years, working on Tableau for two years.

16:26And I'm like, interesting.

16:27They're they're clearly individuals who are coming over

16:31from the Salesforce world into the Tableau ecosystem.

16:34Likewise, there were also lots of people who've worked in Tableau this whole time and you know they've they they've never they've never left

16:40They're still there, they're still doing great work.

16:42And I'm not saying either of these groups have any sort of differences.

16:46They're all very talented, very smart people.

16:49But what it does signal to me was a change in culture, a change in approach, a change in style, and some of those manifested in very sort of public ways.

16:57Number one, um Salesforce likes to put on a show.

17:01It's just the kind of company they are.

17:03And this this comes from the

17:04From the top down, if that makes sense, you know.

17:06Um all you have to do is look at Mark Benioff and the way he presents and understand that, you know, if he presents in a certain way

17:14and everyone else in the keynotes that he's in presents a certain way, um then that culture comes from the top

17:21down all the way into the Tableau products and and everything that we see as as long standing Tableau users.

17:27We've seen so many conferences right from when Tableau was tiny.

17:31I remember my first ever conference, I went to Seattle

17:34It was nowhere near as big as it used to be.

17:37Um uh, you know, i in in the later years.

17:39I think um the biggest conference I remember going to

17:42was I think 2017, 2016.

17:452016 was in Austin.

17:462017 was in Vegas.

17:48Um and then they were all in Vegas up until 2019.

17:51Those were absolutely ridiculously large conferences.

17:55I don't think conferences will ever be that big again, COVID happened, but

17:59All of this to say there was a real vibe shift in terms of that sort of integration piece.

18:06But what we're seeing now is something completely different

18:09What we're seeing is not just the culture, not just the changes coming through, not just the presentation styles coming through, but genuinely the decisions, the kind of decisions that Salesforce would make about

18:20pursuing a direction, changing the way a product works, really planning the implementation of a product and its delivery all the way through the end-to-end

18:29picture of how you manage a product is really manifesting itself in the Tableau ecosystem and we feel that change again I'll sign post of the Whiplash videos we see elements of that

18:40And I don't think I was unfair when I said that look, it really feels like salesful slides to leave the vision and then the product follows.

18:46That is that is, I think, a fair way of explaining.

18:50how Salesforce does actually do a lot of its work.

18:53It does often lead with a vision.

18:56It gets customers behind that vision.

18:58uh it's think of it as like an a b test of um where they want to go and then once it has that vision and people have aligned to it once they gain traction

19:06They try and build things very very quick.

19:09There's a big problem with that though.

19:11What happens when the limelight is no longer on that thing?

19:15If the thing has not been delivered to the fullness of that vision, then it's it's i it's likely to be that that thing won't ever reach that vision that was initially sold.

19:25And you end up with what I would call sort of um

19:28you know, fragmented bits, bits that you know no one ever comes back to fix.

19:34Likewise, when that kind of mentality exists, where do you think everyone who wants to work at Salesforce um

19:41where do you think all their attention is?

19:42It's it's all in the places where there is attention.

19:45It's um uh it's gonna be really interesting, let's just say, to look at Tableau Pulse over the next two years and just see

19:53how and when uh it gets the resources to keep pushing in the areas that it's pushed because to me the job is not done but in a funny way this could be the first time we see this sort of

20:04thing I'm describing where there is a little bit of a um a challenge in sort of maintaining a product beyond the excitement and the vision

20:13Now the other thing is Tableau customers just don't get excited about Salesforce.

20:18And I kind of explained this as the what have you done for me problem.

20:22This is sort of like a a really hard one to explain.

20:26But

20:27I think a lot of individuals within Salesforce just do not understand why there is so much negative sentiment sentiment for Salesforce.

20:38And it's because of many of the reasons I've described the layoffs, uh, the change.

20:42There's a little bit of a threat when a company buys another company, and there is always going to be a little bit of an of a of anxiety.

20:49However

20:50Salesforce has not done enough to create some sort of psychological safety for us to feel confident that the product is going to go in the right direction.

20:59And it's not done that by changing names all the time, you know, layoffs

21:03a whole bunch of decisions completely unrelated, completely in response to what I would call very um typical market effects or product effects, but

21:12In combination, they they leave a a nasty taste uh in sort of everyone's mouth.

21:18And so even though the turnover in various roles is quite quick within Salesforce

21:23That organizational context of what has happened over a long period of time seems to just be forgotten.

21:28And so in many ways, part of the Salesforce, let's say, integration challenge is about perception.

21:34It's about anxiety towards more change in the future.

21:38It's about, you know, planning what you're going to do with your analytics solutions.

21:42People want to know that Tableau's still going to be here.

21:45in a few years time and they're still going to be able to build big nice products off the back of it.

21:49Um and so there's a big disconnect between um what I would say the marketing vision

21:56um the product delivery and um potentially the technical implementation of of of the whole product suite

22:04At the same time, I'll be the first to tell you that since SARSWAS is a quiet tableau, I for one, can tell you that it is only

22:14been for the better and it sounds crazy that I'm sat here saying that after I made the video about whiplash but there are just so many things that I have noticed for the better

22:24since Salesforce Acquired Tablet in terms of features getting picked up on the on the user list, in terms of the way they approach certain um

22:33things that are uh shipped at various times, the sort of um the rigidity and the structure that are brought to some parts of the product release cycle and

22:44even small things like being more transparent about certain aspects of the roadmap whilst at the same time, you know, changing that mix up a little bit.

22:52There's so many things that I've changed.

22:54that I think are good things.

22:56Um, you know, even just realizing what some of these big ticket issues are and trying to solve them for once.

23:02So so important.

23:03I used to, you know, use the product a long time ago and I did wonder like, man, how are how are how are Tableau gonna solve these really really big problems?

23:12These are the kind of problems that just require you to start from scratch.

23:15So why I made a video about

23:17you know the ideal version of Tableau because I really genuinely thought there just comes a point where you have to scrap this and start again.

23:24But you take the best things from your heritage and you bring them into this new thing.

23:28You sort of reimagine them for today's world

23:30And I think Salesforce have tried to do that and that is a really hard thing and it does leave certain aspects of the product in a better place.

23:39Um Salesforce, you know, being able to underpin much of the Tableau ecosystem

23:43does leave the Tableau ecosystem in a better place.

23:47The reality is though I can sit here and tell you this and you probably won't believe me and at the same time it's not my job to have to

23:54So to convince you it's actually Salesforce's job to have to convince you that these things are all good things.

23:59They're clearly just not doing a great part of

24:02communicating those things.

24:04There are also just some people who just don't like the brand.

24:07And that's something you're never going to be able to change.

24:09Salesforce just need to recognize that in some places the Salesforce brand

24:13doesn't carry the weight it maybe they think it should carry amongst Tableau customers.

24:18And so you have to solve that in a very different way.

24:21to how you'll solve it for the people who just don't know um what value the brand is bringing forward.

24:26So Salesforce integration challenge really big challenge so much more I could talk about you know

24:31I could talk about Agent Force, I could talk about the rest of CRM, but I'm not going to because I'm not an expert at those things.

24:37And there will be customers who do like those aspects.

24:39But

24:40This to me is another elephant in the room.

24:42How does Salesforce continue to communicate the value of integrating itself and Tableau into the whole entire Salesforce ecosystem?

24:51Huge challenge

24:52Someone needs to answer the question, but it's going to be pretty hard one to answer at conference when people don't want to hear that term.

24:59Now, um in the previous bit I touched on this what have I what have you done for me kind of problem and this really culminates in

25:07Well, one really simple idea which is um trust and confidence around delivery.

25:12Now, what do I mean by that?

25:13Well, in the past, Tableau have showed things at conference and not delivered them, or delivered them many years later than than than expected uh

25:22good one virtual connections we saw this first and think in twenty sixteen and it took up until twenty s like four or five years later to actually see that feature come through

25:32Equally, there's been so many other features that we've seen at Conference that have never materialized.

25:36Um the one that I think comes up most recently is Tableau Gestures.

25:40There was a big, big push around Tableau Gestures.

25:43Um that was a

25:44demo that I think won BI Bay Cost.

25:46We saw it at a conference.

25:47It's really impressive.

25:48Just use the webcam.

25:49It definitely felt like something that was about to ship.

25:52didn't ship.

25:53Okay, so to to date there are just so many notable examples and this to be fair this has happened even before

26:00Salesforce acquire Tableau.

26:02This has been a running theme of Tableau well before Salesforce Acquire Tableau.

26:06But the problem carries through because um in the more recent years what we've seen is a a subtle shift in

26:15Well, people's perception of how products are delivered and when they're delivered.

26:20So I've talked about this in other videos.

26:23Um, when Salesforce announced a feature, there's typically multiple stages

26:27The main one that you want to look out for is something called general availability.

26:31And actually, at the last conference, Tableau showed us a whole bunch of different features.

26:36When they'd come out and broadly speaking, they've stuck to that um schedule.

26:41Whenever they've said, hey, this is coming out in this month or this quarter

26:45generally speaking it has reached that sort of shit point and there might be some things that sort of get delayed.

26:51That is always due to just I think budget and resource.

26:53There's only so many engineers that can build the product and so things have to compete to get on the table.

26:59to get shipped out of the door.

27:01Additionally, you could be building a feature and find a problem or a huge bug that you didn't expect to find, but in order to

27:07fix it it requires more work and therefore you end up pushing that shit point further back and maybe waiting for the next big cycle of time that you get

27:16in order to shift uh that and other problems in one bucket of time.

27:20This is just how product development works.

27:22The issue we have is I think there is this um

27:28Sort of building sea of um anticipation for a bunch of things that people have been asking for a long, long, long, long time.

27:37And to be honest, I've just waited too long.

27:39If you look at the ideas page and you look at the number of new features coming through the ideas page,

27:43Some of them there's this sort of big sigh of relief and there's often this sort of thing that says yo finally we have this basic thing uh tables in tableau.

27:52There's a there's a new extension that does all this.

27:54The response most people will have is uh

27:56Finally, Tableau can do XYZ.

27:58If you look at the data model as an example, this has existed in other products for a long, long time

28:03If you look at um Power BI already has something like this already, the typical response from the broader community is oh finally Tableau can do XYZ.

28:11So these are never you know things to celebrate because in many ways some people perceive them as having arrived late

28:17But this perception carries through with Salesforce because the other challenge with Salesforce is, you know, since the last conference, it's actually a fair question to say, well, what

28:26in this new vision have you delivered?

28:28And the thing about it is look, Salesforce never gave us a date.

28:31Salesforce never said, hey, this new vision is going to be live by this point.

28:36And in their defense they would also argue that actually they've already started to ship on this vision.

28:41The problem is, I'm not sure many people know that, and actually they've not helped themselves because the um the the marketing and the the communication touch points

28:50have all been shifting and so a good example if I say to you hey when is Tableau next available Salesforce would say to you it's already available and you'd go well how do I access it

29:01And then they'd go, well, you need a Tableau Plus license and you need a Tableau Plus license with Data Cloud for Tableau, something

29:11brand new that I saw on the LinkedIn page that I didn't know existed until literally a week ago.

29:16Kind of part of the problem.

29:17And then on top of that, there'll this there'll be this sort of

29:20elephant in the room around data cloud which is like okay well what is data cloud um can I just publish all my data sources from my tablet cloud instance up to data cloud um and

29:30you just get into this sort of list of questions and and and things that are just really difficult to answer.

29:35And so people whenever you have to explain something

29:39You've already lost everyone.

29:41It's a it's a clip it's a typical um uh sort of concept in politics actually.

29:45When you're when you're in a TV debate

29:47The minute you have to explain a fact, you've already lost half the audience.

29:51And this is the exact same thing.

29:51Whenever Salesforce has to then try and explain to you how exactly something works, they've already lost everyone.

29:57And in so many cases, to me, the blindingly obvious decision of how you communicate and then how you solve the problem just seems to have never been on the table.

30:06It just never seems to be something you can look at.

30:09A good example.

30:10Um

30:11If I'm on Tableau Cloud today and I also want to try a Tableau next, to me a logical thing would be to say, well, let's make it easy.

30:19for you to try your data sources regardless of where they are across these two platforms because your data sources fundamentally drive the experiences between these two platforms.

30:29Tableau next

30:30And then Tableau Courts or Tableau Cloud in this instance.

30:33Well in order to do that, it turns out that Data Cloud is actually a really important part of this piece because Tableau Semantics itself is driven off data cloud.

30:43And so it turns out that look, if you want to try this new exciting thing, you're going to have to commit to putting your data sources inside of Data Cloud.

30:53And so the next question is, well.

30:55How do I get my data sources in Tableau Cloud, the things I've already invested a ton of time on into Data Cloud?

31:01And there's a couple of mechanisms.

31:02I don't know what that is yet because I haven't seen the documentation.

31:05I haven't even tried it myself

31:06But the root exists, but even that in itself is just not a logical thing.

31:11If I was doing this from a customer first perspective, what I would have done is said, hey, it looks like Data Cloud is going to be a pretty important part of this piece to try anything across the two things.

31:22side by side.

31:23Let's make it easy for all data sources in Tablet Cloud to equally exist immediately, readily available inside of Data Cloud.

31:29Now this might be an unreasonable ask, but

31:32If you can solve that problem suddenly, you've just multiplied the number of people who can try the new thing that you're trying to ship without any friction.

31:41They can try Tableau Semantics.

31:42Why?

31:42Because they know that if it

31:44they don't like it and it doesn't work, it's not going to affect any of the data sources that are currently running inside of Tableau Cloud.

31:51Equally if they do love it, they can capitalize from it and put it back into a Tableau workbook because there's a new connector for Tableau Semantics.

31:58And then the journey just continues.

32:00And so you might have this sort of virtuous circle where a few things are ready to go over to the new thing, but some things

32:06Aren't writ ready and so you leave them where they are and slowly over time that shift changes.

32:10That's how I would have done that as a sort of customer led

32:13Focus, but because that's not the case, because it's actually quite painful, even customers who are paying for Salesforce and Tableau still today find it really difficult to figure out how to try the things they apparently supposed to have a license for.

32:27There was a really interesting

32:29interesting session at Tableau um at TDX, Salesforce TDX, which was like the developer conference for Salesforce.

32:35And there's an interesting session on Tableau semantics.

32:37And there was a a a gentleman who got up at the end of that session and asked

32:41A very sort of basic set of questions.

32:43And it was very just apparent that A, the Salesforce reps who were presenting, just didn't expect this sort of response from the customer.

32:51This customer was, you know

32:54genuinely trying to try this news experience but was just having a really tough time trying to get it.

32:59And that's going to be the repeating experience that you get.

33:02I put a timestamp to um it in Salesforce Plus.

33:04I obviously can't link to it directly so I'll put the link and I'll tell you which timestamps to go to.

33:08But that in itself, that whole interaction is about five minutes, is an example of what I think is about to happen at Tableau Conference times 10 because everyone there is going to be in the exact same same situation.

33:21So

33:21We'll call that the the trust and delivery gap, you know.

33:24Um how do we trust that SelfSource can really close the gap on these things that we've been wanting them to close the gap on for a really really long time

33:31How do they do that and how do they increase the psychological safety, I guess, in this sort of ecosystem of products they're trying to ship to us?

33:41Now the next one's a little bit briefer.

33:43It's actually quite easy.

33:44It's to do with the global context today.

33:46Trump.

33:47Now, this is not a political video.

33:50This is not a

33:51a an opportunity for me to suddenly start to take sides.

33:54What I will say is that as a UK citizen who's traveling to conference, let's just say I'm really glad I booked my conference ticket when I did, because if I was having to book it now

34:04I would genuinely be thinking twice about going to America for so many different reasons.

34:08Now this isn't to say that I think America has suddenly changed or

34:12You know, I'm not going to feel welcome at somewhere like the Tableau Conference.

34:15But if I think about next year and the year after that, and then the year after that.

34:21You just gotta ask yourself, I think it's gonna be a real struggle for a lot of people to justify traveling to America for a Tableau conference.

34:28Tableau conferences are very

34:29you know they're not cheap things to start with especially if you're traveling from outside of America if you're traveling from outside of America you can expect to spend anything really starting from about three thousand dollars up

34:40Because you've got flights, you've got hotel.

34:42And then additionally, you've also got a little bit of the currency stuff to to fight with.

34:46And then on top of that

34:47Um you really have to be going there to sort of you know execute on something really really valuable.

34:51So you'll probably throw in a certification, you'll probably throw in some sort of a contact point with your sales team.

34:57And although this is corporate pricing, in reality

35:00Even so, in today's world, I think companies would really really struggle to understandably send one person at roughly that price.

35:09Imagine sending two or three people, which is typically how teams work, right?

35:12So

35:14That value judgment is going to change, not because of anything that's happened at the conference, but just because I think America as a country will really become an unattractive place to go and travel to for lots of, you know, very, very valid

35:27valid reasons.

35:28And it's also not safe to assume that, you know, hey, everyone in the Tableau ecosystem can just ignore this sort of global um discussions going on around

35:37um what's going on in America.

35:39You know, at some point people can take an active choice not to go to a country where they don't feel the country aligns with their values.

35:46People make that decision all the time.

35:48Now for Tableau and Salesforce, most of their customers are based in the US, makes total sense.

35:53And so actually I think the impact will mostly be for um

35:57people traveling to conference from outside of the US.

35:59So they have a couple of options.

36:01They can either uh downscale the US event and upscale other events around the world.

36:06I'd love to see that.

36:07I'd love to see a return of DataFam Europe this year again.

36:10I think that was a great European conference.

36:12Uh whether it's in London or whether it's another European city, I don't know.

36:15Whichever city it's in in Europe, I will definitely go because I think it's great to have

36:20this sort of um critical mass of people in local communities where this stuff goes on.

36:24So that to me is the model they have to solve.

36:27But I think it will be the elephant in the room because conference tickets are still available.

36:31And I think people will be looking at them now in a very different light to how they were looking at them just a month ago or even two months ago.

36:38So um

36:39It's a really tough one to it's a really tough one to sort of touch now.

36:43I don't wanna go into politics um again, but I I do think

36:47There is going to be an impact on the global tablet community just purely based on all the activity that's going on.

36:52And I think there will be people who will be attending the conference.

36:55in a very different light because their companies might be about to make really, really tough decisions in order to combat what's going on.

37:01So that I think that would just set the context for conference, but it won't really be a talking point of conference because we don't go to tablet conference to be political, but I think it will have an impact.

37:15Last but not least, the impossible choice

37:19I think it's actually impossible for Salesforce to answer all of these questions at conference, which means some people will leave conference disappointed and it does mean they will fail on some of these sort of objectives.

37:29Now, it is possible that if they do enough segmenting of their customers and they have enough people on the ground in order to speak to those individual messages they need to, they can actually leave conference with everyone feeling great and getting the answers they need to.

37:43Ultimately that's all that matters.

37:45If everyone who goes to conference can answer the key question they wanted to answer and they can leave the event with

37:52Not just faith in that answer, but you know a genuine confidence that that answer is the right one and it's going to deliver for them, then I think Salesforce will have succeeded.

38:01They will have done a great event.

38:03However, if they leave conference and they don't sort of solve all these different problems, in essence they don't solve they don't thread the needle.

38:11They'll be one of many sort of different outcomes.

38:13And I think again

38:14Action Analytics had a great sort of uh slide on this.

38:17Again I'll I'll blank it out on the screen here, but you should go check it out.

38:21Um

38:22I think those four points that they covered are absolutely on point and they're absolutely the only four things that can happen.

38:29Um really you know when you go to a conference

38:33There's so many people with different expectations, but the the one thing everyone can rely on is that the outcomes are very, very sort of narrow.

38:41You're either gonna love it, you're either gonna hate it.

38:44You might be indifferent or you might just walk out with something completely unexpected.

38:48All of those things um are on the table at this conference.

38:52But I genuinely don't think Salesforce can answer all of those questions.

38:56Some of those answers need to come from other places.

38:59The community, it needs to come from other partners who are at the conference.

39:03It's really gonna take a collective effort from everyone who's participating to sift through the madness, understand each other, have a little bit more of tolerance in terms of messaging and really listen in to what everyone's saying to really get that sort of common understanding.

39:18standing built up um around around the event.

39:21So those to me are the sort of the five elephants in the room.

39:24I'd be curious to know what you think.

39:26Let me know in the comments below.

39:28I think I'm gonna be covering conference uh in in in a very different way because obviously I'll be there, I'll be physically there.

39:36So

39:36We'll do a little bit of a breakdown afterwards.

39:38We'll do our usual sort of uh deep and then short breakdown as well.

39:43And it'll be just very different in terms of timings.

39:46I will try and stick to my classic, you know

39:49at least forty eight hour sort of window um if if if that allows um at at the at the at the conference but um

39:58Yeah, I think this is going to be a pretty big conference.

40:01I'd love to know what I've missed.

40:03I've definitely missed something.

40:04So please let me know what you what you think in the comments below.

40:08And um yeah, I guess I'll catch you in the next one.