# Unlocking Expertise in Tableau & Power BI through Playfair+ featuring Ethan Lang

> 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:** 2025-07-01
- **Format:** Video · 74 min watch
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Career, Community, Tool strategy
- **Tools:** Power BI; Tableau
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/unlocking-expertise-in-tableau--power-bi-through-playfair-featuring-ethan-lang
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkhChWLceVk

I sit down with Ethan Lang, director of analytics engineering at Playfair Data, to talk about his journey from statistics student to published author and senior consultant. He then demos Playfair Plus, their on-demand learning platform covering Tableau and Power BI, including the Atlas visualisation catalogue and Swifts accelerators.

## Key takeaways

- Playfair Plus structures all content around four tenets: strategy, design/architecture, data engineering, and visual analytics engineering, each with fundamental, intermediate, and advanced learning paths
- Atlas is a downloadable Tableau visualisation catalogue with original chart types like the Pulua and Leapfrog charts, complete with history, use cases, and build-along resources
- Swifts are tool-agnostic accelerator templates (Tableau, Power BI, Oracle Analytics) with landing pages that onboard users before dropping them into the workbook
- Writing a technical book took Ethan eighteen months of dedicated early-morning and evening sessions, plus a separate lengthy process re-doing image resolution for print
- Premium Playfair Plus members get free access to live virtual training sessions that are fully produced and recorded

## Chapters

- 0:00 Why niche learning platforms are hard to find
- 2:24 Meeting Ethan and the Tableau user group story
- 5:58 Ethan's path from the military to data analytics
- 10:01 Breaking into Tableau through an internship
- 12:55 Joining Playfair Data and consulting life
- 16:08 Becoming an author: writing the statistics and dataviz book
- 27:07 Ethan's role as director of analytics engineering
- 32:39 The Playfair van: four tenets of visual analytics
- 35:59 What Playfair Plus offers members
- 39:02 Live demo: Atlas visualisation catalogue
- 51:48 Live demo: Swifts accelerator templates

Watch the full video and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/unlocking-expertise-in-tableau--power-bi-through-playfair-featuring-ethan-lang

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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