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Tableau Software

ABA10 WinnerCompany: Tableau Software, Seattle, WA
Entry Submitted By: Sterling PR
Company Description: Tableau Software delivers fast analytics and visualization to everyday businesspeople. Tableau’s products integrate data exploration and visualization to make analytics fast, easy and fun. They include Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server and the free Tableau Reader. Tableau has attracted more than 10,000 licensed users in companies from one-person businesses to the world’s largest organizations.
Nomination Category: Products & Product Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Computer Software - Software as a Service

Nomination Title: Tableau Public - A Free SaaS Service for Websites and Blogs

1. Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 500 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and sales to date. You may include hyperlinks to product photos and data sheets. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

The skill of telling great stories has been lost over the centuries. Our
ancestors had it – storytelling was the best way to spread news. As technology
has evolved, the skill to tell news stories with words and pictures was left to
experts: writers, journalists, photographers, TV producers.

But two trends are changing that. On one hand, the availability of data has
exploded. On the other hand, while there are more sources of useful data than
ever before, many of our traditional sources of storytelling (e.g., newspapers
and broadcast TV) are radically changing or disappearing. Meanwhile, virtually
anybody with a computer and an internet connection can create their own blog.

So it’s been online media sites, bloggers and other people of ordinary means
stepping it to fill the vacuum - some with great success and some not.

The question is, how do ordinary people (bloggers included) tell the stories
that yesterday's newspapers and broadcast media would have told? How do they
tell them in visually compelling, practical and fast ways that will engage web
audiences?

Enter Tableau Public. Available for free, it allows virtually anyone in the
world to tell amazing stories with beautiful, interactive graphics published on
their websites and blogs. Once on the web, anyone can interact with the data,
download it, or create their own visualizations of it. No programming skills
are required. It can be done in minutes. Did we mention it's free?

Tableau Public makes data a first class citizen on the web.

Anyone can do it. People don’t need to be programmers or hire one – no language
to learn, no Flash, no plug-ins, no API. With Tableau Public they can create
interactive graphs, dashboards, maps and tables from virtually any data and
embed them on your website or blog in minutes. And it’s 100% free.

Tableau Public makes it easy to:
** Make blogs or websites stand out. Content creators can add colorful,
interactive, data visualizations to their web pages. People using Tableau
Public average 3 times more reader comments.
** Lets people explore data online. Writers and bloggers can bring data to life
with interactive graphs, charts and maps that will engage your readers.
** Share their interactive graphs and visualizations. With a few clicks, they
can embed interactive graphs, dashboards, maps and tables anywhere and share
with everyone.

Response has been overwhelming (see the partial list of media reviews and our
gallery of users below). Major media like The Wall Street Journal,
ComputerWorld and CBS Sports are already using it. Lesser known but popular
bloggers like Seattle Bubble, PAHO bloggers and others are also dedicated users.

2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, product reviews, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

Tableau Public Website http://www.tableaupublic.com

Examples of What People Have Created with Tableau Public
http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/gallery

Video showing how to use Tableau Public
http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/why-use

The story of how Tableau Public came to be
http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/our-story

The Tableau Public Community http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/community

Article - Perceptual Edge - Tableau Public – A Powerful New Tool for
Democratizing Data
http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=753

Article - Life Hacker – Tableau Public Brings Your Boring Data to Life
http://lifehacker.com/5487656/tableau-public-brings-your-boring-data-to-life

Article - Make Use Of – Easily Create Awesome Charts & Graphs with Tableau
Public
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/easily-create-awesome-charts-and-graphs-tableau-public/

Article - Wired – The Quest to Make Web Data Fun
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/02/the-quest-to-make-web-data-fun/

TechFlash – Tableau’s new data tool helps publishers create beautiful charts
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/02/tableau_rolls_out_free_data_tool_for_online_publishers.html

ComputerWorld – Exploding Batteries on Planes: Rare and Small Risk
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9155658/Exploding_batteries_on_planes_Rare_and_small_risk_

Aggregate Listing of Media reviews of Tableau Public
http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/news-and-awards/news

3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:

Put together an Academy-Award winning professor from the nation’s most
prestigious university – CTO Pat Hanrahan; a savvy business leader with a
passion for data – CEO Christian Chabot; and a brilliant computer scientist –
Chief Development Officer Chris Stolte. Add in one of the most challenging
problems in software – making data understandable to ordinary people. These
were the fundamental ingredients of Tableau.

Pat and Chris realized that data visualization could produce large gains in
people’s ability to understand information. Rather than analyzing data in text
form and then creating visualizations of those findings, they invented
technology by which visualization is part of the journey and not just the
destination.