2016 was the quite the year. We’re already over two weeks into 2017, and it seems as if we STILL haven’t quite processed everything that happened. Despite the bad taste 2016 left for many, there were some pretty awesome parts in the world of data. Data viz continues to grow in mainstream popularity, Tableau 10 dropped, TC16 was the biggest to date and InterWorks had a landmark year. Proof of the latter can be seen on our blog.

If you follow us, you know we stay pretty active on the blog. How active? We published 237 posts last year, the majority focused on data. Thassa lotta know-how! To give you a glimpse of all that knowledge, I present to you our “greatest hits” – a curated list of some of our best content from the past year.

Now, you’ve likely heard parents of multiple children claim that they don’t have a favorite child. The same thing applies to InterWorks and our blog. Like children, each blog post is different and good in its own way (until it wrecks your car or starts dating that punk down the street, but I digress). In fact, as I write this, I know I’ve made some grave (yet innocent) omissions. For that, I apologize in advance. My excuse is that there’s only so much space in one post to sum up such a massive year. With that caveat in mind, I present to you our greatest hits from 2016:

10 of Our Favorite Tableau Vizzes

We had several awesome Tableau vizzes this year, covering everything from politics, World War II, New York eateries, fantasy football and more. Here are ten of our favorites:

• Politics Viz Contest: Plotting Political Polarization
• Tableau Viz Showcase by Industry: Retail
• Storm Chasing in Tableau: How to Create a Weather Map
• Using Comics to Tell Data Stories
• Open Data Viz: The NYC Restaurant Finder
• Exploring History with Tableau: World War II
• Actionable Venn Diagrams in Tableau
• 2016 Tableau Fantasy Football Draft Kit
• Exploring D.C. Metro Delay Data in Tableau
• The European Refugee Crisis Visualised In Tableau

Other Great Data & IT Posts

Again, it’s tough to narrow down the year’s great posts, but here are a few to chew on:

• How to Think Like a Tableau Consultant
• Scaling Tableau Dashboards on High-Res Monitors
• Using Big Data to Tackle Big Goals: How Data Analytics Can Help Countries Confront Health Emergencies
• How to Compare Quarters on One Complete Timeline in Tableau
• Material Design and Tableau
• The Desktop User’s Guide to Tableau Server
• Tableau 10 Beta: First Impressions
• The Tableau Server tabcmd Download Archive
• Creating a Collapsing Menu Container in Tableau
• Step by Step: Upgrading to Veeam 9
• Predicting the Flu with Tableau and R
• Using the Alteryx Run Command Tool
• Spark SQL and Tableau: Spin Up a Cluster of Your Own!
• Preloading Dashboards with the Tableau JavaScript API
• Highlights from the Tableau Conference 2016 Keynote

Blog Series, Ongoing and New

This was the year of the mini-series and the podcast. While we certainly had some ongoing series from years past, we also had several smaller series this year. Some focused on in-the-weeds Tableau tips, some were stories from the InterWorks team and others were just for fun.

• 10 Questions
• How I Went from
• Questions from Tableau Training
• Quantified Office
• Tableau Deep Dives
• Tableau Driver’s Ed

Podcast Your Data!

Speaking of series, perhaps the biggest development in the world of series was the start of Podcast Your Data! – our in-house podcast that brings on all sorts of influential people from the data community. Because each guest is so unique, we couldn’t even begin to pick our favorites. Head to the Podcast Your Data! series page to see which episodes speak to you.

Keeping Up with InterWorks

Our blog isn’t just a place for all sorts of knowledge and fun, it’s also our primary medium for letting you know what’s going at InterWorks. We had a pretty newsworthy year. Here are the big stories:

• InterWorks Brings Home Two Tableau Partner Awards for 2015
• InterWorks EU Named Tableau’s 2015 Professional Services Partner of the Year (EMEA)
• InterWorks’ Behfar Jahanshahi Recognized as One of Oklahoma’s Most Admired CEOs
• InterWorks Dubbed ‘Best IT Company in Oklahoma’ for Sixth Straight Year
• InterWorks Celebrates 20 Years
• InterWorks Earns Inc. 5000 Honor for 9th Consecutive Year
• InterWorks Rakes in Metro 50 and Best Places to Work in Oklahoma Honors for Yet Another Year
• InterWorks Earns Distinguished 2016 CRN Triple Crown Award
• Highlights from the Tableau Conference 2016 Keynote

Misc. Things

In addition to all the knowledge and news, our blog is a bit of a hodge-podge. Whether it’s a piece on biking across Oklahoma or just general culture notes, we see a variety of pieces that don’t exactly fit into the typical data blog mold.

• A Video Montage of Team InterWorks at OK Freewheel 2016
• The Freewheel Foodie
• Adobe MAX Through the Eyes of an InterWorks Analytics Consultant
• Impressions from the Third Annual InterWorks BI Summit

Speaking of Greatest Hits …

While we’re on the topic of greatest hits, we thought it’d be cool to share a little playlist that a few of us at InterWorks put together. It includes our top songs from 2016, and the styles are as varied as our people! This has nothing to do with blog content, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t share a little something extra on the subject of greatest hits. Happy listening!

(Special thanks to Kate Treadwell for thinking of this!)