What better place to talk about Snowflake than 89 floors above the hipster laneways of Melbourne amongst the clouds?

Following our successful Brewalytics event in Perth, Western Australia, the InterWorks ANZ team continued our data journey in Melbourne. Once again, we were lucky enough to partner with Snowflake and Tableau to deliver Data in the Clouds to our Melbourne data community.

Data in the Clouds was a fantastic opportunity to take in the breathtaking views of Melbourne from Eureka89, whilst chatting data over a few drinks and tasty snacks, and we were joined by two fantastic speakers. Below is an overview of some of the insights they provided during the event.

Harness the Power of the Cloud with Snowflake

James Harnischmacher, a sales engineer with Snowflake, gave us a great overview of the cloud data platform, including a demonstration of its sheer power and simplicity. Snowflake is significantly impacting how organisations think about and understand their data. Here are the core pillars of Snowflake’s value:

• Simplicity – Simple, serverless plug-and-play
• Scalability – Any scale of data, users and workloads
• Elasticity – Size for what you need right now. Resize performance instantly
• Cost Flexibility – Pay for what you use when you use it
• Diversity – One place for all your data in any format
• Sharing – Secure, live data-sharing across regions and clouds

Well Designed Dashboards with Tableau

Robert Curtis, ANZ Practice Lead with InterWorks, spoke about a passion of his—visual best practices with Tableau dashboarding. He reminded the crowd that just because a dashboard is built, people won’t necessarily flock to it. The viz needs to be informative and add value, and it needs to tell a story that resonates with the audience. Robert gave us five key tips:

• Focus – Narrow your scope to the question(s) you are trying to answer
• Structure – Place your dashboard objects in a balanced and evenly spaced layout
• Weight – Guide your users’ attention to specific items with formatting
• Colour –  Use it with purpose and intentionality
• Testing – Always leave time for testing to ensure you have the strongest end result possible

We’re so pleased by the success of the event, including the opportunity to meet many new faces and contribute to the growth and success of the data community in Melbourne. Sydney, you’re next!