But let's start with some introductions. Hello everyone, welcome. Thanks for letting us chat for a little bit. We're gonna chat some more but I am Garrett Sals. I'm a Content Manager at Interworks. And as I said, I work on the marketing team here at Interworks. I work adjacent to a lot of data people. And Annabelle Rincon and I have been doing this series for a few months now. It's been really life giving and really interesting but I'll pitch it over to Annabelle to introduce herself. Yeah. Of course. My name is Annabelle Pinkon. I'm living in Switzerland. I have twenty years experience in banking, fifteen years in data and analytic. And in my last role, I was leading the center of, enablement for a bank. I am convinced that enablement is a key, of any data analytic platform implementation or digital transformation. And that's why we come up with guide with this great idea to our new webinar, Sierra, on enablement and, yeah, learn from the best in the market. So today, it's a great honor to receive Emily Conde. Just to be very honest here, Emily is the reason why I got involved in the data plus women initiative, which is to promote women working with our own data, but also, my interest in enablement and accessibility. Mhmm. And she's also a great sponsor about inclusion in general. And, in the data plus woman initiative, we always quote her because she used to say that data it's data plus woman, not data men. Mhmm. So, you know, I cannot think of any better, person to for topic enablement for everyone today. Mhmm. So and with that, I will let Emilie, like, introduce herself, I think. It's a wonderful introduction. I know. Thank you, Adam. I'm gonna shrink you down and put you in my pocket so that when I need somebody to, like, I'll just pull you out, like, hologram or holographic, or hologram Annabelle Mhmm. Like, here. But thank you so much for that. Thank you so much for that introduction. So I'm Emily Coon. Actually, as Annabelle was providing her intro, I was like, wow. We actually have kind of a similar track. In that, my first career, was spent eighteen years in the federal government as a bank examiner. Mhmm. I like to say I grew up in banking. I started in banking when I was fifteen years old. Wow. Doing, like, customer service stuff but getting to know the bank. And then after college, being a bank examiner, I did not consider myself a data person, though I used data all the time. And then, through Tableau, actually, somebody in our office introduced me to Tableau, and I saw the potential. And that was the moment where I was like, oh, wow. This can be really impactful. And I just kinda fell in love with data visualization. And so now that's my second career. I've I pivoted from bank, from banking and bank examination to data and analytics and visualization and helping as many people as possible achieve their objectives, which, to me, that's what enablement is. So I love enablement. I also value efficiency. So it makes sense that I love enablement because you can go faster when you are enabled. Mhmm. I love that. I you know, this is, like, a really common thing that I hear a lot in the data world. I feel like there are certainly people who who who go well these days now that there are actual data programs and stuff like that within universities, there are plenty of people who, you know, they they start out in that field and they continue in that field. But I feel like it is just as common to hear people like yourself, Emily, who started out somewhere else. And then you kinda became the de facto, like, this person's actually good at numbers. You wanna be the data person, and then that becomes your career. Right? So what was interesting was that I actually wasn't the data person. Mhmm. I was the person I actually had a, like, a little, circuitous pop. Mhmm. In that, I was a business system administrator, and kind of got to know data a little more. And but what I did, because I was really busy with my day job, I would collect these resources. I would share out information that I knew. So I actually became the person known for enabling others. Like, oh, ask Emily. She's she likes Tableau. She's active in that. She probably has a list. And I was putting on internal tugs like database competitions, and, I call it design skills to thrill. It was Halloween. Now that's marketing. So, so, yeah, I I became known for that internally, and I just love doing that work. And so I did it for, like, the longest time just for free is, like, contributing to that community. And then it became a paid position, and here we are. And how you do you did the, swap between, like, doing that as a side job to really, like, become this enablement person and be recognized? Well, it's interesting because, so Red Hat was the company where I was paid as an enablement person. Like, that was my job. And I looked at the job description and send it to a couple of my friends, a couple of trusted advisers, and said, hey. Do you think I could do this? And they were like, Emily, like, it has you written all over it. And so I was like, oh, okay. And I think that that's important for people to realize is oh, two, like, two things there. One is, like, have your people that you can go to who are in your corner that are like, yeah. That's you or, you know, maybe wait a minute. Or you might wanna beef up on this before you go for it. But then the other thing too is work is work. It doesn't necessarily mean paid work. And so I became a resource in that Tableau community because I was doing things like blogging. I think I've blogged for, like, seven years straight. I did Thank you for your services. Yeah. I did a podcast. Early on, I was doing data visualizations. I was having the conversations on Twitter, at the time, and I, you know, I was like, oh, for several reasons, started a a virtual conference around the Tableau ecosystem. So I was doing all of these things, and that gave me the experience to then be well positioned for Red Hat when they needed, an enablement person to help grow this center of excellence that was just founded. Mhmm. Mhmm. And, let's say if you will be working I have often served this question. If the post doesn't exist in your company, but you really you are the go to person and people, always approach you for, advice, for resources, for training, and something like that. How can you convince your boss that the position is needed? Yeah. That is, that's hard. I know. I think the thing to to do is to recognize that it might be hard. So I go back to some to me, they're pretty, like, basic kind of guideposts. And not surprisingly, I also talk about them in Dataviz and accessibility, but, like, know your audience. So is my is that decision maker are they into data and analytics? Like, are they more likely to be receptive to that, to that conversation? Because if they're not, then, you know, I think you're gonna have you might have a harder time of having that conversation with them. So knowing your audience, understanding what kind of person are they, what are the company goals? Like, I know that this is is all like, what what does that have to do with enablement? But I will say enablement is very hard to measure, and so as a result and and it's not a profit center. So it tends to be more of a cost center. So if you're going to somebody saying, we need an enablement position, and let's just ballpark it and just say, like, a hundred thousand or a hundred twenty five thousand dollars a year, for that position. So especially if there's any extenuating circumstances like hiring pauses or freezes. So now you're asking somebody to spend more money, and they are not going to actually be able to have this hard industry standard, metric that they can say, oh, yeah. This is totally worth it to us. So that's why having and, like, honestly, this is like it's enable it's an this is so meta. It's enabling yourself to have an enablement person. Mhmm. By knowing your audience, by understanding what are their motivations right now, can you tie it to business goals and objectives? If the business initiative or goal for the year is, look, we need to be more efficient, well, cool. Let me show you how we can be more efficient. I also love, I love to quantify things if possible. So are they gonna be exact? No. Could they be proxies? Yes. And so, like, let's talk about I, let's let's talk about it. I I have this thing where I'm like, okay. Fifteen minutes can turn into twenty five FTEs. And at first, you're like, well I'm like, how in the world can that happen? So if you have five hundred developers and they spend fifteen minutes a day researching, trying to find information, sort through all of that stuff. Okay. So that's probably a couple hours, a week. And then think about the number of weeks in a year. Let's just call it fifty because you take two weeks off perhaps. So start to multiply that out. Fifteen minutes becomes five hundred hours, which multiply that by I I forget the math. I have it somewhere. But it ends up being, like, fifty thousand hours multi or divide that by two thousand hours for the work, year. Mhmm. And then you get to twenty five FTEs. So if I were to tell a decision maker, look. This is costing you the equivalent the equivalence of twenty five FTEs, full time equivalents, full time they'd be like, that's crazy. And even if you're like, Emily, that estimate is cuckoo. Like, it would never like, people would never do that. Cool. Half it. Cool. Quarter it. Do you still have a convincing argument that or do you are you setting up a convincing argument for having an enablement person? Because even if it's quartered, what's that? Like, oh, mental math is not a great thing. Let's call it six people. Okay. What is the opportunity cost Mhmm. Of those six FTEs? Is it innovation time where from a data visualization perspective, because they're doing all of this research and trying to figure stuff out and banging their heads against the desk because why in the world can this not work when you could have set up something as an enablement person to help them? Could they have done innovation work where they're finding revenue, where they're identifying cost cutting savings, to are are they doing customer experience work? Are they getting business impact? Like, are they making their customers' lives easier and, as a result, making the company perform better? Mhmm. And so when you start to frame it up like that, again, knowing your audience, if somebody is not into the numbers like that, you know, you might take a different tactic. But when you start talking about what is the opportunity cost and talking about it in, like, this is it. And what is it costing you? Like, that's the other thing I do is to say, okay. So hundred thousand dollars, like, even if it's six FTEs, like, multiply that out. So what are the what's kind of that, the the opportunity cost of not doing that? What is it worth on the revenue side? What is it worth on these other things that you can do? And then you start to have a really good conversation around, this is how we can help, and this is how one enablement person I was actually just having this conversation, yesterday with Christian Langmeier from Pyramid Analytics, and we were talking about enablement specialists and how, you know, it can be a tough market. But what if you thought about it or talked about it in terms of being a product owner? Product owners, there's a really nice overlap between enablement and product ownership. Mhmm. And so could you then be a product owner? And could you be or an enablement person for multiple platforms If there is some resistance to being a full time, enablement specialist for just Tableau, Power BI, or whatever the thing is, maybe you're a general enablement specialist that can work on different things. And then it starts to become more I think it it really opens it up and so that you're willing to see how it can work for the company instead of just you. You're really thinking about everyone in the company and making the company perform better. I think when you approach it that way, if anything, you've planted the seed and you've gone to that person to say and and they know. Oh, wow. Like, they've got their stuff together. Like, they're serious about this. And maybe the answer is no, not right now. Mhmm. But then you can be positioned for it later. So Yeah. Sorry. That was like No. No. No. No. No. This is all good. This is this is all good. I I have thoughts. It's interesting the things that that I'm kinda picking up on. It sounds to me like, you know, one thing kind of working backwards is there's multiple paths to this or multiple paths to persuasion. Right? In one sense, you can become that broad enablement expert and say, you know what? I understand we use several types of platforms and tools, and I know enough agnostically about these types of things and how to upskill users that I can get value beyond just being a Tableau analyst or Power B analyst or whatever it might be. Right. But there's also value in depending on your organization structure, if you do want to truly become like, yes, I'm, you know, defacto doing all the enablement things. Why don't I just slide into this product owner role and then kind of make it make sense and and kind of, you know, find a find a pathway that, find a path that way. Another thing that's really interesting to me that I really, really liked and it speaks to the marketing mind as well is this, the idea of, of opportunity cost. Right? So often we want to frame things in the way of, well, if you let me do this, this is what the organization will get. Here's what we're adding. And that's good. That's positive language. But a lot of times, like you said, framing it in the way of here's what we lose if we don't have someone who is dedicated to this in terms of time, effort, labor, or something we could be spending something more meaningful we could be spending our time in reading this phone. Right? And, Garrett, I think you will appreciate this as a marketing person. I learned something in a mastermind, several years ago Mhmm. Which is people run from plank pain and run towards pleasure. Yeah. But I actually like to I started thinking about it a little bit differently in that I think people run from pain, and they walk briskly towards pleasure. Because if you don't have pleasure, then it's like, okay. Well, you know, like, alright. So my life isn't great, but it's good. Mhmm. If you have pain, you're like, oh. You feel it. But I'm aware of it. Yeah. I need to do something right now. That's a little Christmas story quote for folks. But, you you know, like, you're running from pain. And so bringing up that opportunity cost I mean, I'm not talking about, like, fear based marketing. Yeah. That's a good really great conversation around, this is what it's costing us. Mhmm. Is that acceptable to you? Is that within your tolerance range? If no, great. Here's a potential solution. Let's talk about that. Mhmm. For sure. I'm curious. So we have a question in the chat. We have we have one in in the chat and one in the q and a. I'm gonna answer the q and a one first because I think it segues a little bit, and I'm curious to hear your response as well. Sarah had asked, is there a difference between enablement and accessibility? And if so, what is the difference? Yeah. Great question. Because I I do actually think that they're tied. So accessibility is making something as available to as many people as possible. And that's basically, I think, what Microsoft uses as a definition for accessibility. So is it tied? Yes. Because enablement is kind of like curating the resources and making them available to the users. Mhmm. And so that's how I would tie that together from just a pure, like, definitional perspective. If we're talking about, accessibility and data visualization from, like, a design perspective, you know, I think that there's overlap there between things like knowing your audience. Yeah. Like, you need to know your audience for, enablement because you need to know the type of people who you are working with, whether you do something more formal like personas or you just go out and talk to people and say, okay. We've got, I mean, we've got people who are very engineering minded, who are also report developers, or we just have a lot of business users. And just being able to understand kind of the needs of those individuals Mhmm. And then being able to curate the resources for that type of individual. Similarly, in accessibility and data visualization, knowing your audience and then designing for what they need. And so those are some overlaps that I see, but I answered it from a couple different ways just in case, you know, you were thinking about it in one of those. No. I like that. I think it's important to I know that there's there's a word, out there that that is that is used in terms of, you know, when we talk about, like, diversity initiatives and accessibility initiatives, like intersectionality. And thinking about the intersectionality of not only a person's, you know, abilities, things like whether whether they they're color blind or whether they have anything like that in terms of making it accessible, whether they need, you know, a reader or anything like that, but there's also what their role is. There's also where they're at. There's also, I mean, you name it. There's so many little different variables that can factor into what is true accessibility when we start to broaden that definition. And I think it's the to your point, it's important to think of it from multiple angles, like this kind of quantum threaded sort of thing. Oh, that's very fancy. There is this principle in accessibility called, solve for one, extend to many. I was just having this conversation actually this morning where you can solve for one person, and maybe that's the person with the accessible need. Mhmm. And and, like, you can think about it and, actually, I used myself as an example. So I'm a late diagnosis ADHD person. Mhmm. And, you know, that's been very life changing and just in how I approach things and all of that good stuff. But how I would design and how I ask people to design for me is different now than ten years ago. Mhmm. And so I started to think about, like, okay. But I'm the same person, and it's not like ADHD just, like, happened. Yeah. So what what's the difference? And so as I was thinking about this, I'm like, oh my gosh. Software won't extend to many. Mhmm. So software me, the me now of, oh, she has ADHD. We need to, like, make this whatever. But then the me of ten years ago was super busy. Like, there were days where meetings were eight, eight and a half hours out of nine. I was in addition to work, I was doing fitness competitions, and I was doing long distance running, and I was doing Tableau stuff. I was really busy. So I did not have time to, like, sort through this really great, beautiful, like, intricate data visualization. Mhmm. No. I don't have time for that. Give me the number so that I can move on. Mhmm. And so I'm like, oh, that's great. Because you solve for the ADHD person. It extends to the person who doesn't know that they have ADHD Mhmm. Or the person who is just busy as their life runs. Mhmm. And then or the the example I like to use is the manager in a meeting who just needs the KPI Yeah. And be able to talk about it, speak to it in a meeting, and be able to quickly look down and say, oh, it's seven point six. Mhmm. And that's what I love is, it is that inclusive design because and I really I think about accessibility like super user focused design. Mhmm. Mhmm. Because sometimes you know it, sometimes you don't. And, you know, I think it's it's all about, like, designing for people and Yeah. Helping them do what they need to do. Make their life make their life better. Like, that's what I always go back to. Trying to make the life better. I I really like kind of reframing it holistically as, like, user based design and user based thinking because I feel like there's there's a lot of a lot of that that accessibility. And and if you're if you're truly thinking about your users deeply and and broadly, your that those accessibility things are going to are going to be not necessarily baked in, but easier to find, easier to uncover and apply. Yeah. And I would also say, I think some accessibility experts will say you've got to include the people from the beginning. That is ideal state. Mhmm. But what about the people who don't know? Yeah. Or what about the people who don't have psychological safety in their organization to raise their hand and say, hey. I actually have this. I mean, because maybe they're considered a widget. They're replaced. And so I think, ideally, yes, bring them in. But if you just focus on this is user centered design, and it doesn't matter whether you have it's you have a accessibility barrier or not because it's being designed for you. Yeah. Right. Same with, like, how you develop your enablement contact. Like Mhmm. You know, when you're developing the newsletter, don't put, like, a block of text because That's general best practice. I don't care who you are. But, just like to reborn on one of your, sentence, Emily, I remember, you know, I try in previous job to apply the best practice and say, hey. Do that and that. Please don't do, like, the traffic light color, like, we were being told. Yeah. But I receive a lot of pushback on that. I said, but, guys, it's a best practice. And people told me, yeah. But, everyone is capable of make the distinction between, green and red. I said no. And I managed to convince them when I discover that in the board of director, two people were color blind. And then when I put this argument, you know, there were no discussion whatsoever, and, we apply the best practice. So sometimes it's like Yep. Yes. And I will say my experience has been that the higher up in the company, again, depending on the type of company, if there is not that psychological safety Mhmm. The higher up you get, the less communicative people will be about any perceived weakness or any issue. And, Annabelle, I had the same, a similar experience where we changed the color palette to one that was color blind friendly, and somebody came to me afterwards and was like, oh my god. Thank you so much. Because I would just be in the meetings. And this was, like, with senior leadership. Mhmm. I would just be in the meetings and just nod my head, but now I can actually, like, understand it. And because they couldn't like, they weren't gonna say anything, and then they would go back later at their desk and, like, figure it out. But I'm like, yeah. Like, let's just let's just do that. I think there's something to be said too for for individuals. We talk about psychological safety too. And there are some individuals as well who are just like, even if they feel somewhat psychologically safe, they're like, I don't, you know, I don't wanna bother anyone. I don't want, you know, I don't need to I need to make a big deal about it. If everyone else can read it, don't worry about me, You know, I think a lot a lot of people, especially midwesterners can have a tendency to be like, I don't worry. Yeah. It's fine. But I think that is again, I think this goes back to the value of having an enablement person who can ask these questions and have these conversations. And again, do the user user focused design and user based thinking to say, well, what you are experiencing does matter. I do care about that. Let's talk about it. And if we have the bandwidth and ability to do it, which is not a difficult thing to do, we can do it. So convincing people that even those small things matter, you know. Now I say small things, for some people it's a very big thing, but for people who view it as a small, those small things matter. Yeah, a hundred percent. I'm curious. So this is kind of, I'm gonna answer this question because it was asked fairly early on by William McCann Murphy. And this maybe has to do with a little bit of, I almost want to say, maybe it's ease for developers or dashboard builders, but it could also be ease for people and analyst people who are interpreting it as well. But, yeah. William had asked, what is the panel's view in creating a design language for visualization to simplify data interpretation? So curious your thoughts on specifically what that might mean. Okay. So if I'm interpreting the question correctly, I I am in the camp of plain language. Mhmm. Simple, consistent. I actually think and I wrote this somewhere. I have no idea where. I think we actually do a disservice to our community, or we can be a disservice to our community if we like to, label every little thing, you know, like, this is going to be super embarrassing, but I'm going to admit it anyway because it it wasn't a thing until I was like, oh. So I, for the longest time, was like, oh, this is a bar chart. Oh, this is a bar chart. It's just laying on its side. And then people started calling this a column chart and this a bar chart, and I was like, oh. Because when I started to first see column chart, I was like, well, like, what's the difference between that and a bar chart that just stands up straight? Mhmm. And so from a from a user perspective, I was like, oh, crap. Is this something new I have to learn? Mhmm. And so, like, when we start labeling things, when we start getting too into the weeds because we know it and we know that there's a difference, I think that actually can be a bit of a disservice to our users. So because, like, who really, like is it a bar that's, you know, that's horizontal and vertical? Yeah. And I'm like, that's a super simple example. Like, I don't know, a base warm or, like, there are others where it's similar names. But just even some of that, I think, just adds to the cognitive load Yeah. To the person's processing challenge of like, okay. So they're saying that this is this, and now I have to learn about what that is. And instead, what we should really be doing is focusing on what is the objective of the data visualization. Is that objective being conveyed, and is the person getting what they need from it? And so I'm not sure that I, like, fully answered your question, but I really like plain language items. So that's kind of how I take a look at it. And, yes. And then you can weave in some of that, I call it chart literacy, but or data literacy. You can weave that into your content, enablement content, training, and that can help people feel a little more comfortable. Like, even with training when I would say, I don't know. Like, oh, this is called this. You may have also heard it as this. And so it just helps. And it's, like, you know, a little, like, drop down so it's not, like, in somebody's face. So somebody's like, well, duh. But if you're like, oh, do you need more? Do you wanna learn more? And then they can, like, look into it and, like, get the information they need in order to feel comfortable and confident in looking at the data visualization. So that's my thoughts. No. I like that. I will tell you. I I will come clean. I did not know that there was a difference between bar and column charts either, so I just learned another thing today. But I think to your point, this this does speak to something because I would I would I would argue the vast majority is particularly of business users probably don't know what it's called. They know what it looks like. They know what they want to see. You know? It's it's one of those things where it's like or, like, if you were to ask a business user make me, you know, a Sankey diagram, like, I mean, I'd have to think about that. I have to do some Googling before I could say that. And that's that's what's interesting, right, is is using that natural language. And this is a thing I feel like, especially particularly with, like, AI tools. And we talk about Tableau polls or we talk about things with, like, natural search natural language search, natural language generation, stuff like that for finding reports and stuff. This is a thing that matters. This is a thing that that people are asking about. So I think there is something to using natural language and and, b, destigmatizing that. Because sometimes when people are like, oh, actually, it's called a column chart. If it's not a column chart, it's not from the column region of France or whatever. Right? It's like it's it it It's not champagne. Yeah. Exactly. It kinda adds like a little stigma of like, oh, I'm not smart enough to understand this. So therefore, I'm not smart enough to ask a question of the data or whatever. You need to be inclusive. Sorry. Yeah. No. No. You need to be inclusive to to other people. Right? Yes. You can look like you never lose it. So there's a couple of things that I wanna share. One is I share a lot of personal experiences, not because I'm like, look how dumb I have been. Mhmm. But because those are lived experiences, and I feel like if I can share that, then maybe it helps somebody else go, okay. Yeah. So it it's not it's not just me. So that's why I share some of these things. Mhmm. There's a couple of points. One is, you know, on the lived experience thing. I was in a class on, interest rate risk management, as one is, and they provided us a graph. Now this was before my time in data, and so I was just a I was just a business, like, a bank examiner learning, like, how to interpret this data, this information so that I could ask questions and do whatever. They were like, okay. Look at it and tell us what you see. I was so overwhelmed. I did not know what they were trying to do. I think it was kind of like a scatter plot that then also had some lines. There wasn't anything really labeled or legends. I was at the table with people who knew interest rate risk. So I was there with experts, and I, like, I will never forget. Like, I know who was sitting to my right. I know I, like, I know I was in I'm pretty sure I was in Chicago in the Chicago Ormond Center. Like, I know everything about, like, that experience. And I remember thinking, oh my god. I thought that I was a reasonably smart person. I do not understand this at all. And so then I started to doubt myself more because I'm like, I shouldn't be in this class. I don't know interest rate risk. I, like, I'd, like, just give up my National Bank Certification, and, like, I just need to go back to, like, super basics and why am I here. A chart made me feel that way. Now do I have you know, was there some issues on my side? Yeah. But the point is is that charts, intentionally or unintentionally, can do that. Mhmm. And so, you know, the things like labels and legends and just some of those things can help us or help users, people, understand what's being conveyed. Because if somebody were to tell me, oh, no. This is how you read it, or this is what this you know? Just like those little things, I would have felt so much better. And, yes, I would have been like, oh, I didn't quite get that, but, like, okay. Now I can learn. Instead of feeling that dread and, of course, when you're in a class, you know, people are going to an instructor's gonna call on you. I was, like, anxious for that. I was like, please do not call on me because you will learn. You will figure out how dumb I am. Yeah. And so it was, like, just feeding that imposter syndrome. So that was something that, you know, I wanted to share because, like, how we develop what we say, all of those little things Mhmm. Can really affect a user's a a person's experience. Yeah. There's a concept in that that I I learned pretty early on in one of my marketing and PR internships for when I was working for the city of Stillwater here in Oklahoma. And my boss at the time, she had said and this is this is not an insult to your audience at all, but it's just when you're when you're writing press releases and press materials, assume the audience knows nothing. Assume the audience knows nothing and do that inverted pyramid of information, leaving with that most important information and provide that context and then go into further detail. But don't assume they know what an acronym means. Don't assume they know who this person is just by their name or, or this location or this building or this initiative is because there's a fair chance that some of them don't. So to your point, all those labels, all those additional context dialogue boxes, right, the little exclamation point to hover for more for more information, that stuff is very useful, very, very useful. Yep. I love it. Expository writing style, I think is what that's called. Yeah. I think you're right. I think you're right. More language. Alright. I I have a question, Emily, that's, I I really want to ask you. It's, kind of, hailed or be, you know. Are you a style guide or template team? I love both. I actually have this thing where, I, like, I'm a nerd, fully own it. I value efficiency because time is our most finite like, it's a finite asset. We're not gonna be able to make more of it. And so how how are we gonna use it? How can I, like, get what I need and go and do whatever? So I wholeheartedly believe that guidelines or style guides are amazing. They are great only because or if only because, depending on how it's developed, you are giving people the guardrails. And whether we'd like to admit it or not, people actually like to know what the guardrails are. Mhmm. For working. Because they know, like, oh, if I go out, there might be a consequence. Or, hey. This guide was written this way, but applying some critical thinking, I know that this is my example. So I know, like, it's that bend versus break. Part Part of it's how you develop it, how you have, communicated it. But I really love those because then the developer doesn't have a bunch of questions. They know I can look at this thing. I know how what size it should be. I know the color palette. I know adding. I know all of it. Mhmm. I know where to put my filters or whatever. And so then it's just a matter of focusing on the charts and the data and providing that information for people. So that's why I love it. I love gonna be crazy that a former bank examiner says this, but I love I love documentation, but only the level of documentation that you need, not like a crazy amount. But when you don't have any, then, again, you're search you're wasting your time. Like, you're searching for stuff. You're having conversations that could really have been answered by putting together a one pager or a style guide. So, yeah, I get back to if I have to figure it out as a developer and let's pretend I make, like, a ton of money. You know, like, if I you know, like, is it worth it to the company for okay. In this example, I make, like, a ton of money. Like, three hundred dollars an hour. Is it worth it to the company for them to waste three hundred, six hundred, nine hundred dollars for me to figure it out? Mhmm. Multiply that out, and you can start to see. And so that's why I like it. Mhmm. That's really interesting. I'll say too as working with designers, people who create brand style guides and stuff like that, that I think there's this idea that style guides and templates need to be like this very officious, I'm talking like polished sort of thing. But I have seen iterative style guides, you know, if we do a rebranding, even before we get an official thing, who doesn't want an official nice looking document? Of course. But style guides as simple as a FigJam with like, here are the brand hex codes, you know, for now, and you can do this. Or even in Slack, you know, here's a here's a pinned message with this. It's kind of this idea of start somewhere. And hopefully you get some feedback in iteration. Someone says, could you put this in a PDF? It'd be really helpful. Could you send an email communication about this? And so on. That'd be really helpful. But you never know until you get started. Right? And that's so important. It actually reminds me of something that I'm experiencing right now, which is I I'm helping, a group with a style guide. And at first, I'm like, okay. Like, let's provide as many like, let's provide as much as possible on this so that people don't have to guess. Mhmm. And then as I started getting into a new tool, because the organization is going to a new platform Mhmm. I was like, oh, okay. So I think it's going to be like, we need vertical padding of twenty Mhmm. Pixels, but I don't know. Like, in some cases, it looks like fifteen has been fine or twenty five has been fine. And so do I really want to say in the style guide, you should have a twenty five pixel padding? Well, I don't know that to be true. So could we as we are moving to this new system, could we test out the style guide like you're saying, Garrett? Yeah. And then have people provide feedback, get some, seasoning with the new tools so that you can go, oh, yeah. This consistent let's see. This consistently looks like twenty pixels or thirty or whatever. And then then you can iterate on the style guide and go, okay. So now we're getting a little more formal. And that, to me, makes sense. Yeah. I love that. I'll say, chat, we're I can't believe it already. We're seven minutes out on the hour, which is great. Time flies when you're having fun. But if you do have any questions, chat, please feel free to ask them. We will just continue talking otherwise until until the end of the hour. But I just wanna make a quick reminder too for people that this this is being recorded and this will be emailed out, within a day or two likely. So if for whatever reason you wanna watch back, you wanna share it with someone and, of course, it'll be posted to YouTube. But feel free to get your questions in while you can. I'm just gonna keep talking. So Maybe is there anything else that you want to add? Yeah. Oh, we have one hour. I know. We only have seven minutes. So, I'm trying to think about, oh, yes. Okay. So I would like to talk about adoption, a little bit about value. I wanna really touch on those for, like, a couple of minutes. Yeah. And then if somebody has questions, like, we'll just, like, park whatever I'm saying, and I'll answer those. Okay. Okay. So for adoption, you know, like, let's say you're, implementing a new training program and you want people to enroll in it because it costs some money either in FTE time you know, your, resource time or, like, actual money. And so how can you do that? As we've learned, I love marketing. And so one of the things that, I try to do is put together a launch, like, super simple. I'm not talking about something really crazy, but put together, like, a launch, a launch list of, like, okay. Here are the activities I wanna do. I wanna hype it up because, like, if you're not excited about your product, nobody else will be either. Yes. And so what are the things I can do to get people excited? Part of this depends on your organization. I I know I'm flying, but, and I'm happy to have conversations after to dig in more. Mhmm. But part of it is, like, okay. What can you reward them with? Mhmm. Like, is it badging? Is it, like, a box or whatever? Yeah. Like, what can you do to help get people into your, into your program? And then webinars are amazing for several reasons. One, you get to show them what the experience can be like. One of the things I absolutely love, and I took this away from experience that I was in, was this concept of, the fear of missing out, actually. Mhmm. And so I'd be on a webinar because you are selling something even if it's not costing the person something because they're caught it's their time that they're taking to do this program or to read the whatever. So for the training, what we did was at the end, we would say, okay. So because you attended this webinar, you get early access to the program. You can sign up now. Here's the link. When you have signed up, when you've enrolled in the program, I want you to drop your name in the chat because I wanna celebrate you that you have made this commitment to improving your skills. And so Sally might say it, and you're like, congratulations, Sally. Oh my god. I hope you love it. You can call us anytime with questions. Oh, look. Ojo did Ojo, you're gonna love it. Okay. And then you keep saying the names, and then it becomes this, like, oh, well, everybody else is doing this. I should probably sign up. And then you follow it up with, emails, like, the whole thing. So I love that because it creates excitement. It creates this, like, well, I don't wanna be the only one who doesn't improve their skill. So there's that. The other thing before I get to value real quick is, your cons your product, whether it's a data visualization, newsletter, training program, whatever, it is the plane. Mhmm. Okay? It's the plane from that pain to pleasure island. Mhmm. You are actually giving people a transformation, and people may not be receptive to hearing that, like, woo woo type of thing. Mhmm. But that's what you're doing. You are taking people from I don't know where to start and confused. You're taking them from confused without clarity, and your thing is providing them confidence. Your thing is providing them to, you know, do whatever they need to do. And so when you recognize that and recognize that you're helping this you're transforming people at their job you know, work at their jobs, that's really powerful. And so it's never about the plane. Like, who cares if we're in a seven eighty seven or a seven seventy seven? We wanna know we wanna go from here to here. Yeah. Communicating that, we're really effective because people go, I feel seen because, yeah, I feel confused. Oh, now I don't feel confused. Amazing. That's so important. And then value, we talked a little bit about it. I have this methodology that I kinda tweaked from marketing. I call it farm. It's frequency, audience, recency, and monetary. Mhmm. And so for dashboards, or for you can adapt this to really whatever. But are you, like, how frequently are people using your product? And you can base it on as expected. You know? Like, what was the expectation? How frequently are they doing that? Audience. Who is the audience for it? How they're like getting to know that audience and, making sure that, yeah, it's up when it needs to be up for that audience. Recency. How recent have they been in the dashboard? Mhmm. Every tool has these, metrics, at least from the admin side. So it's just a conversation around, hey. Can you, like, share this out to me? If they haven't been in there for a hundred eighty days and the expectation or the general flop was that they were gonna be in there every month Mhmm. You got something to follow-up on. And then from a monetary perspective, you can, do some you know, there there's, like, a little more. That's a little harder to do. Yeah. But you can do it, or at least get a proxy. But even if your dashboard comes back and it's like, oh, there's very little value here. It's not the end of the world. Mhmm. You can have a glow up by having conversations with your customers. That's an opportunity for your dashboard or for you, if the dashboard needs to be sunset, you can say, hey. I identified this. Where can I be put to be put on higher priority work? That shows that you are a self leader. That is always valued. And then wait. I think I got everything. Okay. That was fantastic. I love it. Well done. So if you if you had if if both of you have a minute, we'll answer this we'll answer this final question because I think it is it is kind of a good cap and and maybe we can broaden it as well. But do you have any suggestions for good resources on plain language, especially around data and data visualization? So is there anything out there that's kind of like that you've seen, whether it's on LinkedIn, a person, a blog, anything where you're like, they're speaking my language, literally. I believe WebAIM has something webaim dot org. Mhmm. I believe they have something on plain language because I was looking it up the other day. I I think about, one, knowing your audience. What's plain language to them? What does that mean? But then, also, I think there are little things we can do. Like, we don't have to be fancy all the time. Yeah. I love being fancy, but we don't have to utilize things. We can use things. And so you can catch yourself doing some of that when you think when you talk about, concepts. Like, I said cognitive load. I'm like, because I know what that is. But, like, then I reframed it as, oh, your brain's processing power. So I would start with WebAIM. I will look it up though because, I wanna see, like, what else is out there because it is a super important point. Yeah. I'm I'm curious as well. So I will share this last slide just so people know again. I'm curious. Is there is there a best way, Emily, for people to get in, you know, if they're looking to follow you or anything like that? Is LinkedIn that place? Do you have a blog? Anything you want people to know about just to kinda stay up to date? Yeah. So I first of all, I love connecting with people. I love having these conversations if you can't tell. I just love it. Like, I geek out. LinkedIn is the best place to reach me, to just message me there. I do have a website, emily coon dot com, where I try to blog occasionally. Right now, I'm actually moving up the pipeline. So I'm working starting my journey and sharing my journey about SQL and Python, and actually putting my my SQL learnings into a way that makes sense to that everyday analyst. Mhmm. Speaking of everyday analysts, I started a newsletter on LinkedIn because I just feel strongly. I started it, I guess, last year maybe. I feel so strongly about that everyday person who's not the data person, who's not whatever, and helping them because they just are trying to do their job. Right. And so you can always subscribe to that. I put out a newsletter. I'm gonna aim for monthly, just so that I don't, like, overwhelm myself. Yeah. But yeah. And there's I think you can see, like, former, or past issues. I try to talk about everything from, like, if I were a COE of one, I have some accessibility stuff. This last one was on KISS people, keep it simple, sweetie. Mhmm. And, and that users are actually people. And so, anyway, I I just try to help people, the everyday person. So I love that. Well, it's very apparent. And I mean, I really do appreciate you coming on and sharing your wisdom with with Annabelle and I because I mean, it's it's immense. I mean, I I it's funny because I had known your name in the Tableau community for years and years and years and years. And so it's very, it's very cool to like, get the chance to actually talk to you and do that and see that come to fruition because I mean, yeah, what you put out there is very valuable and very useful and you should be proud of it. So thanks for thanks for what you do. Thanks. And I would encourage anybody to, like, do that type of thing. Mhmm. Because, like, I will never forget. I know we're, like, over time, but it you know, and for the replay folks or people that are coming on Exactly. Yeah. I remember that I I wrote something and then, like, repeated it at a conference maybe where I said, you know, dashboards are like accessories. And Coco Chanel once said, before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one accessory off. And you can do the same thing with the dashboard. Mhmm. Like, look at it and see what you can take off. And somebody said to me, I have never I have never seen that seen it talked about that way before, but I love it because I love accessories. And so my point being is that you can be infuse yourself into your writing, into your style because Yeah. You never know, like, how people will feel seen and heard because of how you communicate. And so, like, even if, like, I'm starting my journey with pyramid analytics, and so, like, I'm when I yeah. I need to be cloned so I have enough time to write this, but writing my learning so that people can understand, like, oh, I've come from this background, and here's what I had struggles with or here's what I love, and just to help people. Like, we all can connect with others in how we communicate. Absolutely. That's fantastic advice for sure. Thank you all for having me. Like, I love this so much. I know we need like parts two, three, four, five, and six. I mean we're gonna have a whole universe. You will be invited in some Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, cool. Well, that that's a wrap. Thank you so much to both of you for joining. And again, people, you can catch this. We'll be emailing this out and it'll be live on YouTube probably within the next week, next few days sort of thing. So, stay tuned for that. And But that'll say good day and good evening to Annabelle. Thank you. Thank you so much. Bye everybody. Bye.