Eva Murray talks #MakeoverMonday & Data Visualisation ahead of Tableau Workshop in Dublin
Ahead of her upcoming visit to Dublin, Eva Murray chats to the Information Lab Ireland about Tableau, #MakeoverMonday and her remarkable professional journey.
Hi Eva, nice to talk to you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I’m 32 and from a beautiful little town called Bamberg in the north…ish part of Bavaria, the best state in Germany.
I left Germany after high school to learn English and to see something new and ended up spending eight years in New Zealand. I lived in Wellington and while I was there, I studied Psychology, HR, Accounting and Commercial Law.
Woah! Hold on there. That’s quite a few subjects to be studying.
Ha, yes. Well, I did Psychology because I desperately wanted a science degree without doing too much Science. Accounting and Commercial Law I hated and I still do but it was the time of the Financial Crisis so I thought ‘well at least some one will give me a job’. And HR was something that I thought I was interested in but it turned out to be rather boring.
That’s great. Where did you go from there?
So I followed all that up with a very intense two years at Deloitte as a consultant in their Information Management Practice. That’s where I got introduced to Qlik. And then in the search for new adventures, sunshine and money we moved to Sydney, Australia.
I’m going to take a guess here and say this is where you came across Tableau for the first time.
Correct. I started working as a Business Analyst at Commonwealth Bank which is one of the largest users of Tableau in AsiaPac. That’s where my Tableau journey started. It was August 2013 with Version 7.
After just under two years there, I joined Tridant, and I became the Tableau person in the team.I went to the Vegas conference and met lots of your lovely colleagues and then others from Exasol who offered me a job and because I really wanted to move back to Germany I took the job and so here I am.
That’s quite a journey.
Yes, it has been quite a journey for sure.
You are very heavily involved in the wider Tableau community. Why do you do it?
At the beginning it was quite difficult because I was in Australia and you’re always in the wrong time zone and because online is instant it’s hard to get involved. So it wasn’t until I went to Vegas and met the people that I followed online that I got more involved. What I really love about it is that you put yourself out there and people tend to lap it up and they learn something from it and improve their skills.
#MakeoverMonday was handed to me on a silver platter so I can’t take the credit for that but that made it possible for me to reach so many more people and to realise that I’m not the greatest, certainly not at the technical stuff, but there are things I can offer people and vice versa. I always wondered why would anyone want to listen to me, what do I have to share? But I realised that I do have something to share and people appreciate the feedback I have to give them.
Are you looking forward to coming to Dublin?
Yes, I have never been there and I have heard so much about it so yes, I’m really looking forward to it.
Join us on Thursday September 14th for a very special Dublin Tableau User group workshop with Eva and Andy Kriebel.
And if that wasn’t enough, we have a great evening lined up. The Road to Sam, promises to be an entertaining preview of The All-Ireland final with All-Ireland winning Donegal footballer Eamon McGee and our very own Rob Carroll.
