Alter.Nation
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Today’s ACE spotlight is @Treyson! Keep reading to learn more about Treyson and what makes him a unique Alteryx super user.
Tell us a bit about your professional background.
I started at a company out of college doing some operational work. I found that my bosses were spending the last hour or so of their day copying and pasting data into cells for these end-of-day reports. I offered to take over that task and started using VBA and automating these reports so now they took around 3 minutes instead of an hour. It blew everyone’s mind and led to the opportunity to get Tableau and do more reporting because they saw that I understood how data works.
I enjoyed building reports, but I started discovering issues at the data modeling level. I wanted to understand how we could improve the model. I ended up learning SQL and I continued to automate reporting at several trucking companies.
I went to a Tableau user group, and while I was there, someone was demoing Alteryx. We were having a major data problem at my company, and the Alteryx sales rep thought we could solve it with Alteryx (the company had already spent a lot of money trying to solve this with data warehousing). Within about 2 months, we had created a fix for this operational reporting problem in Alteryx. After that, everyone’s eyes were opened and they started asking what else could be done with analytics and this tool called Alteryx.
After the company I was at went through a major acquisition, I left and got into Alteryx Consulting. I have been working in the data/analytics engineering space for about 10 years now, using Alteryx to streamline reporting and data science functions within my client organizations.
The DCG Team
What is your favorite Alteryx tool, and why?
Dynamic Input. When I was starting in the Alteryx world, some of the functionality here was a game changer for the way I developed workflows. I have since moved on to developing my own macros that offer a little more flexibility with the same functions but it’s the gateway tool I use when training people in dynamic workflow building. I made it my LinkedIn URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dynamicinput/
What has been your favorite Alteryx project? Can you tell us about the business problem you solved?
I have a white paper here for my favorite recent use case. We used Snowflake, Alteryx, and Power BI to deliver predictive analytics for a food producer to save $10 million in food waste during the first year.
What advice do you have for new community members?
I always say that the most valuable asset for Alteryx is Alteryx Designer, and the second is their Community. I do a lot of "Alteryx 101" sessions, and I usually spend about 1/3 of the time talking about all the resources available in the Community. Get registered, do weekly challenges, follow the learning paths, ask questions, answer questions, get involved with your user group, and grow.
What is your favorite way to engage as an ACE? Also, what area of the online community do you spend the most time in?
I have been fairly inconsistent over the years with the online community. I most recently created YouTube videos but had to step away when work got really busy. I am mostly engaged with the Oklahoma City and Tulsa User groups, which I helped start over the last 18 months.
What discussion topic(s) could Community members tag you in for help?
My favorite Alteryx topic is integration. Alteryx+Snowflake, Alteryx+Databricks, Alteryx+GCP. Whatever the need is there, I would love to help out. The community does a really good job with individual workflow builds and how to use tools, so I let that take care of itself.
What is one fun thing about you that community members might not know?
I am in the first year of starting my business and have a 6 and 4-year-old. I have no time to have any fun facts about me. But I have recently found a community of dads that play late-night pickleball, so I am starting to do that. I also enjoy talking to the ACE community, I have been a part of that for 8 years and feel like the “old man” in the group so I just post a lot of dad jokes and try to help keep people laughing. I also listen to a lot of death metal, so on a rare occasion I get to go to those shows.
