Inspired!

[GeoffJ]

Here are a few observations about February's Inspire 2012 conference from the perspective of a new (1 month!) Alteryx associate:

The biggest takeaway for me was how much Alteryx users truly love the product. The accolades went far beyond what I would have expected about a tool you use for work. But the reason for all of this praise was clear: Alteryx saves time. One attendee sadly described working until 4am to deliver reports before adopting Alteryx. Again and again, the point was made: tasks that used to take weeks or months were completed in minutes or hours with Alteryx.

Data analysis is all about to trying to find and tell a story, and it was interesting to hear different use case stories, such as:

• One retailer used Alteryx to analyze past sales data and to identify items that tended to be purchased simultaneously. They then grouped those items together in the store to increase sales. It turns out birdseed and mouse traps are often purchased together. And it makes sense when you think about it.
• Another company looking to expand in Mexico was struggling to find accurate address information at some of the sites they were considering. They solved this by taking photos with mobile phones and then using Alteryx to map the location by pulling the latitude & longitude data that had been encoded in the photos via GPS.

I was repeatedly struck by the fact that these companies, our customers, were giving formal presentations to endorse Alteryx at our conference simply because they love using it that much.

This year’s conference unveiled the release of Alteryx 7.0, and the new R tool was a big highlight. Based on all of the interest, Dr. Dan Putler, our new R expert, will have his hands full driving future R development within Alteryx.

Unsurprisingly, the keynote speech by Gene Krantz was captivating from start to finish. One comment that struck a chord with the audience was about the important of trust – if you have the right team, you must trust them enough to let them do their job.

The Alteryx Grand Prix was spectacular; a show stage decked out with giant projection screens, checkered flags, and bleachers on three sides for the audience. Ten Alteryx power-users worked to solve a set of pre-defined problems, each hoping to win a 3-day trip to the Mario Andretti Racing School in Las Vegas. Congrats to Justin

Tischler of Intalytics for his photo-finish 1-point victory!

As the User Experience Product Manager, my role is to help make Alteryx more intuitive and fun to use. Throughout the Inspire conference, I took notes about opportunities for improvement based on things I saw and heard from our users.

In the Solution Center (where Alteryx associates are on-hand to answer questions with live demos) I had a neat chat with a customer who had a user experience request. He wanted the ability to open any tab in the ToolBox (especially “All Tools”) and type the first letter in a tool name to jump right to it. This one didn’t go in my notes however, because we showed how that exact feature had already been implemented for 7.0, much to his delight!

The conference was a great experience. I learned more about the company and the product, but most importantly I really got a strong understanding of our customers’ use of Alteryx.