Hi All,
For our 33rd London Alteryx User Group we were welcomed by the Alteryx team at their lovely new offices in Aldgate. @paul_houghton kicked the night off with some of the latest insights from the Alteryx Community followed by some fantastic presentations by our speakers.
Our first speaker of the night was @OllieClarke, Consultant Support at The Information Lab.
Before joining The Information Lab, Ollie was a musician but quickly found his love for data and enrolled for The Data School. It was here where Ollie was first introduced to Alteryx and has since advanced his career to becoming an Alteryx Ace. As Ollie still works at TIL, he is frequently asked by the latest students for advice and guidance. The most common questions (and Ollie's responses) are as follows:
-
Why did you get good?
-
Job Requirement
- Enjoyable
- Gamification of Weekly Challenges
- The Tool Itself
-
How did you get good?
- Weekly Challenges
- Client Work
- Personal Projects
- CoE/Community
- Collabortation
-
What helped?
- Collaboration
- Colleagues
- Community
- Competition
- Conference
It was clear from Ollie’s answers that he utilised the materials that are freely available on the Alteryx community, in particular, the weekly challenges and the learning materials. Ollie is also a big fan of collaboration whether that be with his colleagues at work or the wider Alteryx Community via conferences and user groups.
Our second speaker of the night was @Joe_Lipski, a UK Practice Lead at Aimpoint Digital.
Joe has been using Alteryx since his very first internship with the Javelin Group in 2011 and is still actively using it in his latest role at Aimpoint. Joe attended one of the very first Alteryx conferences back in 2014 where he was awarded his Alteryx Ace status for the very first time, a title that he still retains to this day. Joe has shown his support to not only the wider Alteryx community, by helping others and speaking at various conferences and events, but he has also been a massive support to our local London community by co-hosting the London Alteryx User Groups. After many years of organising speakers, hosting locations and pizza, Joe has made the decision to step down as a London User Group Leader. To celebrate Joe’s dedication to the role, we asked him to take us though his Alteryx life and how it has evolved his career. Joe has spoken at multiple events over the years covering a wide range of topics but he ended his talk with 5 key points on what has helped him get to where he is today:
-
Be Passionate
-
Be Proactive
-
Start Communities
-
Help Others Level Up
-
Know and Promote Your Value
@paul_houghton was back on stage as our last speaker of the night where he shared some very helpful tips and tricks about optimising a workflow. Paul showed the User Group a workflow which initially took 18 minutes to run (luckily he ran it well before his presentation started!). By following a 5 step thought process he was able to dramatically reduce the time of the workflow down to around a minute:
-
Where are the bottlenecks?
-
Evaluate your data sources
-
When are you filtering?
-
Check your output use
-
Optimise Spatial and Predictive processes
He then shared some key actions that a user could do to help optimise the workflow:
-
Workflow Profiler
-
Remove Unnecessary Fields
-
Limit Amount of Data
-
Eliminate Browse Tools
-
Optimise Record Size
If you're after some more hints and tips then you're in luck. Paul has recently released a book which is available to buy on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Data-Engineering-Alteryx-engineers-practices/dp/1803236485
What’s next for the London User Group?
We are excited to announce that our next user group will take place on 13th June 2024. The location has still to be confirmed but watch this space!
📢 If you would like to become a co-leader of the London Alteryx User Group leadership team, contact usergroups@alteryx.com.
