Welcome to my Data Visualization blog. I have been blogging about data visualization for over 12 years now. I owe any success I have with this blog to the people who consistently follow and visit it. They help me by offering their opinions and feedback. Thank you for taking a look and supporting my blog.

I primarily have been focusing on several topic areas:

• How can we improve the way we gather requirements from our business partners?
• Data Visualization 
• Infographics
• DataViz tools like Tableau, Sigma, and Power BI
• Business Intelligence
• Python, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Generative AI (ChatGPT)
• Analytics Centers of Excellence (CoE) or Communities of Practice (CoP)
• Data Ethics
• Historical Aspects of Data Visualization (e.g., John Snow’s Cholera Map)
• Storytelling
• Data Prep
• Interviews with interesting people in the Data & Analytics profession
• Datavizzes related to social issues as well as social good
• Cartography (I love maps!)
• Photography
• Architecture
• …and the list could keep going

Right now, my main work-related areas of interest are related to Telematics, specifically Connected Auto data. I am also very interested in tools and techniques to improve the sometimes difficult task of prepping data. I am also very interested in providing the right visual toolsets for our business partners to work independently with our data to do self-service reporting.

I currently use Tableau, Snowflake, Dremio, Python, SQL, Alation, and Bigeye in my work environment.

I have an exciting, challenging job that excites me every day. I feel very lucky to be able to do what I love daily. My leaders show a lot of grace in their support of my work.

On a personal note, I decided when I originally started my blog to not allow sponsorship of my site, so please don’t offer or ask. This allows me to eliminate some level of bias in my review of products and presentations. I want to try to be as objective as I can about my views and opinions on all topics; in particular, those topics related to Data and Analytics (D&A). You will not see me beating up on the various Data & Analytics platform vendors or any of their executive leadership (well, maybe some scolding).

The mantra that I preach to everyone (or anyone who will listen) is to get our business partners excited about their data. Now the way to do that could come in many different forms: understanding what the business wants and not assuming IT knows best, being partners and collaborating with our business partners versus having a Us vs. Them mentality, great data visualization, self-service BI, data ethics, data anywhere (e.g., multiple distribution formats), how to properly organize data that is easy to access, asking the right questions, making mistakes AND learning from it, and providing actionable insights.

If you want to contact me directly, please drop me an e-mail at tableau@cox.net.  I can also be found on LinkedIn.

Thanks for visiting and I hope you visit often.

Best regards,

Michael (“Mike”)
Last Updated: May 18, 2025

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