 Live from Seattle, Washington, it's The Cube at Tableau Conference 2014. Brought to you by headline sponsor, Tableau. Here are your hosts, John Furrier and Jeff Kelly. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Seattle, Washington for the Tableau User Conference and Technology Show. In the date of 14, this is The Cube, our flagship program. We go out to the events and they strike the silver of the noise. I'm John Furrier, my call is Jeff Kelly, big data analyst with wikibon.org. Our next guest is India Sware and Jen, Director of Evaluation and Insights at the United Way, welcome to The Cube. Thank you. So, United Way, big organization, maybe not the most agile, like these big corporations are, but data is a big part of it, obviously, to do it. So share with us some of the innovations because how are you guys using the data? Well, we are using the data in so many different ways. To start with, we as a nonprofit have so much data to leverage from so many different data sources. And traditionally, nonprofits don't leverage the data the way some of these bigger companies are. And I think this has been a really great journey for us and a really great opportunity for us to find new ways to be innovative, to be strategic, and to be very data-driven. I mean, the data already exists. It's about really looking at it and doing analysis and doing insights from it. So describe your title, I love your title, Director of Evaluation and Insight. Inside I get, we're going to get to that in a second, but evaluation, is that like data prep? Like auditing and figuring out where the data is? It's... Someone calls you up saying, I need an evaluation, I mean, what does that mean? It's a really tough one. I almost hate to say it sometimes because it means different things in different fields. But evaluation, so director of evaluation is program evaluation, actually, which is similar to applied social research. And so it's basically evaluating a strategy, a program, a movement, whatever it is you're trying to see, whether or not it's working, what the outcomes are, what's happening. So I do a lot of that evaluation in an informal sense, I guess, at United Way. And the insight piece comes from just being able to take data and provide insights to different departments, to different people, and help them really just understand what's happening, just basically with the word. So effectiveness of programs, essentially. Is it working, is it not working? What can we do to make it better? Exactly, what can we do to make it better? So talk about a situation where you've blew it out of the park, knocked it out of the park with data, where it was kind of unexpected, where you guys are plotting along, doing your thing, doing your programs, doing your evaluation, and then you got this massive insight and you injected it into the organization. Can you provide any kind of aha moments? Every time I show data, people are blown out of the park. What do you mean? What's the most amazing thing? I'll probably draw upon recent experience. So we recently did an opinion poll and it was not just the fact that we did the opinion poll and we collected all this very valuable, useful data, but it was the way that the data was presented to folks. So now it was able to, right in front of their face, in front of our staff, in front of our leadership team, to go through these interactive tabs in Tableau and have the data actually move before their eyes. So as I'm communicating the metrics, I'm not just communicating data, I'm communicating a story. And so I can actually kind of like walk them through some of the insights in a way that really engage people. It goes away from the traditional sense of just giving people metrics and saying, these people like this more than this and these people do this more than that. But it's really just storytelling and saying, here's what I found through the data. Let me walk you through my insights as though you are coming from the same background and I want you to be able to see what I see and tell that story. I just tweeted that out, that was an epic comment. Not just communicating the data, but communicating the story. Oh, wonderful. In a clean way, so people go, oh, I get it now. Yes, exactly. So I wonder if we can kind of just step back for just a second. So can you talk a little bit about, I mean, I think everyone's probably heard of United Way and has a general idea of what United Way is all about. But maybe just lay out for us kind of United Way's mission and then maybe we can talk about specifically how data helps you achieve that mission. Okay, well, I will start with, it's not the airline company, which I've gotten a couple times. United Way is a nonprofit. We're actually one of the, we're a part of the largest nonprofit network in the world. Each United Way operates slightly different, but they all have a similar mission of fighting poverty in their community, in their region or their area. For United Way, the Bay Area, we focus primarily on San Francisco Bay Area, and our mission is to cut poverty in half in the Bay Area in 2020. So it's a really big bold goal. It's a ambitious agenda. Very, very mission-driven agenda. And we can't do, we know, in order to do something like that, we have to collaborate with other partners, community partners, people in the organizations, different types of systems, affect policy and get people to advocate for things. So it's a whole roundabout way of addressing an issue versus just having one singular program and trying to accomplish that goal. So yeah, so let's dig into, so what are some of your activities? Sounds like probably kind of impacting policy at probably the state or city level. What are some of the other things you're doing actually on the ground to help achieve your mission? So on the ground, so we have five core programs at United Way and one is called our SparkPoint Centers, which helps families build their income, whether through giving them a job or helping them start up their own business or budget their money. Just a whole consortium of activities and that involves bringing agencies together to provide services in one central location. We have our match fridge jobs program that gets youth connected to jobs and hopefully extends those jobs beyond just the summer and it does job training for them as well. We have our two-in-one call center, so if you're familiar with four-in-one, right? The two-in-one is just the same thing, but for social services, so anyone can call from anywhere and get connected to services immediately. Like if you need a place to stay and you don't know where to go, you can call two-in-one. And then we have our community schools program, which is putting services at these lower income or traditionally disadvantaged schools. So we're trying to affect with these core programs in the areas of income, basic needs, and education. And so we feel like those are the pillars to kind of pulling people out of poverty and those are on the ground programs, but we're working, most of this is really just bringing people together, bringing organizations together, bringing those systems together to provide services. So it's a long-winded answer. No, that's great. So I guess my next question would be, so when we're talking about data, where are, you mentioned kind of some surveys, but what kind of data sources are we talking about? What's the data that's kind of in your environment and then maybe we can get to how you're using it? Yeah, so the different data sources we have are financial data, like most companies and organizations. Where is the funding coming from? How are people giving to us? Has that changed? And we have engagement data, which is not new, but it's fairly new in the way that we're looking at it and collecting it. We're being, now we have the capabilities to track who's engaging with us in different ways, whether it's through volunteering with us, advocating or doing policy work, who's at a partner company or organization and working with us through that. And then also our clients and people that are coming through to these different program areas. And also people that are part of this big rise together collective impact movement, which is the whole cut poverty and a half by 2020 movement. So we have a variety of different people and we have data and information on how they're being engaged and who we can leverage and who's connected to who and what networks we have. But then there's also the program data. So each of these core programs, there's a wealth of information that they're all collecting. The two in one database is just a dream of information. I mean, you have all this thousands of records from all across the Bay Area. People are calling at different times, different demographics, asking about different services. So you can really target where these needs are at in these different areas, very specific down to the zip code and see, you know, there's a lot of people calling here for, you know, they need basic housing in this area or they need affordable housing or they're calling for, I don't know, tax services. So if we can leverage that data and kind of make it open and get that out to the public, we can really help bring in more resources, advocate for more, you know, money to be put towards those things and really just understand what's happening in the community. So I think that was program data, financial data, engagement information in the community survey thing that I talked about. And so you're using, I imagine some underlying infrastructure but also Tableau kind of at the top of the stack to visualize that data, find some of those insights you were just talking about and then share them with either internal stakeholders or policymakers and others. Yes, absolutely. Very cool. Definitely really exciting. So talk about the show. What do you think about the show this week? I mean, obviously it's great, great company, great culture. Talk about some of the highlights for you here. What's been cool here for the folks that aren't attending? The Tableau conference. So my highlight, and it's only because I'm still beaming from it is to be able to, I was able to meet Neil deGrasse Tyson this morning and have breakfast and do a selfie. But it was really more importantly, it was really important to hear his take on how data is increasing and growing and even in his field, or not even in his field. I just never thought about it in that way. And so he gave like a different perspective on how the wealth of information is growing and just how we can begin to use it and not to mention he's a very pleasant person to interact with. Was he okay with the selfie? Yes, he was all for it. Did you post it on Twitter? Did you put it out there? I posted it in every social media avenue I could find, even in ourselves first. How about the product? Any from Tableau? What are you getting jazzed about or is it just business as usual here? I'm getting jazzed about being able to kind of take my skills to a whole other level. I don't come from a data analytics background necessarily and in this sense I come from a statistics background. I'm used to using R and SPSS and Excel to do advanced statistics. And so it's really cool to see how other people are leveraging this tool to like do coding and create visuals and things like that. So this is still a new field for me and it's just really exciting to kind of see how other people are on a whole other level and to kind of soak in all this stuff. So the community is solid here. I mean, you feel good about kind of hanging out with people who are maybe pacing ahead of you and maybe people that you're helping. Absolutely. It's pretty, a lot of camaraderie. Yes, I did not get here and feel like it was just a networking opportunity or just smoozing with people. I really have felt like I've learned so much from folks, which is good. The smoozing is the sharing the data and the knowledge. That is smoozing. Exactly. You kind of hang out birds of a feather, whatever that expression is. Yes, yes. You hang out together. So I mean, everyone's smiling. I'm impressed by the, just the spring in the step. The guy, yeah. The vibe's good. People are smiling. It's, Jeff and I were talking about it's like the Tableau Kool-Aid injection. Yeah. People are growing. It's a great field. It's moving really, really fast. Yeah. Great career opportunities, societal benefits. I mean, it's just, it's really kind of intoxicating at many levels. Yeah. So share with the folks out there who are looking at Tableau saying, man, I want to get out of my current job or, or, hey, I really want to change the world. I really want to do something meaningful and hang out with all those cool kids at the Tableau conference and play with that software. What's your advice to them to get started? Well, get a register for the next year. This is step number one. But just really start playing in it. For me, when I was first introduced to Tableau, I didn't have anyone to give me a training or orientation. My then boss said, here's Tableau. You used it, right? And I'm like, and I just started the job. So I was like, uh-huh. So I had to. I am now. Yes. So I lied, kind of. But I ended up picking it up really, really quickly. It's super, it was super easy for me to use. It's super intuitive. And to the point where now I'm teaching others at an organization, I have like a little Tableau data users group and I'm training other people to use it in the same way. So it's super easy. Just pick it up, start playing with it and download it. And are you located in the Bay Area, you said? Yes, I'm located in the Bay Area. Okay, great. And how big is the user group in the Bay Area? The San Francisco users group. Is it pretty large? It's pretty big. I don't know like half the people. But it's massive. It's pretty big, yes, very big. Really good group too. If you could summarize the show, kind of in a bumper sticker, what would it be? This show. Oh gosh, that's a hard one. I don't even know. That's the trick question. I'm good with like really cool things to say. It's like a, I don't know, a data geeks dream? I don't know. Yeah, that's a great bumper sticker. Yeah. That's the hashtag, data geek dream. Yes. We're going to put, that's trending on Twitter. We'll get that trending. Exactly. Congratulations on the selfie. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. You're awesome. We love talking to folks that use the product. What I love about Tableau is when we come broadcast at their event, they actually don't want to put the Tableau people on because there's so many people who want to share their story and answer tough questions and have fun. Share their experience. And share their experiences and it's great. I feel like I work for Tableau every time I talk to people. I'm like, oh, it's so awesome. It's amazing tool to allow us to do this. So yes, absolutely. Well, you may end up working for Tableau because I've noticed a lot of customers end up coming on board and actually working for them. We had on a gentleman from Lucasfilm who's now running the mobile and strategy development. So, you never know. You might end up working for Tableau. Be careful. It speaks to the product, though. If your customers are wanting to work there, that means they believe in it. Well, we're critical of Tableau at some level. And ultimately, our criticism is, our critique, if you will, not really criticism, we think it's a great product. They've done great there is, what do they do next? They got to keep on innovating. We had Amazon just before you came on and that's another example of a great company that just does something really, really well and then adds. And they keep getting better. And they lower their prices, right? So, they're not exploiting the customer. They're helping the customer. So, I love that vibe. I love that mission because it's not about extracting rents out of people and making the profit because if you get critical mass, the profit's flowing. So, India, thank you for coming to theCUBE. Really appreciate it. Another happy user here on theCUBE, Sharon, her knowledge. We'll be right back with our next guest live from Seattle. I'm John Furrier with Jeff Kelly. We'll be right back after this short break.