Keynote
The 2012 Tableau Customer Conference keynote line-up is bigger and better than ever. Get ready to be inspired, energized and delighted when this veritable list of who’s who take the stage.
Christian Chabot
CEO and Co-founder, Tableau Software
Christian Chabot is CEO and Co-founder of Tableau Software, one of the fastest growing analytics companies in the world. Christian co-founded Tableau and has led the company to eight consecutive years of record sales and customer growth. Prior to Tableau, Christian was with Softbank Venture Capital, where he specialized in enterprise software. Before Softbank, Christian was CEO and co-founder of BeeLine Software, a pioneer of next-generation digital mapping technology. BeeLine was acquired by Vicinity Corporation (NASDAQ: VCNT). Christian started his career as a data analyst at Cornerstone Research, an economic consulting firm, where he first became a bona fide data geek. He is the author of Understanding the Euro: The Clear and Concise Guide to the Trans-European Currency (McGraw-Hill, 1998), which he wrote as a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow. He holds an MBA from Stanford University, an M.Sc from the University of Sussex, and a BS from Stanford’s School of Engineering.
And his favorite part of our annual conferences? Getting to meet customers when they’re excited to learn and primed to have fun. “Is there a better way to get to know a customer than on a party bus?"
Chris Stolte
CDO and Co-founder, Tableau Software
Chris Stolte is Tableau Software's Chief Development Officer and is responsible for product strategy, product design and engineering. Prior to co-founding Tableau and in addition to his founding another start-up, Chris spent six years researching the analysis and exploration of multidimensional databases at Stanford University. This culminated in the research which was the basis for Tableau’s first products. Chris is a co-inventor on five software patents related to information visualization. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a B.S. in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University.
Chris’s early career as a database programmer helped him see the problems with existing analytical tools. “I remember writing programs that helped people get data directly in just a few minutes, where they used to wait a few weeks. I was astounded by their responses – they were shocked at being able to get the data so quickly and grateful they could do it themselves. I’ve never forgotten that.“
Chris’s favorite part of the conference is the opportunity to meet one-on-one with customers. That, and the pride he takes in his development team on-stage giving rabble-rousing demos of their work.
Malcolm Gladwell
Author
Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine since 1996. His 1999 profile of Ron Popeil won a National Magazine Award, and in 2005 he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. He is the author of four books, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference" (2000) , "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" (2005), and "Outliers: The Story of Success" (2008), all of which were number one New York Times bestsellers. His latest book, "What the Dog Saw" (2009) is a compilation of stories published in The New Yorker.
John J. Medina
Developmental Molecular Biologist, Author
Dr. John J. Medina is a developmental molecular biologist focused on the genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders. He has spent most of his professional life as a private research consultant, working primarily in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries on research related to mental health. Medina holds joint affiliate faculty appointments at the University of Washington School of Medicine, in its Department of Bioengineering, and at Seattle Pacific University, where he is the director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research. Medina (Meh-DEE-nuh) was the founding director of the Talaris Research Institute, a Seattle-based research center originally focused on how infants encode and process information at the cognitive, cellular, and molecular levels.
Larry Gonick
Author
Larry Gonick has been creating comics that explain history, science, and other big subjects for more than forty years. He wrote his first guide, Blood from a Stone: A Cartoon Guide to Tax Reform, in 1977. He has been a calculus instructor at Harvard (where he earned his BA and MA in mathematics) and a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, and he is staff cartoonist for Muse magazine. He is perhaps best known for The Cartoon History of the Universe, a history of the world in comic book form, which he has been publishing in installments since 1977.
Steve Johnson
Author
Steven Johnson is the leading light of today’s interdisciplinary, collaborative, open-minded approach to innovation. His writings have influenced everything from cutting-edge ideas in urban planning to the battle against 21st-century terrorism. Steven was chosen by Prospect magazine as one of the Top Ten Brains of the Digital Future. He unites a deep understanding of scientific progress with a sharp sensitivity to contemporary online trends. Together, those traits give him an unmatched insight into how ideas emerge and spread and how they affect the world today.
His books, “Where Good Ideas Come From”, “The Innovator’s Cookbook”, “The Ghost Map”, and “The Invention of Air”, explain what systems and states of mind encourage creativity. Steven’s new book, “Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age”, makes the case that our world is getting better — much better — almost under our noses. Emergence lays the groundwork for Future Perfect by exploring bottom-up intelligence in everything from ant colonies to internet forums. His other books include “Everything Bad is Good For You”, which argued that the increasing complexity of modern media is training us to think in more complex ways.
A practitioner as well as a theoretician, Steven has co-created three influential sites: the pioneering online magazine FEED, the Webby-Award-winning community site, Plastic.com, and the hyperlocal media site www.outside.in, recently acquired by AOL. He is a contributing editor to Wired magazine and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and many other periodicals. He’s appeared on many high-profile television programs, including The Charlie Rose Show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Steven blogs at stevenberlinjohnson.com.
