The TC25 Step Tracker is Live! Time to Track and Submit your Steps!
Welcome to the fourth annual Tableau Conference Step Tracker!
Starting in 2022, I’ve facilitated a data project during Tableau Conference — collecting number of steps taken by attendees. I do some light data prep, then share the results with the community for folks to visualize their conference experience.
This year the project returns bigger and better than ever with new fields based on your feedback. I’ve also got a new and improved tracker viz to monitor progress against the this year’s goal as the results roll in.
What‘s new this year?
This year, I’ve split up the form from one long page into three short sections — step/distance, demographics, and feedback.
By popular demand, I’ve added a distance field — in addition to steps, you can now add your equivalent distance in miles or kilometers. My hope is this spurs some new data viz options, and makes the project more accessible to those using wheelchairs or other mobility devices.
I’ve also added fields for home country, a simplified socials field, a dropdown for device tracker type, and checkboxes for which days were your travel days to/from conference.
Finally, I’ve added a field asking how you heard about the project — this will help me determine the best areas to focus publicity efforts next year!
Enough small talk, here’s the form:
TC25 Step Tracker Form: https://forms.gle/4VCqGW7VDhcPtJMU6
It is ready to accept data, tracking steps from Sunday, April 13 through Friday, April 18. The survey will stay open for roughtly two weeks post-conference. My goal is 200 participants, with a stretch goal of 250 so please share with your friends and colleagues!
FAQ:
Can I participate if I’m not attending in person?
Absolutely! No matter if you’re in San Diego or tuning in from around the world, I’d love your participation — this project doesn’t run without your data. Last year we had 3 virtual participants, I’m hoping for at least 10 this year.
Do I have to fill out all the non-step data questions?
Demographic questions are all optional — share as much or as little about yourself as you like.
Do I need to use a dedicated fitness tracker?
Device type does not matter — many folks use the built in step tracking in their phone. However you track your steps, your steps count.
Can I leave my name out?
Absolutely — I include an option to keep your data anonymous.
When I prep the dataset for publication, your name will be replaced with a generic user ID, and if you filled out any information about your social handles, that information will not be shared either.
What happens to the data?
During the survey period, responses are logged in a google sheet that only I have access to. The number of users and running total of steps feed into a Tableau Public dashboard to track towards the participation goal.
After the survey period, data is prepped and uploaded to data.world, where users may download the csv to use in their own data projects.
While email addresses are collected to avoid spam, they are deleted as part of the data prep process, and I do not save them for any lists or marketing.
What does last year’s data look like?
Great question — you can learnabout last year’s data at the below post:
Inspiration
What can you do with this data? Here are a few vizzes from previous years:
Data24 Step Count by Michelle Frayman:
#Data23 Step Tracker by Christian Felix:
Acknowledgements
A big thank you to all who have supported this project for the last three years-and a special shoutout to the fine folks in the Women in Dataviz slack for their feedback on this year’s survey design and logo.
That’s all for now, thanks for reading and sharing, and I look forward to seeing you in San Diego!
