If you’re a data enthusiast looking for the next big event, head to Seattle, WA for this year’s Tableau Conference. Kicking off this week, the five-day conference will be held at the Washington State Convention Center. We’ll have live event coverage today and tomorrow, with exclusive interviews from our roving news desk, theCUBE.

Watch LIVE coverage here, on SiliconANGLE.tv

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Attendees can expect to learn ways to leverage their investments in data analytics, discover what’s next in business intelligence, and expand their network with like-minded individuals.

So what’s new with this year’s conference?

First off, the name has changed.  In the past, the event was the Tableau Customer Conference, but it’s been updated to the Tableau Conference. Dropping “Customer” from the event name is indicative of the growth Tableau has experienced in the last year, exceeding analyst expectations last quarter and bringing in a reported 2,200 new users.

“One of the things Tableau is known for, when you go to these events, the customers are thrilled with Tableau – it’s like a revival, they love Tableau,” Wikibon Principal Research Contributor Jeff Kelly said in his Tableau Conference 2014 Preview. Over time, Kelly has asked customers why they love Tableau so much, and users have been consistent with their answers: aside from solid products, Tableau is responsive to customers’ needs and new feature requests, like support for Mac OS. But Kelly is curious as to whether Tableau can keep up that level of hands-on customer support as the company rapidly grows.

For attendees

This year is pegged as one of the largest Tableau events, featuring 220 breakout sessions, 50 hands-on training sessions, 7 engaging keynote speakers and more.

Speaking of keynote speakers, if you’re a fan of the revived television program “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey”, you’ll be delighted to know that its host Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of the featured speakers at Tableau’s event.  Other keynote speakers include data visionary Hans Rosling, author of “Brain Rules” Dr. John J. Medina, CEO and co-founder of Tableau Software Christian Chabot, CDO and co-founder of Tableau Chris Stolte, and bestselling author of “Liar’s Poker,” “Moneyball,” and “The Blind Side” Michael Lewis.

• What to Expect

What can attendees expect at this year’s conference?  According analyst Kelly, there are no major product announcements expected. Instead, the focus is likely to be the same as last year’s – all about data visualization, with an emphasis on cloud computing. Tableau has been largely banking on data visualization to support the growing market around business intelligence, able to succeed no matter which player wins the Hadoop wars for delivering Big Data solutions to the enterprise.

But as more people start to talk about automation and using analytics in-house to make intelligent decisions, ostensibly bypassing data visualization, Tableau may find itself fighting a shrinking market.

According to theCUBE host and analyst Dave Vellante, in order for Tableau to adopt more enterprise customers, it should put tools in the hands of business users – as close to the end user as possible. He also pointed out that there’s more to visualization for the business intelligence market, but the general trend has been the idea of dumbing down intelligence in order to support business decision making processes.

Read more after the video…

Join the conversation

Find out more about the conference and the company by following them on Twitter – @tableau, #data14, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and the official Tableau blog.

As mentioned above, SiliconANGLE’s premiere video production theCUBE will be extracting the signal from the noise at Tableau Conference 2014.  Check out live interviews with executives from Tableau, its customers and many others on SiliconANGLE.tv.  You can also watch interviews on-demand via our YouTube channel.

Follow theCUBE hosts, SiliconANGLE CEO and Founder John Furrier and Wikibon CEO Dave Vellante, on Twitter (@furrier and @dvellante), to get the latest buzz from the Tableau Conference, and even send your questions to interviewees.