Fiona (00:08)
Hi everyone and welcome back to unDUBBED the podcast that's unscripted, uncensored and undeniably data. I'm Fi Gordon and here with me today is my brilliant co-host, Sarah Burnett.
Sarah (00:20)
Hi, Fi
Hey listeners, we're super excited about today's episode. Before we get into the topic, while you're here, why don't you like, subscribe, leave us a review? We love seeing your messages. okay folks, we're diving into the world of data visualization with a special guest who's made waves in the Tableau community.
Fiona (00:42)
That's right. Our guest today is someone who's turned data storytelling into an art form. She was a finalist in the 2025 Iron Viz competition and has captivated audiences with her unique visualizations.
Sarah (00:57)
Kathryn is an analytics consultant at Biztory, focusing on dashboarding and community building with her current clients. She's been at Biztory for six and a half years after moving to Belgium from Scotland, and she's hoping to become a Belgium citizen soon. Please welcome Kathryn McCrindle. Kathryn, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on our show today.
Kathryn McCrindle (01:23)
Good to be here.
Fiona (01:25)
Let's get into it So Kathryn, can you give us some background on your career journey? How did you find your way into the world of data and eventually start using Tableau?
Kathryn McCrindle (01:36)
I studied maths at university because I think when you're choosing your stuff at university, you've not really thought through your life yet and it's just whatever you're sort of good at. So I was good at maths and I did maths and then afterwards I did a masters in operational research which was more like applying the maths to something else and while there I met my my now.
fiancee, we did the same master's course together. And then I went and started working at a company in Glasgow who were tool agnostic. I was learning a lot of different tools. when I started working, I was amazed that I wasn't taught anything like Tableau or Power BI at university. It was all Excel and R and yeah, I was making dashboards in Excel, which now seems completely nuts.
But that's how was at the time. So started learning different tools. Then when I learned Tableau, that's when it all clicked for me. I thought this is so easy to use. It's easy to make great looking dashboards and insightful visualizations.
My fiance is from Tunisia and he didn't get a job in the UK after studies so he ended up moving to Belgium and yeah he had an internship there so he was there and I was in Scotland and we were long distance and then when I started looking more into history I realized that they were Belgian which is something I didn't realize before so I thought this is great like my boyfriend's there and the company that I want to work for is in Belgium.
I applied, then ended up in BizTory. And at the time BizTory was very, very Tableau focused. for the first five years there, I had a huge support system with Tableau. Anytime you had a question, there were 50 people to answer it. it was great. Really built up my Tableau knowledge there.
Fiona (03:37)
It's really fascinating. I actually studied op research at university as well, although the tools I used were a little bit different. They probably weren't around by the time you got to uni. I used to use MATLAB a lot. But I really loved the way that op research really put maths into something that was practical and could solve the problems as well.
Kathryn McCrindle (03:42)
Mmm.
Sarah (04:03)
Kathryn, you were saying that you've been on the Tableau journey for five years in your current employer and you were using it a little bit before. We always like to anchor with what version did you start with Tableau if you can remember that.
Kathryn McCrindle (04:18)
I don't know actually.
It was before, they used the year point something, but I don't know. I couldn't tell you to be honest.
Fiona (04:29)
Yeah, fair
enough, fair enough. that's often how people describe it before the years or after the years.
Kathryn McCrindle (04:35)
Yeah.
Sarah (04:36)
Yeah.
Okay, so just kind of switching gears a little bit participating in Iron Viz is such a massive achievement. What motivated you to kind of come on board and even enter the feeder competition?
Kathryn McCrindle (04:53)
So it was a couple of things. was, I don't know if you know Sam Parsons, well, he's pretty famous in Tableau, but he used to be at Biztory and the two of us were trying to motivate other people in the company to apply for Iron Viz. And obviously he's already done it, so he didn't do it again. But I thought it was a bit hypocritical of me to discuss how beneficial it is to apply for Iron Viz if I've never done it myself.
Sarah (05:00)
Yes.
Kathryn McCrindle (05:22)
So that's when I thought I would do it. last year we were looking at the top 10 entries. Sam and I were going through them with people and discussing the good points and the bad points of them. it was at that point that it kind of motivated me more. It was a specific dashboard. The bookshelves one last year by Michelle,
I actually met her at TC and I was like, you're the reason that I'm here, because I saw your dashboard. that ended up in the top 10. I think a lot of the time you think about Iron Viz, this massive, complicated dashboard that you could just never ever do. Like Sam, when he did the Rivers of Time one, which was just insane.
I still don't think I could do that. But hers was really well structured and there wasn't anything there that I thought I couldn't do but it still very very well structured, brilliant use of color, lots of little things to play around with, lot of Easter eggs to kind of dive into and things you didn't notice the first time. But it wasn't
so artsy a lot of the time you see a lot of fancy fonts even or graphic design elements that you just don't know how to do and hers was very, in tableau, tableau only. And yeah, I just loved it. But that that's what motivated me in thinking I can do this.
It was good design, good analysis and good storytelling. And those are the pillars of Iron Viz. And that's what I'm doing at my clients as well. It was just that it was.
sort of achievable for me.
Fiona (07:04)
Mm.
Sarah (07:06)
Yeah, I like that. And I really like how you're using the the top 10 kind of from from last year and the feeder competition with your clients and within the business to look at what's good and what's what's not so good about each of those. that's something I definitely take away and and start using with my clients as well.
Fiona (07:07)
Yeah.
I really love how you've picked up on that Michelle's feeder entry was something that I suppose was in reach of people.
to do. It wasn't the advanced calculations that are required to do all of those beautiful curves. It was really leveraging the power of what Tableau can do from a visualization perspective, which makes it more approachable, easier to understand and really consume that information so that you get to understand what's actually happening with the data.
Kathryn McCrindle (08:03)
Yeah, it was really well laid out and also easy to interact with as well. And it was nice to go through and, you know, adjust things yourself or click and open up different things. And yeah, I just thought it was great. So that then inspired me, well, to the two things, thinking, maybe I can do this and trying to inspire the rest of the company to apply. And that's what made me apply for Iron viz, but
It wasn't ever with the intention of being on that stage.
Sarah (08:35)
what was your reaction when you first found out you're in that top three?
Kathryn McCrindle (08:41)
Well, they sent me an email, but because it was American time, it came in middle of the night for me. So when I woke up, I think I woke up, I don't know, six in the morning and then checked my phone thinking, what time is it? And then saw the email and yeah, my boyfriend was beside me sleeping and I kind of had the, do I wake him up or do I not wake him up?
I was silently screaming in the bed next to him for, it felt like hours until he finally woke up. And then he woke up and he was sort of slow. I said, I've got something to tell you, but I'm going to wait until you've woken up. He said, just tell me now. I'm like, no, no, no, this has to be, the setting has to be perfect here. So then after he was sort of woken up and he came through and then I told him.
and he lifted me up in the air and he was very supportive. it was the moment that I wanted. It was really nice.
Sarah (09:28)
you
Kathryn McCrindle (09:32)
It was a good feeling. But then afterwards, after I came back down to earth, I was then thinking, oh shit, I need to be on that stage now. So yeah, it was a bit daunting.
Sarah (09:39)
Hahaha
Fiona (09:44)
I can imagine. So walk us through the intense preparation for Iron Viz like how you approached it and what sort of inspired your final design.
Kathryn McCrindle (09:57)
So we got told in January that we had made the top three and then they gave us the data, I don't know if it was four weeks later in February. So then even that time I thought, okay, how do I use this time to my advantage here? And I started looking at lots of visualizations on Tableau and the ones that I liked and ones I didn't like and trying to work out what I liked and what I didn't like about them. I also bought a lot of books which
I now realize that books aren't how I learn. I've got like five or six books on data visualization and they're not exactly cheap, the visualization books. I just flipped through them and I've made a lot of post-it notes. Yeah, stuck a lot of things on a lot of the pages.
and then just never went back to it, to be honest. I don't know if it was wasted time, because maybe subconsciously something went in for using it later. But yeah, when we got the data, it was sort of mixed feelings, because I thought I've seen this data before, and it was from that famous dashboard. I thought,
How can I compete with what Kelly did? Because everyone loved it and everyone loved her. And how do you make it different with a data set that everyone knows well and everyone maybe has used at some point? I wasn't super happy with it to begin with. thought, what can I do differently? It's a nice data set, but...
There's not much in there. There's like the speed of the plane, the height type of species and parts of the plane. And yeah, I guess what you would expect from wildlife strikes, but there's only so many directions you can go with this. And actually, when I saw Bo's and Ryan's, it was interesting for the three of us to see what everyone else had done.
I had thought about going in those directions too. like when Ryan did the bird thing, I'm not saying that I had that whole thing mapped out but I did think maybe you can do it from the bird's perspective. Then I looked at the data and that quickly crashed down. And then Bo's Hudson thing, that's something I'd looked at as well. Maybe we do, yeah, the Hudson crash and we look at before and after, but again, I decided not to go for that. So.
It was interesting to see how they had looked at it. Design wise, I don't know, to be honest. I went through a lot of drafts. I had a lot of sheets. I had to keep opening up a new workbook because I just had like hundreds and hundreds of sheets in this workbook and I don't know where I was going with it. And I just kept making more and more and more more more, just exploring.
And my sous vizzer was really great as well. At some points I said to her, I don't think I'm good enough for this. I don't know what I'm doing. Like I did do the feeder entry, but it doesn't necessarily mean I can now do this. Like maybe that was, maybe I peaked there and now I have nothing to show for myself. And there's a lot of times she talked me down. said, you are good enough, you're fine, some of the design choices I've made in the beginning.
Sarah (13:10)
Ha ha.
Kathryn McCrindle (13:22)
she did knock down which was great because at one point so the plane I had that was like a blueprint of a plane that was initially quite a realistic looking plane or like maybe not realistic but more cartoon looking and that's when she said do you think that's a good idea I thought okay fair enough no
And at one point I had flashing lights and stuff on my dashboard. And again, she said, do you think that that's best practice? I was like, OK, no, isn't. So she was great at knocking away my bad ideas and bigging up my good ideas.
So many things I wanted to show and then you realize that you only have three minutes to present what you've done and 20 minutes to build it as well. So there were things about different species and I think deer for example, they're mostly hit in November and that's due to mating season and also they're not hit as much since 9-11 because of the security.
because they started putting fences around the airports for security measures and then the deer weren't getting in. So many things I know now about this and I really went into depth about all this and I wanted to show it all but it just wasn't possible.
Sarah (14:38)
you
Fiona (14:38)
Hahaha
That's really interesting. I just want to dig a little bit deeper into one of the points that you've made in different ways as you've been describing your journey. And I would say you had some imposter syndrome that you were β experiencing And that can be crippling in its own way as well.
Really great to hear that your sous-vizzer was helping you through it and giving you the encouragement that you need. What would you say to people who feel like their visualization skills aren't up to doing iron viz or even doing something different publicly with Tableau? How would you approach that imposter syndrome that they're experiencing and break it down for them?
Kathryn McCrindle (15:36)
Mm-hmm. I think just give it a go and not necessarily, if you're applying for Iron Viz, I think the whole, what do call it? It's not a motto, it's like a saying for Iron Viz or a motivational thing that's like, win or learn, you can't lose. that was great for me when I was applying as well because
It's a whole month of working on one dashboard, which you don't usually do that often in clients. If you said that you'd take a whole month to make a dashboard, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be happy. So I had a whole month of focusing on one dashboard and one data set as well. And you really get to know the data so well and your dashboard as well.
It's really, really rewarding. I would, even if I hadn't gotten to the top 10 or the top three, I would still take that as a really good experience.
Yeah, I think just go for it and see what you can do and as long as you're proud of what you've made then you've won.
Sarah (16:47)
Yeah, I really like that. And I like the way as well, you took on a lot of the constructive feedback really well, you could have been quite harmed by the fact that maybe your plane was a little too cartoony or the flashing lights you'd really bought into. But I think that's really important factor as well as when you've got someone who is a subject matter expert next to you, allowing them to give you feedback that can be quite crippling.
critical and giving that back to them and listening and taking that on board. Is that something that you've always done or is it something you leaned into a little bit more around taking that feedback?
Kathryn McCrindle (17:26)
I don't think it's something I've always done. I've always said that I'm open to feedback, but then it does, it always hurts a little bit, think, when you get bad feedback or more critical feedback. I don't know if it helped that she's Scottish as well, so it felt like we had some kind of connection anyway. it was always questions she would ask. Do you think, what do you think about what you've done here? What do you think about?
best practices and what do you think? And it was obviously hinted at that she felt a certain way, but no, I'm very grateful for her because some of the things I had on there before, it would have been worse hearing the bad feedback from the crowds in Ironviz. So it was nice. She created a safe space for sure to give me the feedback and also for my presentation. I owe her a lot for that.
Fiona (17:55)
You
Kathryn McCrindle (18:18)
because I think my goalpost kept moving. When I first applied for Iron Viz, I was like, I just want to motivate other people to apply and create something that I'm proud of. And then once I'd finished it, thought, it'd be really nice to be in the top 10. That's my goal now, even though it seemed like it wasn't going to happen. I thought my goal was top 10. And then I got into the top three. And then my goal at that point was, I just don't want to embarrass myself on the stage.
I thought, I don't want people saying, why is she up there? How did she manage to get there? So the goal was really low. I don't want to embarrass myself and I don't want to run off the stage. As long as I stay on that stage for the whole time, then I get the prize money. That was sort of the goal. And then, yeah, as we started doing rehearsals at the beginning, I thought, again, I just don't want to embarrass myself.
to begin with, when I was reading my script, I thought I just need to, I just need to say it. As long as I say these words for three minutes, it's fine. I've done it. It's ticked off. So I sort of had my script and I was just reading like this and going through my dashboard and not looking up a lot. And as rehearsals progressed, I then started looking up and yeah, what I thought was being more charismatic, but...
one day Morag said to me, want to come in before rehearsals and we can go over it together? So she recorded me doing my thing. And when I thought I was like so charismatic and owning the stage and so on, I was so small and so quiet and just very in myself and wasn't what I expected at all. So she said to me afterwards, how did, again, a question, how did you think that went now that you've seen the recording? I said, well, I don't sound like the most confident person, but
think it's okay, like I think I just need to get through it. And she said, well, I don't know what to say to you. I can't say to you to be more confident. That doesn't help. But maybe you can try and do it now and just act like a crazy person. Just be so big and so dramatic and then do that and I'll film you doing that. Just go wild. So then we did it again and I went wild. But my wild was quite tame.
Sarah (20:23)
You
Kathryn McCrindle (20:38)
as well so she played that back for me I thought that looks really good compared to what I was before so she was saying to me to like point at things and do hand gestures and things like that so I did it. She dramatically improved my presentation just by telling me to to go wild so yeah massive thanks to her for the help of my
dashboards and also for the presentation. I couldn't have done it without her really.
Fiona (21:09)
And so tell me now that you've got sort of extra presentation skills, have you found that that's really been helping you in your day-to-day job?
Kathryn McCrindle (21:21)
I think, yeah, even just with being scared because I think once you're on stage in front of 7,000, I think, 7,000 people, everything else is okay. I'll get through it, a lot of people have said to me, I could never have done that. But you do it. You just, if you have to do it, then you do it and get through it and...
Fiona (21:32)
you
Kathryn McCrindle (21:41)
Yeah, now everything else is tiny. So it's been great.
Sarah (21:45)
β And
I think it's not just the fact that you're in front of 7,000 people, you've got to present for three minutes, you've actually got to build a visualization end to end in 20 minutes. I think that's the bit that I would be the most scared about.
Kathryn McCrindle (22:01)
It was, it was scary. I think, because I'm a very last minute person, so we had to submit our dashboards in advance and that would be the one that we'd be making on I spent a lot of time making my dashboard, doing everything perfect.
Yeah, right up until the deadline, then I submitted it. And then I thought, Oh, I haven't actually checked if I can do this in 20 minutes or not. So afterwards I tried to do it in 20 minutes and record myself. And it was about 35 minutes, first time I did it all the way through. So that was nerve wracking. I spent a lot of time really rehearsing, really making sure that this can be done in 20 minutes.
Sarah (22:23)
Really?
Kathryn McCrindle (22:42)
in the end I finished it in 19 minutes or 19 and a half minutes. I think we all finished a little bit earlier. β But yeah, that was, I didn't think about checking that before, which could have gone horribly wrong. Luckily it was okay. But actually it was quite nice on stage having a focus and then you're focused on your laptop and you've done this a million times already and
you don't have time to be scared because you need to get this finished. you don't have any time for any other mental clutter in your brains and you can't do this. Like, how many people are here? my God, my God. It was fine. you focus on one thing for 20 minutes and then afterwards you can breathe a sigh of relief as well. I'm also glad I wasn't.
first to present Poor Ryan.
Sarah (23:33)
So Kathryn, then let's delve into your iron viz You've got it up on screen now. Can you walk me through what is your favorite element?
Kathryn McCrindle (23:41)
OK, I think my favorite one is the spotlight here, where I look at the airport, the location and the buffer zone around it. I did a lot of exploring with the data and when I was looking at different things thinking, why are there more
strikes here or why is it this specific species there? What does the airport surroundings look like? And also when I realized that most strikes occur within five miles of the airport due to the height of the plane, I started zooming in and I was just looking at Google Maps and I was looking at different airports and I was zooming in on a lot of them and I thought, actually we could do that in Tableau and we can...
dynamically just select an airport and see the surrounding area. And then, yeah, then I brought my shape in because I felt like even with a small ring around the focus area, I still wasn't really focused. I was looking outside of the ring. And so that's when I had that shape on top to really focus in and have a spotlight on the airport.
Sarah (24:54)
Yeah, it's a really great idea and visually it looks beautiful as well.
Kathryn McCrindle (24:59)
Thank you.
Sarah (25:00)
Is there anything that you would do differently now given the chance?
Kathryn McCrindle (25:06)
I don't know, to have dashboard actions to take me from one dashboard to the other. I think that's maybe what I was missing a bit in a bit of the flow of the story, something I maybe missed out on a bit. By like, you had the home screen and then you're like, okay, let's take us to the cockpit or something.
But it was a case of running out of time almost. Or when I'd made my whole dashboards and started panicking that I couldn't do it in 20 minutes, I thought I'm not going to add extra things here with actions to take me to different dashboards. And I know that Ryan, for example, his dashboard was all just one screen. And he used dynamic zone visibility to go through the different slides. And think Bo used stories.
I think maybe clicking on tabs is a bit beginner almost. So that's something I think I wish I'd done a bit differently.
Sarah (26:11)
I really love the plane there. To me, it really hones in more clearly than I think anyone else told the story of where the strikes happen. Like there's no mistaking when you have a visual that is that clear. I love that imagery being in there. And I'm interested to see what the cartoon picture was before that, because this is a great image. β
Kathryn McCrindle (26:28)
Mm-hmm.
you
Fiona (26:39)
So too, I mean, I look at the design, just starting out at the design here on the front page, I really love the balance that you've got in here. I think that the color of the orange is really striking in the bar and the lines as well. And like Sarah said, I really love the plane imagery as well. So as you were building this out,
we were like, wow, that looks, the design looks so visually appealing. And so the way that you've structured sort of the first third of the page with, you know, the setup and then having the plane coming in there and then bringing that into the visualization, I think it's got a really beautiful.
visual flow.
Kathryn McCrindle (27:28)
Thank you. took a lot of, there were a lot of iterations on this page especially. the initial idea was machinery clashing with nature and so on. So I had the birds and then the plane and it was supposed to be half and half. this is something I actually struggle with, the design aspect of things.
Sarah (27:28)
Yeah.
Kathryn McCrindle (27:46)
I did it in PowerPoint, so I'm not skilled with, yeah, I think Ryan used a lot of Figma. I'm not sure what Bo was using actually, but it's something that I'm not used to. So, yeah, it took a lot of iterations and sometimes the plane was diagonal as well. β yeah, different colors and so on.
Fiona (27:52)
Mm.
one of the pages that you haven't really showed too much on the podcast yet is the middle one in the cockpit.
And as you were building this out, it was really amazing to watch you go through this and layer upon layer and having those concentric circles come through in the different donut charts. It's so visually appealing. It's beautiful.
Kathryn McCrindle (28:38)
think it was one of the things I did that was controversial almost. I think a lot of people didn't like β the layered pies. think, yeah, I don't think they liked Bo's pies either. I don't know if Ryan did it. No, Ryan didn't do any pies, but anytime it comes to pies, people didn't seem to be happy.
Fiona (28:58)
Yeah, totally reminded me of being in the Navy or something and seeing all of the the radars coming out and I was really excited to see it. I think the color balance on here is really great as well. And to me, to me, it really came through as you were pressing play, I could see where β have things sort of decreased and you've got all of the other
Kathryn McCrindle (29:03)
Hmm.
Fiona (29:24)
pieces as well with the bar charts you know coming through and demonstrating that as you're layering it on so I personally loved it.
Sarah (29:34)
Yeah, me too. it really showed, you there's a time and a place for a pie, a donut. And I think you showcased it here. And like Fi said, it really visually appealing. The colors, really pop together as well.
Kathryn McCrindle (29:34)
Thank you.
when I first made this, well, I liked the colour here, but then I almost regret using it because when I was saying the orange shows this, blah blah blah, and then when we're doing rehearsals, Andy said something to me like, yeah, when the reds did this, I thought, no, is this, I don't know if this is orange or red, and I don't know how to describe it anymore, so I went, I think I went with orange in my talk, I can't remember, but.
It was maybe a... Yeah, it's between the two colours. Difficult to describe.
Fiona (30:24)
It's interesting, isn't it, when you're trying to get that balance of different colors coming through and as you take that step back for how people would describe it, having that third party view coming in. β One of the things that I find when we're designing color palettes for our clients is
when there's similar naming conventions we try and keep it as distinct or discrete as possible.
Kathryn McCrindle (30:55)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah (30:57)
Yeah, and I think in this example, is like whether it's orange or red, there's not another orange or red next to it. So it's, it's kind of, yeah.
Fiona (31:04)
Mmm. I got it. That's
it, that's it, totally.
Kathryn McCrindle (31:08)
Well, that's the main thing.
Yeah. And also, I spoke to people afterwards and they said they don't know what the number in the middle is. cause with the feeder entry, you have to have all the information on there because you're not there to talk through the dashboard. So it was a different experience for me not being able to coach someone through my dashboard, just as what it is and you need to know how to use it.
And this one I felt was different as well. thought it's almost like PowerPoint slides where you don't need to have everything on there because you're going to explain it. yeah, maybe I could have used tooltips, but again, there was a time limit, but that was like the, the number substantially damaged was in the middle. that was a bit of feedback I got that it's not obvious.
Sarah (31:56)
And I think you're always gonna get feedback, right? But when I look at this and think that you built this in 20 minutes, it blows my mind for sure.
Fiona (32:05)
Me too, Me too!
Kathryn McCrindle (32:05)
It's a lot of practice.
Sarah (32:07)
Because
you do it in your sleep now. Can you still do it? you think? Yeah.
Kathryn McCrindle (32:11)
yeah, thanks for sure. I
think that part of my brain is reserved for that for the rest of my life maybe. It's always going to be there.
Fiona (32:22)
So presenting Iron Viz is one thing, but competing against two other people is a totally other thing, especially in front of such a large crowd. And there's a couple of crowns that come with it. There's the overall winner who's judged by the official judges. And then there's the crowd favorite, which is people text in. We texted for you, obviously. β
Kathryn McCrindle (32:48)
Thank you.
Sarah (32:50)
You were
our standout So we were really surprised.
Kathryn McCrindle (32:52)
Well, nice to hear.
Fiona (32:55)
It was a really interesting way to be watching it. And obviously there's different things that people get when they're there in person. I don't know if everyone sees the same screens as what we see as well. But how has it been processing the outcome of Iron Viz
Kathryn McCrindle (33:13)
I think because my goal at the start was I don't want to embarrass myself, I don't want anyone thinking I shouldn't be up there, I really have been okay. mean, Bo won and Ryan got the crowd's favourite, so yeah, I didn't get anything, but I'm honestly so okay with it because...
It seems like the crowd was split. They said this is a lot of people have said this is the first Iron Viz in a while where people didn't know who to vote for, people didn't know who their favorite was and you'd be talking to the person beside you and they'd have a different opinion from you. So it has been really nice that there's a lot of people in my camp and also in Bo's camp and Ryan's camp. It's been nice for all of us to have the support individually. If there was one person β
who was really standing out and the other two weren't as good at all. It might be difficult β for the other two to process that everyone's going on about how amazing this one person was in their push to the side. But I haven't felt that at all. I felt a lot of support. A lot of people have messaged me on LinkedIn and reached out to me and said that they really liked my one and I was their favorite. So even if just one person thought I deserved to win.
I'm happy with it. And Bo and Ryan as well β couldn't have chosen two better people to compete against. were, we were so supportive of each other throughout rehearsals and backstage and so on. And yeah, even when Bo was celebrating, came backstage like, what have you got to say? You won. He's like, well, you know, also Ryan and Kathryn did a really good, really, no, no, no, no.
Don't focus on us, we'll be fine. Enjoy your moment and enjoy winning because it's amazing. yeah, I'm so happy for him that he won. I would have been happy for Ryan as well. And there wasn't any animosity or anything between us. yeah, I'm okay with it. I'm okay not winning and not winning the favorite. It's
Fiona (35:19)
Yeah.
I love that you're a great sport. But here in Australia and in New Zealand, we always love to take competition to the next level. And I do want to congratulate you because you have come first in something in comparison to the guys. You've got the most favorites of your dashboard on Tableau Public, and you've also got the most views as well. So you're obviously doing something right in the eyes of the public. So well done.
Sarah (35:54)
Yay.
Kathryn McCrindle (35:54)
Thank you.
Sarah (35:54)
β
Fiona (35:54)
Yay!
Sarah (35:58)
you
Kathryn McCrindle (35:58)
consolation prize.
Fiona (36:00)
Yeah there we go.
Sarah (36:01)
So Kathryn, you talked a little bit about podcasts and LinkedIn and so forth. What's been some of the real positive stuff that you've got out of this in terms of networking or just meeting more people in general?
Kathryn McCrindle (36:18)
To me there were celebrities before are now speaking to me and I'm thinking, who am I? I'm no one. But now I'm... I don't know. The Flerlage twins both reached out to me on LinkedIn. I was like, meeting Beyonce or something. I'm like, I'm not worthy of speaking to you right now. This is nuts.
Sarah (36:36)
Hahaha!
Fiona (36:41)
We totally have to send that to them. that's a
good... Like, meeting those baldies is like meeting Beyonce.
Kathryn McCrindle (36:44)
you
Hahaha
But it was like that with a few people who reached out, I thought, my God, like, am I famous now? These people are way up there in Tableau. So, yeah, that's been nice just feeling like suddenly I'm with them. I'm up there in the Tableau community and stuff. It's been unreal.
Fiona (37:13)
We're coming up towards the end of the podcast, but I've just got one more question for you, Kathryn. Every project, doesn't matter what it is, comes with its own set of challenges. What were the biggest obstacles that you faced during the Iron Viz competition and what did you learn from it?
Kathryn McCrindle (37:35)
when I first got the data I was really really blocked. I didn't know what I was gonna do with it. I started to panic a bit and I had to message my Sous Vizzer after all of the panic and say like I'm sorry for being such a big baby because I kept saying like I'm not doing this like this got this data I'm not happy with it. So it was getting past that
when you first get given a data set, maybe you do start to panic or think there's nothing in there and you just need to create so, so many charts. Just keep making charts and charts and charts and something's going to stick out. Something's going to be interesting. And don't make a chart to try and be perfect. Just keep iterating, iterating, iterating and you will find something. At one point, I think with
Bo's pie charts for example I also had something that was like loads and loads of pies because I wanted to see when it was like different species over time and which ones were standing out and pies were actually quite good at showing that a bit more but I didn't bring that into my final but yeah I made I don't know would say I made over a thousand sheets at some point to come to this final so yeah I was
blocked in the data to begin with, but after a while something will come out and you'll find something and it'll be interesting. I now know more than I want to know about bird strikes. Some of the things I found as I said to them, Ryan and Bo when we were at dinner, we went out for dinner and I said, is there anything that you found out that horrified you?
And he said, no, I don't know what you mean. said, I have two things that really horrified me when I started researching. And one was the, like a chicken gun, which I didn't know existed before. And I wish I didn't know existed still, but to test planes, they have like, I don't know if they do it anymore. I think they have maybe plastic ones now, but they used to just take frozen chickens and put it in a, well defrost them, and put it in a gun and fire it at a plane.
Fiona (39:35)
Thank
Sarah (39:44)
my gosh.
Kathryn McCrindle (39:44)
So I wish I didn't know that, that's one thing. And another thing was, there was one airport that had like a zero tolerance policy for geese and they were just gassing all of the geese around the airport. I wish I didn't know this, but I do now. I'm now very knowledgeable about this subject, unfortunately.
Sarah (40:04)
And did it make
you a nervous flyer as well? Or do you think that the statistics are so low, it's actually okay?
Fiona (40:07)
Yes.
Kathryn McCrindle (40:12)
No, I think not at all. They're so low. This is the one thing that was bothering me as well, because we had the data on wild outstrikes, but we didn't have the data on how many flights were there overall. So we can't, we couldn't actually do any kind of comparison. I thought I can't come up with any meaningful conclusion here because I don't, we can't compare it to anything. We can't compare it to
number of flights, we can't compare it to the geese population over time or anything, so there's no benchmark here and no percentages, but it is very, very, very low. So no, I'm still okay with flying.
Sarah (40:53)
Good to hear.
Fiona (40:54)
Wow, what an inspiring conversation. Thank you so much Kathryn for sharing your journey through Iron Viz and giving us such great advice.
Kathryn McCrindle (41:04)
Thanks for having me.
Sarah (41:05)
I've really enjoyed the conversation today. Your insights have been astounding and it's been super exciting to have you here guest starring on our podcast today.
Fiona (41:15)
Sarah, it sounds like you're motivated there to jump into the next iron viz feeder, is that right?
Sarah (41:22)
Let's think about it.
Fiona (41:24)
Okay, well everyone, if you liked this episode or enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed hosting it, please take a moment to like, subscribe and leave us a review because we love reading your feedback or drop us a note. It helps us to grow and bring you more of the content that you love.
Kathryn McCrindle (41:24)
you
Sarah (41:45)
Don't forget to share this with your friends and colleagues and we'll catch you in the next episode of unDUBBED.
Fiona (41:52)
Thanks for tuning in to unDUBBED. Until next time, keep exploring the Data Universe.
Sarah (41:57)
Bye.
