
Eva Murray
Tableau, Travel and Triathlon
That’s the theme of this blog and it has evolved over time, since I started this page in 2016. My passion can still be summed up with those three words, but other topics have definitely emerged and re-emerged and I want to personally introduce myself to you here.
My journey into the world of data started around 2012, when I worked for Deloitte in New Zealand and attended a QlikView developer course. From there I went on to move to Sydney, Australia, joined a bank, ‘met’ Tableau and the rest – as they say – is history. I had the good fortune to meet kind and generous people early on who helped me see and understand data and who took it upon themselves to teach me more about data visualization. They also introduced me to the Tableau community, which has become an extended family and circle of friends for me.
Back in Europe
My travels eventually took me back home to Germany, where I joined analytical database company Exasol as their Tableau Evangelist, a role that helped me live my passion and support others in their work with data. It also allowed me to discover that I love being on stage, be it in person or virtually. Sharing stories, tips and advice is something I enjoy and helping other data professionals and those keen to enter the industry, take steps towards telling better data stories and communication information and insights more effectively has become my mission.
In these past years I have thrown myself into the data visualization community, having co-led the popular global social data project #MakeoverMonday since 2017. Leading, growing and developing the #MakeoverMonday community gives me a challenge I enjoy: bringing together people across the globe with varying levels of data literacy and training; teaching them best practices; encouraging them to participate regularly and build dataviz habits while also creating their portfolio of visualizations and developing a strong social and professional network. Bringing these people together around a shared passion for telling data stories and learning new skills is something that brings me immense joy and is an accomplishment I am very proud of.

Accomplishments:

Tableau Zen Master 2018, 2019, 2020
Tableau Social Ambassador 2017, 2018, 2019
Published Author of 2 books (#MakeoverMonday and Empowered by Data)
Podcaster: DataXpresso
Various publications
Speaker:
Tableau Conference US & Europe 2018, 2019, 2020
The Data Festival 2019
Tableau Global Sales Kickoff 2020
The Wharton People Analytics Conference 2019
Exasol Xperience 2017
MC of Exasol Xperience 2019
Various Tableau User Groups (London, Berlin, Munich, Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen, San Francisco, New York City, Sydney, Cincinnati, Paris, Milan, Netherlands, New Zealand)
Triathlon
Swimming, cycling and running are still very important in my life but I have stopped racing so that I can focus on other things that I care about and enjoy my training for the pure fun of it, rather than a competitive end goal.
Focusing on running and cycling gives me a good structure and keeps me fit and healthy so I can embark on any adventure, whenever I feel like it. Running and cycling also allow me to explore the beautiful surroundings of my home in London and to truly experience nature in all its facets.

I had the honour to represent my country (Germany) in sprint triathlon world championships in 2017 (Cozumel, Mexico) and 2018 (Rotterdam, Netherlands) and truly cherish my racing experience and the people I met along the way.
My Books


Hi,
Is there a way in Makeover Monday to see various makeovers of just1 dashboard/workbook along with the original?
Thank you
Morgan
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Hi Morgan,
you can check the pinterest board https://uk.pinterest.com/andykriebel/makeover-monday-2017/
There are a number of blogs out there where people showcase their work, their makeovers and the original. Maybe you want to check them out?
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Hi Eva,
I am a data science student. I am working on a project analyzing economic data of honey production with bee colony losses. I came across your post on Bee Colony loss (https://trimydata.com/2018/04/30/mm2018-week18/) then followed it to the data.world to download the data. How did you pull bee colony loss data off of BeeInformed.com? You data visualizations are amazing!
If you have more information regarding the Bee Informed data set, I am very interested in learning.
Thank you,
Dane
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Hi Dane,
Thanks for your kind words.I got the data from this page: https://bip2.beeinformed.org/loss-map/
All the information I had is on that page, I didn’t go beyond it.
Good luck with your project and happy learning. Join us at #MakeoverMonday 🙂
Cheers
Eva
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Thank you. I will check out #MakeoverMonday. Do you primarily use Tableau for your analysis and data visualizations?
Thanks
Dane
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Love your book – going to be joining the makeovers community shortly, I have set up my word press blog site but…then I hit a wall.
I have viz’s and other project management information that I think is blog worthy, but I am not sure how to get readers interested. It has to be more to it than just down loading an article, information or viz make over; sending the website to folk with the hopes that they will reply and leave a comment – I am sure it’s more than that. Maybe it’s not, but I think it is.
I want the information to inform, enlighten and be engaging without falling into the “TLTR” (to long to read). Would you be so kind and suggest a resource that I could turn to, so I could set my blog correctly.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
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Hi Regi, my tip is to simply start. Don’t try to emulate someone else just make it your authentic voice and write about the things you care about.
Your audience will see your passion come through when you genuinely care about your topics.
A year from now you’ll be glad you started today…
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I live in Erlangen, Germany. I work already with Tableau at an intermediate level, yet I would like to have private classes to improve on few especific areas. I am starting with makeoverMondays, which I find a great tool. Thanks for your contribution.. Could you direct me on few contacts who I could address for further Tableau Training?
Thanks,
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Hi Martha,
Thanks for your comment.
Do you mean formal training classes or literally a private tutor?
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Hi Eva, sorry I missed your answer. I would like to have a private tutor. Could we set up a meeting at Exasol on Neumeyerstrasse for further talks?
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Eva,
I had a question about formatting wbc or URLs for the makeover monday viz’s. I am standing up an automated workbook to pull in data from a year’s worth of MakeoverMonday datasets. Is there a way to standardize the urls as you post them (format — 2020w[weeknumber])? Random, but I am not sure where to direct the question.
By the way, I really appreciate your work with the community and your amazing insight.
Thank you,
Kristy McGee
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We have standardized it but Charlie is breaking the rules 😬. You’ll see the even weeks follow the pattern quite neatly
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