Dashboard week is here for DS15. DS16 started two weeks ago and I was on holiday in Gran Canaria last week; Bona and Sara from DS14 were more than happy to step in and pick data sources for me. The feedback from DS14 was that Dashboard Week was too easy, so I asked Bona and Sara to make it hard and I think they’ve delivered. Sorry DS15, you can blame them.

The basic idea behind Dashboard Week is that the team is given a data source, they prep the data, create a visualization, and write a blog post.

Here are the rules that are common across each day:

1. They must work independently.
2. Everything MUST be completed by 5pm (so that I can write a recap blog post).
3. They must deliver (1) a data prep workflow, (2) a visualization published to the web, and (3) a blog post.
4. They MUST leave their laptops at work in the evening.
5. The next morning, they present back the previous day’s work.
6. No complaining!
7. Pay attention; requirements may change day-to-day or even within the day.

Day 1 involves interactive web scraping. There are two websites they need to scrape and combine: Men’s and Women’s new clothing from ASOS. Monday’s rules:

1. They must scrape all clothing items, brand, cost, description, and product types.
2. They may use batch macro and/or an iterative macro, or they can do it all in a single workflow. The final output must be a single data set that includes both the men’s and women’s data.
3. Create a viz and publish it to Tableau Public.
4. Write a blog post and publish it by 5pm.

That’s it…easy! Good luck team! I’ll see you Tuesday. Remember to ask questions if you get stuck.