Speaker Bio & Abstract

 
Kent Marten Principal Product Manager, Maps and Spatial Analysis
Tableau Software
USA

BiographyKent is a geographer, with BES from the University of Waterloo, MBA from the University of Redlands, and an advanced diploma in GIS from the Centre of Geographic Sciences. Kent has spent his entire career building mapping software products, first for Esri and now for Tableau. Originally from Toronto, Kent and his family currently reside in Seattle, Washington. AbstractDemocratizing geospatial analysis for the non-expert is one of the largest hurdles faced by the NGO community in pursuit of the SDGs. The challenge for the GIS community lies in making it easy for everyone - from organizational leaders to field staff - to build maps and make location-driven decisions without needing a data or geospatial background.

This session will explore how Tableau and partner researchers are developing accessible, user-centric geospatial capabilities including visual data cleaning, offline global geocoding, single-click spatial analysis, and much more. The intuitive interface for building interactive data visualizations allows international development professionals everywhere to make data-driven decisions and share the impact of their work.

The task of making real, meaningful progress towards the UNs Sustainable Development Goals challenges this expert community to think of ways to scale access to geospatial insights and help anyone that wants to use data to drive change from within their organization and the world.

This session will include a gallery of data visualizations from the amazing Tableau community and the community initiatives #VisualizeNoMalaria and #VizforSocialGood.