Tableau makes its desktop software free to IRE members

** 2018 update: Please read this blog post on additional free Tableau benefits for current IRE members **

Today IRE is announcing a partnership with Tableau Software, maker of Tableau Public, to provide Tableau Desktop free to IRE Members. This should provide tremendous value for IRE members, who can use Tableau Desktop to develop stories in complete privacy, work offline and access a wider variety of data sources.  

Many IRE members are using Tableau’s free product, Tableau Public, and its companion product, Tableau Public Desktop. Publishers include Argentine daily newspaper, La Nación; British national daily newspaper, The Guardian; French daily evening newspaper, Le Monde; The Dallas Morning News and many more.

“At Tableau we believe that data is an important part of the civic conversation,” said Ellie Fields, Senior Director of Product Marketing. “Journalists have embraced Tableau Public as a way to tell important stories with data, and we want to support them in their work. And while Tableau Public is a fantastic product for making data open, journalists often need to keep their data private while they are developing a story. Providing free licenses to Tableau Desktop Professional will let them do that.”

With this announcement, journalists will be able to use Tableau Desktop Professional to:

• Save files locally, as opposed to on the web, so they can develop stories in private before they publish them to Tableau Public.
• Publish to the Tableau Public service when a story is ready. Tableau Public provides live, interactive visualizations that can be embedded in web pages.
• Work offline.
• Access databases, Hadoop and a wide variety of data sources. 

Members who want to get a license for Tableau Desktop should contact Amy Johnston at amy@ire.org.

 “Tableau Public has provided an important tool for journalists who want to both analyze their data and tell better stories through data visualization," Executive Director Mark Horvit said. "Access to Tableau Desktop will increase the ability of journalists to do this work.”

Tableau is holding training sessions at the IRE conference in San Antonio onThursday, June 20. The team there can answer any questions about this announcement or Tableau in general.