Why I still Submit to Dashboard Challenges

Link to the interactive embedded dashboard

It doesn't have to take that much time to build a challenge dashboard. This one is built within a time frame of roughly 24 hours.

I had already looked at the data the moment the data was available, back in January. And I made already a few first charts, but most of the work was done at a Saturday in February.

Why do I still submit on dashboard challenges

This is my 28th entry. Most of them were Power BI entries and most of those were Maven analytics challenges.

I tried to gather that 1 badge, the winner badge, for ages, but even when I did enter the finals quite a lot, I always met people like Zoe Douglas , Gerard Duggan and Jasmin Jusufbegovic . So I accepted, that winning amongst hundreds of others, and them, is not my primary goal.

So I still would love to reach the finals, to become part of the winner video to get some feedback from the Maven Analytics team, but it isn't that important to me anymore.

So why do I still work on entries?

To practice, practice and practice!

Practice Power BI skills

Power BI is an end-to-end tool, where you can easily connect to, or import data, model the data, and build visuals to put on a dashboard.

But to do so "easily" and fast, you need to practice a lot. Only taking a course or doing a customer project isn't enough. Besides that it is an awful lot of functionalities to Excel, and there are a lot of new functionalities added almost weekly.

So, challenges in general, are the perfect place to get a dataset and a question to work on.

Other reasons to submit

Practicing your skills isn't the only reason people have to work on challenge dashboards. It also can help you to build a Useful portfolio when looking for another job, or as demo material when you are looking for new customers.

Posting your dashboards on LinkedIn can help you to grow your network, and to get feedback from the community.

How to Build a Challenge Dashboard

If you want to learn more about how to build a challenge dashboard, you can have a look at my portfolio here Link to portfolio.

I guess everybody has his own way of working, and if I look at myself, it depends on the data, the question, the available time and the thing I want to practice with that dashboard.

In the LEGO challenge, I didn't have much time and I wanted to focus on a clean, eye-catching design. And practice a bit with the new Power BI card and slicer visuals.

The most important is to answer the question if you want to go to the finals or not. If that's important to you, you have to read the challenge brief very well and do what is asked for.

In the LEGO challenge they asked for an interactive dashboard to explore the evolution of LEGO sets through the last 5 decades.

So if you like to compete, you have to deliver an exploratory dashboard!

If you don't mind, you can deliver whatever you like to. In that case, I always advise you to write that down in your LinkedIn post to avoid misunderstanding.

But you have to submit it first!

But anyway.

I've done a couple of sessions on this topic, and one of the first questions I have for the audience is, have you ever downloaded challenge data with the attention to submit a dashboard to the challenge, and didn't do so?

There are always people who do start but don't deliver. And of course, many of them face time constraints. I also downloaded challenge data but didn't reach the finish line.

It's about the ones who did build a dashboard, simple and/ or pretty nice, but didn't submit it because they didn't dare. To them I would say, give it a try, ask for feedback, and start over again with the next challenge!

Some final tips

Here are some checks I shared earlier for our own #DashboardDuel, that you can do before you submit your dashboard.

If you have any questions or doubts about stepping in the world of dashboard challenges, please leave a message below or send me a personal note.

Link to my portfolio with detailed steps on how I built this LEGO dashboard.

Next Session about dashboard challenges, is in Dutch, "Waarom meedoen aan dashboard wedstrijden jou zoveel brengt!" at the PBI Usergroup day in Utrecht 9th March 2024. Power BI Gebruikersgroep