I missed Tableau Conference 2026 to spend time with my family, and I don't regret it.

A reflection on missing Tableau Conference 2026, choosing family, and what I'm learning about presence in the age of AI.

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon at the reunion in South Carolina, and I was sitting next to my uncle, watching my cousins fry fish. The kids were running around, my wife was over talking to my brother, and the sun was sitting right where you’d want it to. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I didn’t even check it.

A few days earlier, I was supposed to be on a stage in San Diego.

For four years running, I’d been at Tableau Conference, speaking, hosting, connecting, showing up for a community that’s given me more than I could ever put on a résumé. This year, I’d been selected to speak again, with my session already on the calendar and in the program, and yet I wasn’t there. A few people reached out. Some texted, some asked on LinkedIn, a few even assumed something was wrong. Nothing was wrong. If anything, it was the opposite.

We were prepping our old house to put on the market and had just moved into our new home. The Tableau Conference keynote was on a Tuesday, and that same weekend, my family had a reunion in South Carolina that had been on the calendar longer than the conference had. On paper, I probably could have made it work. I could have flown out to San Diego to speak, flown back, repacked, and flown to South Carolina a couple of days later. But let’s be honest with each other for a second. I would have shown up to that reunion completely drained, running on fumes from a conference and a house that was still half in boxes. I wouldn’t have been present for my family the way they deserved, and I probably wouldn’t have been fully present on that stage either. The more I sat with it, the more I realized that trying to do both would have meant doing neither one well.

When I reached out to Alyssa Jenson at Tableau to let her know I wouldn't be able to make it, she was completely gracious about it. Alyssa handles a lot of the behind-the-scenes work for speakers like me, and she had every right to be frustrated. Instead, she made it easy. That kind of grace from the people running the show isn't a small thing, and I want to make sure she knows I noticed.

The trap I almost fell into

We’re living through a strange moment in tech right now. Every conversation seems to be about ROI, output, leverage, AI agents doing the work of ten people, productivity dashboards getting their own dashboards. The pressure to always be producing, always be visible, always be shipping has never been higher than it is today.

In an environment like that, choosing not to optimize feels almost rebellious. Choosing a Saturday afternoon with cousins over a keynote. Choosing boxes in Mount Juliet over a booth in San Diego. Those choices cut against everything the industry rewards. But here’s what I keep coming back to. Time with family is high ROI. It’s just the kind that compounds quietly while everyone else is chasing the loud kind. You come back sharper, more grounded, with better judgment for the next six months of decisions. Nobody puts that on a dashboard, but it shows up everywhere anyway.

The independent’s anxiety

When you’re independent, there’s no big team to cover for you while you’re gone. Every conference is a pipeline opportunity, every absence feels like a missed deal, and the pressure to be everywhere, TC, FabCon, Summit, every meetup, every LinkedIn Live, isn’t just FOMO. It’s business model anxiety. The thinking goes that if you’re not visible, you’re invisible, and invisible doesn’t pay the mortgage.

I won’t pretend I didn’t feel that pull this year, because I did. But something has shifted for me in 2026. I’ve been learning to trust God with the finances and the connections, and so far, He keeps showing up. The right clients have found us. The right partnerships have opened up. The right rooms have made space without us having to force our way in. That doesn’t mean we sit back and do nothing, the work still has to be real, the relationships still have to be built. But it does mean I don’t have to be in every room to make sure the next deal happens. The people who hire Royal Blue Analytics aren’t hiring us because I was at every conference. They’re hiring us because of the work, the trust, and the long game we’ve been playing. One missed event doesn’t unmake any of that, and it took me a few years to actually believe that sentence. This year, I got to live it.

Leadership at home

We talk about leadership in our industry like it only has one definition. Stages, badges, ambassadorships, title nominations, visibility, content. But there’s another kind of leadership that doesn’t come with a badge or a LinkedIn post, and it’s the kind that happens at home.

It’s being the person your spouse can count on during a stressful move. It’s flying to South Carolina for the reunion when you easily could have sent your regrets. It’s being the son, the brother, the uncle, the cousin who’s actually in the room when it matters.

My father passed in 2022, and this reunion was the first time in a long while that I’d spent real time with his side of the family. Anyone who’s lost a parent knows there’s a void that doesn’t get filled. Family doesn’t fix it, but family helps you carry it. My wife flew down with me, and so did our daughter. My uncle, my aunt, my brother, my sister, my cousins, my niece and nephew, all in one place.

The people who knew my father and loved him, who still carry pieces of him in the way they laugh and tell stories. I’m not going to pretend I had words for what that weekend meant. I just know we were there for it. We sat with my uncle, caught up with my brother and my sister, the kind of catching up you can only really do in person. I watched my niece and nephew, who are just a little older than our daughter, running around with her like cousins are supposed to. I let everyone remind me of things I’d half forgotten.

No keynote in the world could have competed with that.

That kind of leadership doesn’t trend on LinkedIn, but it’s the foundation that everything else gets built on. The public-facing leadership, the talks, the user group, the consulting work, only works because the home version is solid. You really can’t pour from a cracked cup

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The community carried me

Here’s where it got incredible, though!

There was a Black in Data meetup at the conference this year. Our people gathered, connected, and led, without me there. Shoutout to Rain Ortega and Chris Williams for organizing that space. And honestly, that made me proud. Because if the spaces I've poured into only work when I'm in the room, then I haven't really built anything. I've just been showing up. Watching our people show up for each other while I was 2,000 miles away unpacking boxes in a new house was the whole point. That's legacy.

Sam Batchelor reached out just to check on me, to make sure I was doing alright. Kevin Flerlage, Rudy Castillo, and Travis Harper started sending me pictures. My face on the walls of the conference center, in the marketing materials, in the hallways. Kevin even took a selfie with my portrait, the two of us grinning side by side, like we were hanging out at the conference together.

I was 2,000 miles away in my new house, unpacking a box, and apparently I was also somehow at Tableau Conference.

These folks didn’t have to do any of that. Sam didn’t have to take a moment out of her conference to check on me. Kevin, Rudy, and Travis didn’t have to stop in busy hallways, pull out their phones, and think to text me. Kevin had just come off the keynote stage and still had time to track down my face on a wall and take a selfie. That’s not a small thing. That’s people saying we see you, we miss you, and we wanted you to know that you’re still here with us.

Sam, Kevin, Rudy, Travis, thank you, genuinely. That meant more than y’all know.

That’s what community looks like when you’ve spent years pouring into it. You don’t have to be in the room, because the room carries you anyway.

The seasons

I used to think the goal was to be everywhere. Now I think the goal is to know what season you’re in.

This season called for home. New house, family, roots, presence. The next season will probably call for something different, with more travel, more stages, more rooms full of people, and that’s fine too. Both are real, and both matter.

If you’re reading this and you’re sitting on a decision you haven’t admitted to yourself yet, skip the conference, decline the talk, take the week off, I’m not going to tell you what to do. I’ll just tell you what I learned this year. The community will still be there when you get back. Your career will still be there when you get back. But the people who love you might not be, in quite the same shape, the next time you finally look up.

I missed Tableau Conference 2026 to spend time with my family, and I don’t regret it. Honestly? Best week I’ve had all year.