Excel User Conf London 7-8 Oct 09

The next UK Excel User Conference will take place next week at Microsoft London.

Its two days, Wednesday and Thursday.

Its a re-run of the April event for those that missed out that time

Fuller details including an agenda are here.

If you are going I look forward to seeing you there.

cheers

Simon

UK Excel User Conference 2009 content

Please leave a comment listing the topics you would like covered and what level.

Also note if you think it is more suitable for a one day event or more in depth coverage over a 2 day event.

If you would be interested in presenting then drop me a line.

If you would like to sponsor the event then let me know too.

Also if you have any ideas for improving previous conferences then leave a comment

and finally for the 1 day free event – London or Reading?

cheers

Simon

Conference Report Day 1

Thursday – Conference Intermediate, Add-ons – Advanced.

Overall the delegate feedback was very positive about the venue, the content, and presenters.

The first session was my Pivot table slot.

I went through from basic intro to pivots, through some of the features I have found useful on client assignments. And features I tend to avoid, and why, and what I do instead. That included a 10 minute intro to the most useful parts of Access. I did a very brief demo of using some simple macro recorder stuff to synchronise multiple pivot tables, and ran out of time before punishing everyone with some of my gruesome real world examples.

Next up was Patrick with auditing spreadsheets

He gave us some insight into the work of a spreadsheet auditor, in particular the things to look out for, or sniff out. Poor practice being likened to a bad smell. He gave a useful overview of some of the available tools, both free and those that cost. We had a good discussion about names and external links, and plenty of other ‘quality’ practices. Patrick was also generous enough to offer a copy of his excellent book Spreadsheet Check and Control as a draw prize. So thats one delegate going back to the office armed with the knowledge to improve theri corporate spreadsheet quality.

(fortunately Patrick had left to catch his flight before he saw my random name picker fail rather embarrassingly with a #REF! error – whoops)

We then went off for dinner/lunch, for some more spreadsheet chat, this time over a buffet. I defy anyone to suggest there wasn’t enough food!

Bob got the graveyard shift after the food to talk about Visual Impact.

Considering the tube map as an presentation example was inspired, especially when alternative inferior examples were compared. Bob had plenty of excellent advice for clarifying the message, I particularly liked the talk (and demos) of removing ‘ink’ from a diagram to leave only what is genuinely important. In another section Bob went through and highlighted some of the weak informational content in many of Excel’s inbuilt chart types.

Nick closed the formal session for the day with a look at what new in 2007.

There are some great new features in Excel 2007, and Nick did an excellent job of demoing a selection of the most useful. It was especially useful that Nick has moved his whole firm over to 2007 – he has the insight that only real world use can provide.

We then had a short informal questions from the floor session, and a prize draw for Patrick’s book and some wonderful wooden puzzles Keith had brought.

It was then I realised what it was about conferences that bothered me – the dead spot between the last session and food. I had sorted the food no bother but had nothing arranged for the hour or so beforehand. Obviously we were going to a pub, but which?

We found a pub (eventually), then had a great meal at Pizza Express and those that were up for it went off for more drinks. They suffered on Friday!

Although the social aspect is a hard sell to the budget holder, in many ways it is one of the most important activities. Many a useful snippet is picked up in the pub, and by getting to know people better you can be more at ease asking questions. Its often easier to approach someone in the pub with a question than infront of 20 other people who may be more keen to get off and get their dinner.

psst – wanna save a few quid??

Today and tomorrow are great days for booking your place at the Excel User and Developer conference.

On Wednesday the early bird discount ends and prices revert to the normal price which is about 10% more.

Get over to :

http://www.exceluserconference.com/UKEUC.html

And book your place ASAP to beat the price rise.

Still not sure you want to invest a few hundred pounds in some of the best Excel training around?

Check out the schedule and contact one of the organisers if you have any questions. My contact details are here:

http://www.codematic.net/Codematic-general/contact-us.htm (email will work best)

Cheers

Simon

Excel VBA training

One of the great strengths of Excel compared to alternative spreadsheets is the power, simplicity and refinement of the integrated programming language VBA. Whilst the conference aims to cover as broad a range of Excel based content as possible, it would be remiss to ignore VBA. A little bit of VBA can go a long way in improving a spreadsheet, in a variety of ways.

There are several sessions at the Excel User conference focusing on VBA. The outlines for all the sessions are here.

On Thursday, Andy Pope is doing an advanced level add-on class covering Class modules.

Using classes and the associated object oriented design can often make a solution much more simple to code and maintain. This OO approach is also followed by most of the modern Visual Studio languages.

On Friday there are 2 advanced level VBA sessions in the conference, which reflects how useful VBA can be.

In the morning I’m doing a session on good design in VBA, this will touch on classes, but focus more on general areas that apply whatever design is used.

In the afternoon Charles Williams is doing a session of writing efficient user defined functions in VBA. Its common to be able to swap fairly ugly worksheet formulas for simple elegant VBA functions. Charles will be showing how to do that without affecting performance.

Also on Friday afternoon Bob Phillips is running an intermediate add-on class covering some of the VBA tips and tricks he has picked up over the years. This is an excellent opportunity if you are just finding your feet in VBA to really boost your knowledge, and learn some tried and tested ways to to get things done.

There is also plenty to learn at the conference if you have no interest in VBA of course.

cheers

Simon

[And if you are staying for the Excel Developer conference on the Saturday we will be looking at what the future might hold for the VBA language and our solutions based on it. Well worth attending.]