We had an excellent event over the last couple of days at Microsoft London.
All the program info is over here so I won’t repeat it.
We had around 100 people for 2 days geeking out on Excel, which was great. Even better there are another 1-200 hundred signed up as reserves for the next event in October. This will be a complete repeat of the one we just did, specifically for those who couldn’t get in this time. I’m thinking I might stick to my script next time and not miss half of it out by accident!
I have had a quick glance at the feedback forms (in the pub – well outside it in the ffrrreeezing cold) and they are extremely positive for all the sessions.
I did sessions on working with the grid (clever cut n paste, and select special stuff) and an intro to VBA (setting up the IDE and a bit of macro recorder). I think the sessions could have been aimed a bit higher without leaving many of the audience behind, but it was advertised as a beginner level event.
Next time we can maybe have a proper fight about the relevance of convoluted naming conventions in VBA in Excel, and the value of classes and Object oriented designs in an application extension scripting technology, especially when that application does not support data hiding in any shape or form.
One interesting point – about half the delegates said they were mainly using 2007, yet 90% of the presentations were done in 2003. (I did one in Classique, and one in 2007 – fair’s fair).
If you came along I hope you enjoyed it, if not maybe see you in October.
Plans are already afoot for the 2010 series…
cheers
simon
Friday, 3rd April, 2009 at 12:18 pm |
“Next time we can maybe have a proper fight about the relevance of convoluted naming conventions in VBA in Excel, and the value of classes and Object oriented designs in an application extension scripting technology, especially when that application does not support data hiding in any shape or form.”
Would be worthwhile doing that here. Fancy summing up your views in a couple of posts so that we can all get stuck in?
Rob
Friday, 3rd April, 2009 at 1:26 pm |
Throughly enjoyed the conference.
Agree that the sessions could have been aimed at a slightly at a slightly higher level — maybe an idea to have an Excel Developers Conference?
With @Rob Bruce on wanting to know more about your views on naming conventions.
Particularly interest on your thoughts about whether it is considered good practice to employ naming conventions when defining named ranges. For instance, prefixing a named ranged to indicate the range type. (eg.
“tableSales2008″ for table range, “relCminus1″ for a column minus one relative reference.) Overkill, good idea or depends-on-spreadsheet?
My thoughts: poorly implemented, applying naming conventions to named ranges may make the sheet developer-friendly at the cost of being user-friendy.
Friday, 3rd April, 2009 at 7:14 pm |
Simon,
I would love to have a fight with you about classes, but not being a delegate it would probaby be poor form.
Sunday, 5th April, 2009 at 7:06 pm |
Simon
It was a great conference – thank you! I really enjoyed your sessions – the humour definitely helped :-)
Don’t let Bob know that I enjoyed his presentations too – he’s got a big enough head as it is!
Richard
Monday, 6th April, 2009 at 8:09 pm |
100 people….Wow! Congratulations to all of you across the Atlantic for delivering such a valuable contribution to the Excel community. Sorry to have missed it Simon!