Here are my slides from this years event, on the codematic site.
(right click save as – done in powerpoint 2003, let me know if any bits don’t work)
The garden/ field slide is the IS department v End User computing – see if you can guess which is which!
(any feedback very welcome)
cheers
simon
Smurf on Spreadsheets 
Tuesday, 17th July, 2007 at 12:00 pm |
Very entertaining Simon – I especially liked the pie chart for “admits spreadsheet hell vs deluded”! (a few people came by to see what I was chuckling at there!)
Any plans to publish speaking notes as well for those of us who were unfortunate enough to miss this due to basking in 30-degree plus sunshine at the time? =;-)
I’ll place my bet that the garden is development and the field is EU, on the basis that the dev is a controlled environment with almost entirely controlled variables based on the specification, while in the EU environment, as they used to say in Stingray “anything can happen”.
Though I know that, having said that, you’ll say that it’s the other way round on the basis of the EU only seeing the finished model which looks great and does exactly as it should, while the dev has to deal with the spreadsheet equivalent of wildlife, overgrowing plants and hikers who insist they have a historical right of way, in order to present the garden version to the EU? Hmmmm….
Tuesday, 17th July, 2007 at 2:26 pm |
spot on Mike
IT dept – nice well managed garden (Ora, SQL server DB2, C/C++, cobol)
End user comp – the wild, organic natural jungle (xl, access and VBA)
On the fence (benefits to / strengths of both) Essbase, MSAS, .net
I like your alternative take on it though.
Thursday, 23rd August, 2007 at 10:32 am |
It was a good talk. In answer to Mike, I was at the event and took notes, some of which I transcribed for an article in AccountingWEB’s ExcelZone.
I focused a little more on the early section of his talk outlining the nature of spreadsheet hell, and more particularly the “Frankensheet” phenomenon, as I think the message still needs to be amplified for my readers.
However, Simon’s explanation of the differences between wild, unweeded end-user computing and the careful tending of corporate IT departments was also very instructive. Maybe with Simon’s permission and help, AccountingWEB can investigate that avenue in a future article.