Right Excel legend Bob Philips up next,  self service BI with power pivot… better concentrate.

Bob demo-ed the new features of Power Pivot (did, we ever get an agreed TLA for Power Povit?, I’m going to run with PPVT). There was some interesting debate at the start of Bobs talk about exactly what the point of PPVT is, can you just use Access to link table together and stuff?? – See here for some thoughts.

Some say he can only write in DAX, all we know is he's Big Bob Philips

Anyway, Bob covered a lot of ground all the new stuff, with people asking questions along the way, lead to a lively debate, will normal users be able to use PPVT, or will it just be a Power User tool? I guess time will tell, my money is on the latter. I think PPVT is one of those things you have to get down a dirty with before you can really say your ready to use in any serious way, but once you have you’ll probable start using it for stuff that would be better done in a database!!

Right Onwards!

I’ll return to the matter of what laptop is best for an (Excel) developer at a later stage, but I did have a quick chat with Bob and Charles about while at the Dev Con, needless to say we were all more or less in agreement. I’m not too sure what Charles is trying to convey here, but I’m sure it made sense at the time!!!

Bob and Charles, talking laptops...

Bob's portable Zen book, a wrist screecher

F1F9, (http://www.f1f9.com/) have kindly agreed to sponsor this year’s conference.

More over, they are going to be taking some short videos of some conference goers for their site, with a few hints and tips, I believe these will be put of there free learning page at some point in the not to distance future, look here:

I spent quite a bit of time talking to a few of the guys from F1F9, they stuck me as decent chaps, with a good idea of what was needed.

Here’s Roger getting interviewed, never been so popular Roger!

Who filmed Roger Govier, F1F9, thats who!!

Interesting presentation from Stephen Allen on how to track and manage spreadsheet development, and possibly audit them.

Stephen described how after having been tasked with a fairly simple development job, the complexities of the business issue meets spreadsheet model found him out. Drawing on his background in auditing, Stephen pulled together a framework of control like statements to ensure a track-able path though the process.

One thing that I took away form this was the point Stephen made about not only makign the process clear for yourslef, but also createing a support network for you decisions etc, say for example one of the inputs is 10, then you get asked why its 10 some time after the event, Stephens’ approch should have that covered.

Stephen Allen - Control Freak!

It struck me that this was not a little unlike TDD is a way, but for decisions/logic. It also struck me that its one of those things we should do a lot more of, but don’t because we want to get to the answers to quickly, or dont have enought time to do the job right first time.

You can find out more about Stephen ideas at his web site, and having spoken to him about it I know he’d be keen to hear form anyone looking to develop the ideas, further.

Good turn out this year, 40 plus I’d say, and some famous faces. Nice to see the event well supported. Maybe next year we’ll get even more? I think that eveyone who attdened would agree, the value for this event is great, not only do you get to hear the preseantions but you get to meet and talk to all the other Excel devs, and they have the same issues, thoughts etc that you have, and thats worth its weight in gold too!!!

The pack themselves in... that's Andy, Russell and Roger you can see