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
Simon, the driving force and brains behind the whole event and started us off with a presenation on architecture. It was a great start to the day,
Simon asks N-Tier Applications with Excel, what's the impact?
After describing how Excel solutions grow, into an N Tier solution, or why they get built that way in the first place Simon looked at the implications to maintenance and robustness.
Why did he call his talk the Excel Window? Well Simon’s view is that the Excel Windows is “his”* view of the corporate world, and thus, what happens in that window, to some extent drives the org. – well somthing like that, Excel is the window, and there all this data and informaiton so where behind it…
*or the app users, I guess
Yesterday I deployed a Addin to a handful of users.
These days I mainly deploy my .Xla/m using a mixture of Inno Setup and a .net app to automate the Excel OM, and use that to add the addin to the addins list. One way or another I have found this the most robust/easy method.
Today I wanted to issue a “HotFix” for the addin – such is my commitment to continues improvement you understand – but I hit a problem.
My plan was to write (modify) the Inno script so that an updated version of the .Xlam was overwritten into the same Dir with the same file name that the original set up had created.
This worked no problem, but when I opened Excel the Addin was not loaded. Attempting to reload the addin via the addins diolog lead to some sort of error message saying that the file had unreadable content or something… I was at a lost as to what the issue was.
After a while trying different things, I hit across the idea that I had also change some of the data in the File Properties. The most likely looking one to cause an issue was the Revision number. I had changed it form 1, to 2.0
I is long, or I might be Int
I changed it to 2, and tried the process again. Bingo.
So it seems that chaning that number to have any sort of decimal place in it can cuase a problem – there you go, tuck that away in the back of the head for future reference!
Its that time again…
The last UK XL dev con back in 2010, was a great event, some say the best London centric Excel developer event of the year.
Good news. Simon is doing another one next year (2012), Wednesday 25 Jan, The Skills Matter Exchange, London.
You can book a ticket here, great value at 200 quid:
http://www.codematic.net/donations.htm
Here’s the outline agenda:
More details of who’s doing what here – impressive, I’m sure you’ll agree!
Notice there’s a mix of how to technical stuff and more cerebral approach based stuff. I know that a number of Excel big hitters are lined up to present, and the level of folks who attend is always nice and high; its a great event to be at.
You can really get behind some of the issues and questions that have been bugging you, with people who are on the same page as you, and have eirther been there themselves or have some decent ideas about what to do!
Aside from the content of the talks and so on, its a good chance to meet many of the Excel tribe in person, there nothing like actually seeing a persons face, even if its mine!
Book your place now: http://www.codematic.net/donations.htm
So, I hope to see a lot of you there and look forward to meeting you if your coming, I might even go for the curry and beer this year.
If you can’t come heres a slightly funny excel based picture:
“na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na BATMAN!”
Check this dashboard out, http://www-05.ibm.com/innovation/uk/leadership/insights/index.html, eneter a number in the box and the webpage will take you through to a dashboard.
It’s the standard mixtue of crappy charts and so on, but one stood out, the green one on the right:
There is a slider on the right of the chart representing marketing spend, and if you change it, it updates the values for Spending and Revenue.
As you decrease Spending your Revenue goes up, one is directly related to the other – its totally nuts!!
Its a shame it stops at zero actually otherwise, I could make all the money in the world!
Oh and by the way, can anyone explain the two line charts on the right, WTF!!!