Excel Conference in London 25/1 2012

So I went there without too much thought about why? Ryanair having a marketing campaign on the route made my travel expenses close to nil. As a knowledge partner for my customers I often need input from smart guys, so I thought I will give these UK guys a try. Simon and the others I met at the pub the evening before impressed on me. Many of them where experienced VBA-guys gone through them same process I have been trough, with similar but in some aspect different experiences.

Late but not too late I arrived at the conference. The starter was not my favourite subject. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the importance of being accurate in the definition of how and why you solve problems with Excel and why that is important. Suddenly I realised that this is probably a result of the financial crises we have been trough… Sorry but it did not strike me that hard, so that might be why I lost the importance….

Next on stage was Bob Phillips who told the story about Power Pivot the new invention from MS in Excel 2010. To be really honest I was a bit disappointed about the speed, Bob told us about using VPC, but anyhow, why VPC?? I think that due to all interrupts he may have missed giving me my point. I don’t believe ordinary end user are capable of doing my job, and so did Bob. I think the important point about Power Pivot is setting up the business aimed views and combining them with tables you have in your own spread sheet is the real selling point, at least that is a feature I think my customers will like.

Next on stage was Mike Staunton and ExcelDNA. I have never heard of it, so to me it was very interesting, though I am still disappointed about the “.Net-thing” MS gave us. I have for a long time being disappoint about MS, and suddenly these guys give me hope . So after this presentation I might give my 20k’ codebase a new try, not tomorrow but in 2012, maybe?? He also talked a lot about FFT and how to make them work faster, maybe not what I am up to most of my time.. Nice guy with a lot of enthusiasm, but maybe a little bit academic for me..

We went into “The Slaughtered Lamb” and hade a nice lunch sponsored by F1F9. Thanks Morten.

After arriving late after lunch Simon, being a good host, gave up his presentation on project management. Instead he introduced Mathias Brandewinder, a guy who presented himself having a strange accent in English, not being my mother’s tongue, I had some problems. He told his story about going from VBA to VSTO… In this issue I have been through a lot of pain, making me very uncomfortable for him, sorry for making to many interrupts . He tried as many before to convince my brain of doing the shift, but sorry to say he did not manage. I still don’t know how to convince my customers of doing the effort of a transfer to the “promised land”…. Pls pls give me the solution I have been searching for a long time.

Next on was Charles Williams telling us the story about converting your brain from VBA to C++!!!
Probably there are more feelings about such a shift in your brain. He made a very good presentation on what this is all about. Dramatic was, when he got  hidden compiler errors, but everything was under control, just giving us some excitement. Very subtle. Probably I wont go into it, but it was a very good presentation.

Morten from Denmark living in Baath running F1F9 (Help+Calculate) was next on stage. Another story about making spread sheets understandable and possible to audit. I liked his presentation though it was a little beside my main interest.

Simon was then given the possibility, and he told an amazing story about bridges I will never forget. After that we ended up in a pub were all problems for the world was solved.

Great experience, and thanks to all I have learned to know.

Some other views from the conference:

• Ross Mclean with some nice photos from the event.
• Patrick O’Beirne with his Irish view.