I would still dearly love for someone to put on a high-brow conference for the advanced user ... it was clearly difficult last week given the numbers involved who had never coded VBA and/or never used an Array etc... I was quite surprised by the split - equally there were obviously a lot of people in attendance who were at the other end of the scale.
Me too, on both points.
I think the Array topic on Thurs was particularly difficult - those that had never used them found themselves out of their depth very quickly and unable to follow thereafter whereas those that did have experience probably wanted to go into the really clever stuff which was touched on briefly (IMO) with the likes of date calcs using INDIRECT etc...
I agree, I felt I lost it very quickly on Thursday as I was getting calls to explain WTF I was doing/talking about whilst others were leading me ahead of my agenda. My intention was to go exactly where you wanted, but the lack of understanding by some pulled me back.
In retrospect, I dropped too quickly into the more esoteric techniques, not enough lead up. Problem here is that I would need 2 hours to cover the basics in more detail to give those users more chance to understand the more advanced, whilst actually doing the more advanced.
IMO I would say that it would be worth offering 2 versions of that topic - one for the newbies/intermediates and one for the more advanced user who has used array's for a while ...
Unfortunately, that would mean twice the work, and quite honestly the time eaten up by these events is enormous.
The point/Q I raised at the conf. was that for me a CSE is useful really only when 1 Sumproduct can not achieve the same result, eg for a quick MIN(IF or MAX(IF or even (pre XL2007) AVERAGE(IF ... and these are easy to demo... for the more complex Sum & Count I think it's better to concentrate on Sumproduct given it's greater robustness.
So you were that b#*t'?d were you
? Again, that was on my agenda to cover as I wanted to migrate to SP having explained the mecahanics of aarray functions, because SP is just a peculiar/aprticular array formula, and its only over-arching benefit is no CSE. But as I said, I had already lost it by then so I didn't make that point well (at all?).
I guess for me the advanced stuff would constitute a general overview of how Arrays are processed etc - ie the general mechanics - to that end I know Colin and yourself have had a few discussions here on that topic and it was that type (level) of discussion that I was expecting last week.
This is probably the one thing that we differ on, I don't think this was the place for this topic. This is more suited for a master class session, less scripted, more free-form, but with everyone pitching in. The conference content was really for beginners to intermediate, beyond that it is more for the event, meeting, greeting and networking.
I think you were caught between a rock and a very hard place last Thursday
And didn't I feel it, but lots of masseage and they are almost working again
At the end of the day (he says sounding like a footballer) the problem stems from the fact that most XL users believe themselves to be Advanced... the majority obviously are not but it's a subjective thing... I've known a few people in the FP&A field who regard themselves as experts based on the fact they know what a VLOOKUP is (but not a SUMIF!).
True, and we have to try and cater for alland not destroy their egos/confidence (too much). As I say, I anticipate October being easier as I expect a less sophisticated crowd, truly beginners and intermediates. Unfortunately, I am re-writing both of my function presentations for that, trying to ensure it is a bit more structured around realistic examples.
The visualisation presentation I am happy with in content, just need to cut out some of the slides (like half of them), and leave Andy to make the points about colour and data-ink in graphs, and ensure we get the timing right so that Andy has the requisite time ti build the dashboard.
