Yes, you read that right.  If you haven't heard yet, I'll be coming to New Zealand and Australia in just under a month!  And the entire purpose of the trip is to come and share Excel knowledge for with my friends and colleagues south of the Equator.

I'm pretty jazzed about this, and not just because I get to go to the southern hemisphere for the first time in my life.  And also not just because I get to talk about Excel when I'm there.  That would be enough, but no… I'm jazzed because I get to do this with some pretty cool friends who are world respected leaders in their area.

Excel Summit South

The main purpose for my trip is the Excel Summit South conference.  Two days, two tracks of advanced Excel material in 3 different cities:

• Mar 3&4: Auckland, New Zealand
• Mar 6&7: Syndey, Australia
• Mar 9&10: Melbourne, Australia

And the best part about this conference is that – while it's sponsorsed by Price Waterhouse Coopers – regisration is open to everyone.  So basically, you can check the schedule, pick the sessions that interest you, and learn things that will impact your Excel skills.  In other words, if Valuation Modelling isn't your thing, then you can go to a Power Query class.  And if Power Query isn't your thing… well… you're kind of odd, but there will be something that is. 

The cast and crew for this conference really can't be beat.  Charles Williams, Bill Jelen, Jon Peltier, Zack Barresse, Liam Bastick are all Excel MVP's on the bill (as well as Ingeborg Hawighorst in our New Zealand apperance.)  Heck, we've even got a couple of guys from Microsoft attending and presenting as well.  This is a fantastic opportunity to not only meet some of the big hitter independant Excel folks out there, but also to talk to Microsoft directly.  How can you pass that up?

My Sessions

If it hasn't shown yet, I'm seriously looking forward to this conference.  Personally I'll be leading two sessions:

An End to Manual Effort: The Power Query Effect

What Power Query is, why you care, and how it can re-shape and transform the data experience.  What's really special about this session is that I'm going to take this data and turn it over to Jon Peltier who is then going to take it and turn it into a dashboard.  This is perfect, as I'm demoing how to automate data cleanup, and Jon will show you how to use it to add true business value… the real life cycle of Excel data in just a couple of hours.

The Impact of Power Pivot

This one will be fascinating, especially for those who have never seen Power PIvot in action before.  In just an hour I'll show you how big business BI (business intelligence) is at the fingertips of anyone with an Excel Pro Plus license.  It's applicable to companies as small as one employee, and scales up to multi employee small businesses, and even large businesses.  (Departments in large corporations eat this up, as they effectively just act as a small business within the larger whole.)

Register for Excel Summit South now!

Tickets are going fast for this event in all cities, so we ecourage you to register sooner rather than later, and hope to see you there!  You can find out more details and register at:  https://excelsummitsouth.wordpress.com/