Bill Jelen a.k.a. Mr Excel

A light-hearted discussion about Excel, Power BI and some other occasional tech.
🎧Podcast Episodes: https://unpivot.bio.link/

Find Bill's Channel here
https://www.youtube.com/@MrXL/videos

In this special episode of Unpivot, Wyn Hopkins, Mark Proctor, and Giles Male are joined by a surprise guest—none other than M rExcel himself, Bill Jelen! With Sue away on holiday, the team dives deep into the fascinating backstory of Bill’s Excel journey, his legendary website MrExcel.com, and how his early struggles with book signings evolved into authoring over 70 Excel books. Expect plenty of laughter, great storytelling, and insights from decades at the cutting edge of Excel and Power BI.

From rocket launches in Florida to power queries with cryptic errors, this episode is packed with valuable lessons, Excel updates (like the new Copilot pane features), and fun behind-the-scenes tales from the Excel World Championships. Whether you're a casual spreadsheet user or hardcore data geek, this episode is a masterclass in both tech and camaraderie among the best in the business.
Hosts Wyn Hopkins, Mark Proctor, Sue Bayes, and Giles Male.
💓Like, Subscribe and leave some comments and questions.

Wyn: https://wyn.bio.link/
Mark: https://exceloffthegrid.com
Sue: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suebayes/
Giles: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giles-male-30643b15/
Timestamps ( Courtesy of Grainne Duggan ) :
00:00:00 Introduction, Hosts Wyn Hopkins, Mark Proctor, Giles Male, introduce special guest Bill Jelen, aka Mr. Excel, Bill launched MrExcel.com in 1998 and is working on book #71, book signing can be brutal, motivation to write
00:09:45 Mark and Giles won awards at Gen CFO event for social media of the year (Giles) and resource of the year (Mark), debate ensues about which is the more important award, recent updates to Excel's Copilot pane, including the promotion of chat history, concept of "flighting" for gradual feature rollouts
00:16:00 ChatGPT or Copilot? Bill prefers ChatGPT Pro for daily use due to its reliability and customizability, Copilot deeper analysis mode can affect functionality, inconsistent AI behavior and user confusion
00:20:00 Technical frustrations with Power Query, issues caused by a hash symbol in a file name, complexity of Excel's multiple versions, beta channel, insiders and updates,
00:28:10 Question of the week (turned in to Ask Bill a question): Bill Jelen’s jingle story, duelling podcasts with Mike Garvin, hosting and competing in Excel World Championships on ESPN
00:45:00 Queston of the week – Where is AI heading? content creation and copyright theft, AI content scraping, importance of genuine readers, efforts to block bots from websites, in person presentations, human experts vs AI, biggest spreadsheet encountered, Power Pivot and Power Query with large files, Rob Collie story and book, Excel fan stories, virtual exercise, MVP summits,
01:06:50 Closing Remarks

Видео Bill Jelen a.k.a. Mr Excel канала Unpivot