What is an Independent Contractor?

Having worked as an independent contractor for Excel VBA development for a number of years, I would like to share some useful expereinces for people who drop by my site and prospective clients. Firstly, I define an independent contractor as someone who who offers their time and skill over a limited engagement in exchange for compensation.

There are a number of good reasons you would want to hire someone from the outside to develop your Excel spreadsheets. Mainly to do with reducing overall costs and risks.

Reducing Costs

An independent contractor is hired only for the duration of a project and his engagement will end once the project finishes. Cost wise, you are only paying for his expertise for a limited duration. For small and mid sized projects, this is a very cost effective compared to hiring someone into your employment.

Reducing Risks

When you hire an independent contractor for a project, a well written service contract governs the rules of interaction with contractor and a view to acheive a certain set of visible end objectives. This service contract should have convenient termination clauses that allows both parties to terminate the project in a fair and amicable manner.

For Excel dashboards and powerpoint slide designs. Beautiful, imaginative, futuristic interfaces from Corning Glass.

This video from Corning Glass shows some cool concept technologies. Take a look at the beautiful and interactive computer interface designs. I can see some good ideas for dashboard designs and PowerPoint slides.

Some screen shots here:

Seems to work well in PowerPoint:

More screen shots from the video:

More screen shots from the video:

Google officially announces 10 billion app downloads in Excel

As an Android fan, I am happy to learn that the Android Market has surpassed 10 billion downloads. I found this pretty looking 3D column chart.

I have never been convinced that 3D charts are good enough for serious business use. But this chart made me think again. The exponential growth trend jumped at me. Critical milestones were highlighted in rounded textboxes which were freindly to my eyes. I’m not interested in the specifics but I got the strong message that Android is growing strongly from the chart.

I recreated this chart in Excel using a 3D column chart type.

Use the following Excel 3D Rotation settings and with the right colours, this chart can be done quite easily.

To learn more about how to create beautiful charts like these in Microsoft Excel, check out this workshop: Beautiful Excel Charts

Do it in Excel: Ring charts are better Pie charts

Pie charts are a circular chart divided into sectors, illustrating proportion. I remembered learning them when I was in primary school. Apparently it was invented by this person called William Playfair in 1801.

Pie charts are simple to understand but rather limited because:
1. Can only show a single data series.
2. Can only show limited slices else it becomes cluttered.

Here is a clever twist by using ring charts instead. The following chart was created in Microsoft Excel.

The awesomeness of this beautiful ring chart are:
1. Shows multiple series data instead of just one data series. I’ve taken advantage of this property by showing aggregated revenue data in the outer ring. The inner ring shows a detailed breakdown of monthly revenues.
2. Presents multiple slices of information without being overly cluttered. This needs a careful use of colours though.

To create this ring chart in Microsoft Excel, use this data format.

To learn more about how to create beautiful charts like these in Microsoft Excel, check out this workshop: Beautiful Excel Charts

From the Global Financial Crisis to Microsoft Excel VBA.

Thomas Friedman a New York Times columnist claimed that he has a theory of everything. In that brilliantly short article, he observed that for decades the middle class had easy credit, easy jobs and easy entitlements. He argued that globalisation and IT have taken these away because brain power became more available and cheaper and people with the right skills gets further ahead.

What he wrote were stuff I learned during the Asian crisis. Jobs were scarce during those years. Competition was tough. University graduates working in coffeeshops made the news. Like what Friedman wrote “employers are finding it easier, cheaper and more necessary than ever to replace labor with machines, computers, robots and talented foreign workers… Good jobs do exist, but they require more education or technical skills.”

I remembered back then, I had the job of automating business reporting with Excel VBA and my colleagues feared that I was taking their work away. Reading these recent events was both nostalgic and foreboding. It is more important than ever before to come up with better ideas, learn more and improve how we work with IT. The rest of the world is increasingly impatient for you to be remarkable.

Learn more about Microsoft Excel VBA programming here.

Your own American Deficit/Debt Chart in Microsoft Excel

In the United States Congress there are currently a number of disagreements between Democrats and Republicans regarding the United States debt. On August 2, 2011, President Barack Obama signed into law the Budget Control Act of 2011, averting a possible financial default. This was the background story of this beautifully rendered chart of the USA public debt in the August 2011 issue of the TIME magazine.

Follow these steps to create your own American Deficit chart in Microsoft Excel.
1. Go to the U.S. Bureau of Public Debt portal to extract the data set.

2. Punch in a start and end date. The portal will generate a list of figures.
3. Select and copy the data set from the web page.
4. In Microsoft Excel, paste the figures as Unicode else it will not work properly. Click in Microsoft Excel: Home Ribbon->Paste->Paste Special->Unicode.
5. Plot out the figures as an Excel chart.

A new data portal www.data.gov.sg

The Singapore government has launched a new portal last month: www.data.gov.sg. This data treasure trove stores more than 5000 sets of data from 50 ministries and public agencies.

Totally free for everyone, you can see data sets from Finance, Health, Education,Manpower ministries, Monetary Authority of Singapore among many others. This is excellent news for app developers looking for reliable public data to use!

Beautiful Forms in Microsoft Excel. More examples.

Here are more examples for form designs in Microsoft Excel.
See pic below. The use of bold fonts in appropriate columns make this form easy to read at a glance. The simple yellow bar on the left highlights the important figures.

See pic below. With careful layout of columns and rows, this form can be replicated in Excel.

See pic below. A simple design that can be created with cell coloring in Excel.

Beautiful forms in Microsoft Excel Example

Entering data on thoughtfully and beautifully designed forms can be a pleasure! Look at these examples.

I loved this form because:

Bold and clear layout that is easy on the eye.

The form explained the underlying work process clearly at the beginning.

Straightforward and clearly marked sections that is easy to understand.

Instructions on how to submit the form was provided right at the end. The user wont have scan and search for it.

It makes me wonder why HR forms always seems more complicated and tedious than they actually are? Human resource folks please take a good look at this!

Here’s another beautiful form example.

Beautiful forms in Microsoft Excel

Entering data is one of the most common tasks performed in Microsoft Excel. That must the reason that Microsoft Excel 2007 has provided thousands of downloadable form templates. You can see them by clicking on the Office Button->New.

Sadly, few of them inspires me enough to take them seriously. While all of them are functional, none of them looked good. This is a typical ugly example:

I feel that entry forms in Microsoft Excel doesn’t have to be all clinical in boring blues and black. Why not inspire your users with good ideas like brighter colours and eye-freindly layouts. Think deeper into the entry process that makes business sense like highlighting useful instructions and highlight error entries. Think of creative ways to cut out the weariness of repeative entries.

There are many hard copy examples I can find which can be translated into Excel! Here are some. I will create a new blog section devoted to this topic. Do check in regularly.

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