On Friday after work I attended a ModelOff Meetup in Toronto at The Rum Exchange located on 67 Richmond St W. It was a fun event!

If you haven’t already noticed, I’m a huge Microsoft Excel user and fan! It’s my day job and one of my hobbies. So, imagine a room full of people who all use Excel in a variety of different ways. Some are experts with many years of experience, others are starting out in their careers and most are somewhere in the middle. Here is Johann speaking at the Toronto Meetup in September.

About ModelOff

Have you heard about ModelOff? It’s an international competition that uses Microsoft Excel to test Financial and Investment Analysis expertise. Read more here. ModelOff belongs to the Professional Services Champions League  which has a variety of competitions: Texata, Loyaltygames, Hiqora, Acturian, and Pentios.

I think ModelOff is a great idea! There are all sorts of competitions like FIDE Chess championships and American Crossword Puzzle Tournament so why not a financial modeling contest? I’m interested in hearing how it all started when it was just an idea a few years ago (I submitted this question to Excel TV. See Johan’s response in episode 36).

Toronto Meetup Highlights

I had so many interesting conversations. People use Excel in many different ways: financial modelers, financial analysts, report developers, vba programmers, business analysts, trainers, etc. Here are some of the people I chatted with:

• Johann Odou one of the co-founders of ModelOff and PSCL. I’m really impressed with the global brand that they are creating.  Johann gave a speech discussing ModelOff and encouraging people to sign-up.
  
• www.Jerts.com I chatted with Tom Scott about his career using Excel & VBA. Tom’s company provides Excel consulting and training.
• Allie Rutherford Allie is a program manager in the Office Division at Microsoft. Allie was explaining how different devices can work with Excel.
• Alex Arifuzzaman Alex is a partner at Interstratics which specializes in retail insight. Alex has taught retail at Schulich business school.
• Stoyan Nikolov is an experienced financial analyst working in the banking industry in Toronto’s financial district.
  
• Farhan Warsi is a Financial Planning & Budget Analyst at Pfaff Automotive Partners. He’s also a CPA and a CMA candidate.

That’s me on the left with Johann Odou. There were a total of 2400+ attendees at this years 16 different ModelOff meetups around the globe.

Read more here  and see all the pictures.

ModelOff 2015 Competition

This year’s competition consists of three rounds:

Round 1 (online) is on October 17th

Round 2 (online) case study style questions, is on October 31st

Finals Held live in London England on December 3rd & 4th. 

ModelOff Global Training Camp 2015

If you’re not competing, you could attend ModelOff’s training camp! It’s a two day event that includes a variety of activities. Attendees choose from over 30 different sessions! Check out the agenda here. The Microsoft Excel Product team will be involved in this training providing various sessions and asking for product feedback.

ModelOff Co-Founders on Excel.TV

Johann Odou and John Persico have done an incredible job creating and expanding the ModelOff brand.

• Watch their interview on Excel.TV to learn more about them and about ModelOff.
  
• Johann Odou came back for episode 36 after finishing the 2015 ModelOff Meetups.

The Toronto Social ‘Excel’ Scene

On Thursday September 24th, I attended one of Bill Jelen’s famous Power Excel Seminars. I attended the Toronto ModelOff Meetup the very next day on Friday September 25th. It might be a very long time until Toronto has back to back Microsoft Excel events like this again!

Do you know of any upcoming Microsoft Excel events in the Toronto area?