THE POWER OF MICROSOFT EXCEL - SPREADSHEET TECHNIQUES for Ditch Companies
When: Thursday and Friday, March 19 & 20, 2009 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Where: Room C205 Engineering Building Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colorado Cost: $175 for DARCA/CWC members; $350 for non- members
DARCA and Colorado State University are Working Together - DARCA is collaborating with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University on the Spreadsheet Tools to Enhance Water Management by Ditch and Reservoir Companies Project. Professor Darrell Fontane at CSU was awarded funds for the project from the Agricultural Research Station to develop at least three generic spreadsheets to address the needs of mutual ditch and reservoir companies in Colorado. These spreadsheets will allow ditch and reservoir companies to better manage the water they deliver to irrigated agriculture. DARCA is assisting in surveying the needs of water managers, providing insights on design of the spreadsheets, testing the developed products, and helping to disseminate the developed spreadsheets. These DARCA spreadsheets will be discussed and presented at this two-day spreadsheet class. Once the spreadsheet development and testing is completed, documentation and training material will be produced. This documentation will include written training material and tutorial videos (made with Camtasia screen recording software) appropriate for distribution via websites. Please be a part of this effort by contacting DARCA with your thoughts on what set of generic spreadsheets would address major needs that could assist all the ditch companies and especially the smaller companies with more limited resources. Dr. Fontane can be reached at (970) 491-5248 or at
The Power of Excel—Spreadsheet Techniques for Ditch Companies is a hands-on two day workshop in the computer lab. The course is designed to teach smart spreadsheet strategies using Excel 2007 for typical ditch company data processing tasks. There will be plenty of time for the participants to do practice exercises during the two day workshop. Are you awash in data but unsure how to make sense out of it? Do you feel that you are not using data to its full potential for the analysis of decisions? Computer skills, innumeracy and statistical illiteracy are common and are hampering our abilities to think critically when data is part of the decision making process. Would you like to access and use government collected data for your ditch company? This workshop will help solve these problems. After a brief review of basic Excel techniques, we will dive right into collecting data from online sources. We will show you how to use Pivot Tables—a simple but powerful Excel feature that will greatly assist in data evaluation. The two-day workshop will include some tips and recommendations on file management—how to name files and store your data for easy retrieval. We also will demonstrate sample spreadsheet applications for every day ditch company tasks, such as maintaining a shareholder list, basic water accounting and reservoir accounting. We’ll also have demonstrations of advanced spreadsheet techniques. They include statistical analysis and forecasting available water for the season using historical data. If you’ve designed your spreadsheet properly, you’re more than halfway there. With a little study on your own, or help from an outside professional, you can harness the power of Excel and take your data management to a whole new level.
The topics to be covered include:
* Discussion and Demonstration of Generic Spreadsheets – The spreadsheets developed during the CSU project will be discussed and input from the participants will be solicited.
* Using a Ditch Company’s Diversion Records—Quick review of basic techniques, tricks and tips, basic functions, and statistics.
* Finding and Using Outside Data Sources—Online data sources available to the public. Downloading, importing and converting.
* Using Data Sources—Pivot table feature. Charting includes 3D, analyzing, describing, reporting, formatting and printing.
* File Management—Collecting, organizing and maintaining data for easy future access.
* Sample Spreadsheet Demonstrations—Shareholder lists, sorting, filtering and database functions, water accounting and colored water. Reservoir accounting, real-time automated data retrieval.
* Statistical Analysis – A brief and understandable review of statistical concepts used in the analysis of Colorado water data will be discussed. These include measures of central tendency, standard deviation, probability and frequency distributions, scattergraphs, trendlines, correlations matrices, autocorrelation, and regression.
* Advanced Excel Topics—Conditional formatting, user forms, spin buttons, forecasting and simulating water availability through Monte Carlo simulation.
DARCA is fortunate to have Darrell Fontane, Director of the International School for Water Resources and Professor of Civil Engineering at CSU as one of the instructors. Darrell has conducted numerous training sessions on water resources systems analysis, decision support systems and computing technologies. John McKenzie, Executive Director of DARCA and founder of Innovastat Corporation, also will teach the course. John has extensive experience in data analysis, simulation, optimization and forecasting in the context of Colorado water. While a basic working knowledge of Excel is desirable, both beginner and advanced Excel users will learn from this workshop.
Lunch and refreshments are included. Participants receive access to the DARCA website where all of the materials will be available including the sample data sets. Ditch company superintendents, board members, water commissioners, engineers, policy makers, and water professionals will benefit from the training.
Workstations will be provided in the computer lab, but if you are more comfortable with your own laptop, please bring it. You will need Excel 2007 loaded on your computer. Please contact DARCA if you would like a detailed agenda for the two day class.
Limit: 30 attendees.
The Power of Excel—Spreadsheet Techniques is sponsored by: The Department of Civil Engineering at CSU, the Colorado Acequia Association, the Colorado Water Conservation Board, and Leonard Rice Engineers, Inc.
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