George Mount

I’ve been building out something I call the Modern Excel Playbook, a store that brings together the same frameworks, workshops, handouts, and project materials I use with real clients. The goal is to offer a structured way to approach Excel, analytics, and AI so your work becomes more reliable, more scalable, and more deliberate. You can begin with a few free, role-based guides to get a sense of what’s possible. From there, there are short quick win courses on topics like Python in Excel, Power Query, and AI workflows. If you’re ready to go further, you’ll find in-depth handbooks, workshop recordings, and bundled trainings. There’s also a low-pressure monthly membership with new releases to help you stay current without feeling like you have to keep up with every feature update. If you care about doing stronger, more thoughtful work in Excel, I’d invite you to take a look and let me know what you think: stringfestdata.gumroad.com

The Post-Gazette’s torch has burned brightly for Pittsburgh. Next up, the hand-off. post-gazette.com/opinion/david-… via @PittsburghPG

MIT Sloan Management Review to Cease Publication inc.com/kevin-haynes/m…

I can't tell you how useless it is to just fire off a bunch of events and ideas at someone who's trying to build a social life, especially when you've never even been to those things yourself and don't have any real "in." It's so easy to just barf up a nice checklist of clubs, volunteer spots, meetups, whatever to check out. The hard part is actually showing up, going back again, and seeing the same people enough times that you're not a complete stranger and wallflower every time you walk in. What people actually need is some kind of foothold and level of consistency. And honestly, having someone who already knows the space and can kind of guide you in or introduce you around is huge. For less gregarious people that's often the difference between something sticking and something just being another one-off you tried once and never went back to. Otherwise it's just bunch of random suggestions that sound good on paper but don't lead anywhere.

I’m opening up another run of my Modern Excel workshop next month: eventbrite.com/e/modern-excel… This is a five-session live series where we work through the tools that tend to make the biggest difference in day-to-day analysis: Power Query for data preparation, Power Pivot for building data models, dynamic arrays for more flexible formulas, and then Python and Copilot for extending what Excel can handle. Each session is hands-on, and the goal is to build workflows you can actually carry into your own work. We’ll spend time inside the tools, working through examples, and connecting the pieces so things feel cohesive rather than scattered. Along with the live sessions, you’ll get: - Five 60-minute live training sessions - Full access to workshop recordings - Demo notes and handouts - An ebook copy of Modern Data Analytics in Excel - A certificate of attendance Everything is designed so you can revisit the material and keep building on it after the workshop wraps up. I hope to see you there.

Some of you are packing your bags for the Global Excel Summit in London this month... I'm not jealous at all... 😉 But here's the good news: you don't need a passport to spend a great day with the global Excel community. The Summit runs an online Masterclass track too, and I'm teaching one on May 18. It's called Becoming a Citizen Developer with Power Platform, and it's built for the Excel power users who keep getting asked to "just throw together a quick dashboard" or "build a little tool the team can use." You know who you are. You're already the spreadsheet whisperer on your team; this class is the path out of being the bottleneck and into being the builder. Over five hours, we'll move from Excel into the rest of the Power Platform with hands-on examples the whole way. By the time we wrap, you'll be able to: - Trigger automated workflows directly from Excel with Power Automate and Office Scripts, so your spreadsheet kicks off the work instead of just recording it - Build a real-time Power BI dashboard your stakeholders can open themselves, no more emailing a refreshed file every Monday morning - Turn an Excel table into a working Power App that your teammates can actually use on their phones - Stand up a Copilot Studio chatbot that answers questions about your business data, so you stop being the human helpdesk for the same five questions If you've ever felt stuck as "the Excel person" who's drowning in one-off requests, this is the upgrade. You'll leave with the working files, the full recording, a certificate of attendance, and 5 CPD hours in your back pocket. May 18, 2026 · 16:00–21:00 BST · online only 👉 Grab a seat: globalexcelsummit.com/product/becomi… See you there (virtually).

I had a great walkthrough of my hands-on sessions with my student TAs for this year’s 50th annual Meonske Professional Development Conference at Kent State University. There are still a couple of days left to register at kent.edu/business/meons…, so if you’re in the Northeast Ohio area I’d love to see you there. It’s two full days of learning, networking, CPE credit, and even some Excel fun in a beautiful new analytics lab. Hope to see you there.

which friend are you

I am excited to share that my Panera Sip Club membership has renewed for another year, and thus my reign as the remote work king of the southwestern Cleveland suburbs continues.

I never realized the musical expression rubato literally means "stolen," like stolen time. As a lifelong aspiring musician, I should probably just learn Italian at this point...

My Instant Pot and I are taking this near-freezing weather in May very seriously.

Been having my own Mayday Parade at home all day, just me cleaning and working while listening to Mayday Parade. Thanks very much. Probably the only Mayday parade I’ll ever attend.

She's a beauty! 🇺🇸✈️ @AmericanAir just unveiled a special America250 commemorative aircraft at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), marking 100 years of American Airlines and 250 years of America. Our EVP Jen Condon was there alongside CEO Robert Isom for the big reveal.

Well my Copilot icon finally branched off the ribbon and hit the Excel grid totally gracelessly, and the fact I can’t even relocate it is pretty maddening. Why are we putting literal pop-ups in Excel now that you can’t even close? Not gimmicky at all 😩

WTF happened to the PF Chang creamy sesame dressing? Did it get discontinued??

It's Friday. The week was long. The last thing anyone wants is one more meeting. Especially when you work for yourself. There's no salary covering the half hour you just lost to someone else's pitch deck. Owning a one-person business has sharpened a quiet skill: spotting the meeting requests that benefit the other side a lot more than they benefit me. I wrote up the patterns. A few of the worst offenders: - The friend who has been talking about starting a business for years and now wants to brainstorm yours - The LinkedIn stranger who skipped every step of building a relationship and went straight to "30 minutes tomorrow" - The software vendor flattering you into a demo - The event organizer offering "exposure" - The recruiter who can't tell you anything about budgets - The client who already proved once that they don't respect your scope None of those meetings make my work better. Most of them quietly subsidize someone else's pipeline. Saying no protects the few hours each week when I actually get to build something. Full post at stringfestanalytics.com/how-to-avoid-u…

All I can say is I am ready for May flowers.

The First State is next on the Our American Story tour. 🇺🇸🚐 Dover, Delaware, find us at the Dover Days Festival on May 2 from 10am-2pm and share your story for America's 250th.

"This class will save you 3+ hours every week!"

Why on earth would I buy Cinco de Mayo merch for America’s semiquincentennial? What, are they gonna roll out a Bastille Day line next? store.america250.org/collections/ci…

Happy birthday, Claude 🎉 Not the AI we've all been talking to lately.... The actual man. Claude Shannon was born on April 30, 1916, and if you've used a spreadsheet, sent an email, or asked an AI for help today, he's worth knowing a little about. While still a graduate student at MIT in 1937, Shannon wrote a master's thesis showing that Boolean algebra could be used to design electrical circuits. It's sometimes called the most important master's thesis of the twentieth century, because it laid the foundation for every digital computer ever built. In 1948, he published "A Mathematical Theory of Communication," which defined the "bit" as the fundamental unit of information and gave us the math behind data compression, error correction, and reliable communication over noisy channels. No internet, no streaming, no large language models without it. Anthropic naming their AI "Claude" is a tip of the hat, which is fitting since the technology runs on the information theory he built. The point of dredging up this history, especially for those of us in finance and analytics: the tools we use every day did not appear from nowhere. Knowing the stack of ideas underneath them gives you better instincts about what they can and cannot do, and makes the work feel less like pressing buttons and more like participating in a much longer conversation. So happy birthday, Claude (Shannon). Thanks for the bits.