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The Docx Games: Three Days At the Microsoft Office World Championship (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: On a Sunday night two weeks back, in the Rose Court Garden of the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California, 150 antsy competitors between the ages of 13 and 22 milled around eating miniature whoopie pies by the light of the Moon, sizing up their global rivals in the efficient use of Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. It was as if the Olympics opening ceremony was replaced by a networking event: teens were decked out in national T-shirts, while others handed out business cards specially made for the event. At one table off by the bar, two chaperones nudged their folding chairs closer together and taught each other how to say hello ("Yassas," "Ciao") in their respective mother tongues. In the distance, through the palms, the tiki torches of Trader Sam's, the hotel's poolside lounge, were flickering into the black sky. This marked the first night of the 16th Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) World Championship, in which teens and young 20-somethings compete for the title of World Champion in their chosen professional application. It's an event put on annually by Certiport, a Utah-based subsidiary of standardized testing giant Pearson VUE. It's also a marketing stunt, pure and simple, devised to promote Certiport's line of Microsoft Office certifications. This allows the certified to confirm the line on their resume that claims "proficiency in MS Office" is backed up by some solid knowledge of deep formatting and presentation design.
>> ...competitors...sizing up their global rivals in the efficient use of Excel, PowerPoint, and Word
Is this a joke? Or just another sign that we're really on the road to Idoicracy?
I bet though that none of the competitors can get an image to stay where you god damn want it to in Word and not jump around the doc like Skippy the god damn kangaroo on acid.
Create this slide.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
Prozac, Ritalin, Red Bull, and Dockers.
Closed format of a dinosaur company.
Too boring/didn't read.
I want to encourage people who are doing things with their life, becoming more than just media consumption zombies, but it's really tough on this one. Learning nmap and ping would be better.
Anyway, doing something is better than not doing something, so eh, good job competitors!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Don't play this game. You are the one who will get played. They say docx is Office Open XML (OOXML), an open format (an ISO standard indeed, but let us set aside how that came about), but it isn't. Usually it isn't. You are thinking you are receiving or saving a publically documented format but it is actually that plus proprietary extensions such that you cannot interact normally with the rest of the world.
In the distance, through the palms, the tiki torches of Trader Sam's, the hotel's poolside lounge, were flickering into the black sky.
I didn't think it was that kind of event. Did anyone get run down by a car?
no text no text no text
Too hard?
What, program macros into Excel to make it play Life?
PC gaming has officially jumped the shark!
The Microsoft Special Olympics.
Someone needs to introduce these kids to drugs and vandalism, get them off this dark path they're heading down.
It is established that this is a marketing stunt, so Slashdot is giving it free publicity?
Screw that. It's not news, and it doesn't matter.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
I was Wordperfect World Champion at the 1987 Rodeo in Orem!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If this is a legit e-sports event, who won the cosplay competition? Pics of grown-ass employees dressed as Inori Aizawa, Clippy, and John Hodgman or GTFO.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I hear the next installment in the series is already in development.
Excel: Adventure Mode II - The SQL.
Then I suppose the kid with the hoodie and Guy Fawkes mask who is scaring the other kids by frantically rattling his/her keyboard in front of cryptic white text on a black background... misread the title of the contest?