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.

Comments

Is this a joke?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> ...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?

Re:Is this a joke?

[rogoshen1]

Well clerics and financial analysts are totally different, but I think i can help answer.

Clerics usually wear plate armor, run around with scepters/maces (really any kind of blunt weapon). They're sort of like paladins, just slightly less full of themselves and 'muh chivalry'. They're also pretty much zealots, in their fanatical worship of Rodcet Nife (or Innoruuk, if evil).

SO for skills, they must be good at casting complete heal, and running to remote places to resurrect people. Also keeping a supply of peridots and other gems on hand is a must.. So good inventory management for sure.

Financial analysts.. they're like halflings, right? No one cares about halflings. Go back to Rivervale and stay there you hairy footed bastards.

Re:Is this a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this a joke?

Oh, no! In fact, I have enrolled in the Linux version of these games.

Our goal is to build a complete computational fluid dynamics simulation of a NACA airfoil using a shape description provided, in under 3 hours, using nothing but options to the "ls" command. We have been given a 524 page, leather bound copy of the "ls" manpage, and the first team to complete the task and successfully simulate the airfoil behavior under stalling conditions wins. You may use any ls option or combination of options. Bonus points are awarded for (1) multithreading, and (2) use of the GPU.

Next year, there's going to be something about "grep" and stress/strain calculations related to automobile bridges. I'm starting to brush up already.

Re:Is this a joke?

[munch117]

No, it's finally making sense: Microsoft Office is an adventure game. That's why there's no documentation. That's why all the features are randomly patched together instead of being joined by a common design concept. That's why the ribbon shuffles around and changes whenever you resize the window. And "This product doesn't have a valid license" is really the grue, which sneaks up on you if you stand still too long.

So obvious in hindsight, how did I not see it before? I can't believe I didn't get the ironic joke of calling them "productivity aplications". I actually thought they were being serious!

You are in a twisty maze of spreadsheet cells, all alike.

PowerPoint finals

[Megahard]

Create this slide.

Don't Forget The Corporate Sponsors

[cunina]

Prozac, Ritalin, Red Bull, and Dockers.

Be cool like Fonzy

[kfh227]

PC gaming has officially jumped the shark!

Wut?

[richy freeway]

Someone needs to introduce these kids to drugs and vandalism, get them off this dark path they're heading down.

ask me about "reveal codes"

[Thud457]

I was Wordperfect World Champion at the 1987 Rodeo in Orem!

Re:Special Olympics of the IT World

[Billly Gates]

I disagree.

If you can figure out how to debug IE 6 CSS code so it looks pretty and works flawless among all browsers then you are a God. You may loose your hair in the process. Also as a regular user it would be nice to figure out how to outdo the formatting errors in MS Word on my resume. I started over with a template and I have to make fonts a different size in certain parts so they all look the same size throughout ?! I am not kidding on that one. Each version of Word renders it differently so HR thinks I am a retard if they use Word 2010 which shows the correct font sizes but not on 2016. This is my third resume redo this decade too because of other horrible formatting issues.

God bless anyone that can debug that nightmare.

So...

[Pseudonym]

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.

Re:Special Olympics of the IT World

[phantomfive]

Print your resume out as a PDF. Everyone accepts that.

Also, super not impressed that your explanation is working around the bugs in this crappy software