The geek bandwagon has been rolling for some time now - there's even an educational infographic on the matter. Everyone seems keen to prove themselves slightly more niche than the next person - which closely resembles massive conversations of "Look, my iPhone 4!" "Oh ho, well I have an Android which I can customise in some capacity!", neither of which are particularly niche. Microsoft it seems, are going down the true nerd route, inciting more proper geekiness (the old kind) than Apple Fanboys could ever conceive of doing in the public eye, asking the Facebook public "What's your favourite Excel memory?"
Whilst I may have happy memories of my Father showing me how to create macro buttons and play with easter eggs using the lovely mathy program (shortly after he taught me how to count binary on my hands) I suspect not everyone shared this beautiful history. I have a sneaking suspicion that the average user finds it about as exciting as Powerpoint, if slightly less tedious.
So, drawing on memories - notably this is probably before you owned a Mac and began grumbling at Numbers and the gameplay of the awkward toolbars - comes Microsoft's new competition celebrating Excel's 25th birthday. Another in the line of Microsoft not being very cool, and I sort of like that they're not trying to be. Excited responses are coming through about the joy of VBA, but the big fail is that it's all rather male-centric.
If you're looking to be broadly constructive you'd perhaps point out that it doesn't mind the Microsoft Office package together, marketing-wise (which is obviously not the purpose) and that the prize of an Xbox and Kinect relates little to PCs - unless there is soon to be released an Excel for Xbox game in which you, the mathematician, face a battle against numbers and must efficiently use tables to halt their escape. One can dream.
So, Microsoft urges you to send in your happy memories, and for what it's worth it makes the excel-user in me smile, which I didn't think would be possible. It's a strange little campaign. So, what fond Maths-based memories does Excel conjour for you? "Whether you've used Excel to weigh the pros/cons of the girl you were dating..." suggests Microsoft, the ever gender-neutral organisation, get your cheer-filled answers in now..