When people think of teens competing for prizes, usually Microsoft Office isn’t the medium being used. Nonetheless Microsoft has been holding a Microsoft Office Specialist competition for 13 years now. Contestants compete by recreating office documents while being timed. The only options are Word, Excel, and PowerPoint which makes sense since they are the most iconic Office programs.
The competition is a simple way to engage anyone ages 13 to 22 in advanced document creating. Adobe does a similar competition where contestants must recreate a document using Adobe programs, but other than Microsoft and Adobe, no other companies hold these types of events. This isn’t too surprising since there aren’t too many major desktop publishing software companies with enough iconic programs.
Dallas Texas is the site of this years competition and there have been over 700,000 people trying to get this far. Winners in each category win $5000 scholarships. With Adobe and Microsoft, the certification and testing company Ceriport will be hosting this year. Good luck to all the contestants!
