NCAA Boss Button

Nate (NateO) Oliver reports that the CBS website has a great way to watch any of the NCAA tournament basketball games live over the web at http://www.ncaasports.com/mmod/welcome.



Nate pointed out that Excel is playing a prominent role in the site - if you hear someone approaching your cube, you can click the Boss button, which replaces the live video with an Excel screen:

Someone at CBS has quite a sense of humor - the spreadsheet is actually tracking snack foods consumed during the 2006 tournament. Check out the VP's comments in rows 34-39:

We have over 200 people entered in the 2007 March Madness competition. Check out the results here or click here for more information.

MVP Podcasts + NCAA Results

It is Monday morning after the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament. My bracket is destroyed, as I chose Wisconsin to make it to the championship game and they were upset by UNLV yesterday. Still, we have 209 entries in the 2nd annual MrExcel March Madness competition - so check out the latest results to see if you are still in the running. The entire tournament system is running in Excel - even the HTML results are generated from Excel.

Last week, I was in Seattle for the Microsoft MVP Summit. This was my second summit. Last year, I thought that the point of the Summit were the Microsoft meetings during the day. This year, I've learned that the point of the Summit is interacting with other MVP's after the sessions. The daytime sessions were cool; Bill Gates gave the keynote. The Excel team has plenty of cool ideas in store for Excel 14, due out probably in 2009. I had a chance to hang out with MVP's from Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Office and others. I met 3-4 other MVP's who are recording their own DVD training with Total Training. I had my laptop and podcast equipment, and I managed to coerce about 2 week's worth of podcasts out of other MVP's. Be sure to check out the podcasts this week and next, for podcasts from Bob Umlas, Jon Peltier, Zack Barresse, Anne Troy, Tony Jollans, Curt Frye, and more.

NCAA 2007 March Madness Competition

I'll be running the 2007 NCAA March Madness competition again at MrExcel. Fill out your bracket to predict the winning teams in the men's college basketball tournament. It is free to play and anyone can win. Complete details are here.

Total Training for Excel 2007 Advanced DVD-ROM

The next time you are walking past your marketing department, stop by the cube of the person who creates your marketing materials. Ask if they have ever heard of a company called Total Training. I will bet that they will tell you that Total Training is the best DVD training company for all Adobe products.

Total Training is expanding to provide training for Microsoft. One of their first DVD's is a 6 hour training DVD for Microsoft Excel 2007. I spent a week in their New York studio producing this DVD. The company has excellent production values and created a fantastic, 6-hour training course based on my Power Excel seminar. Pop the DVD in your computer and you can watch me explain pivot tables, charting, subtotals, and more. They really pay attention to detail - every file that I used is included on the DVD. They make sure that the person viewing the software can open the same Excel file and follow the steps along with the DVD.

Personally, I love to travel to a city to do a Power Excel seminar - but there are only so many cities that I can visit each year. This new DVD will allow me to be anywhere there is a computer. Check out screenshots and more at http://www.mrexcel.com/advtraining.shtml.

21 Ways to Create Stem & Leaf Plots

Thanks to everyone who sent in a formula for stem & leaf plots. A discussion of the entries and the winners list is at http://www.mrexcel.com/pc16.shtml.

A new challenge of the month for March/April is now available at http://www.mrexcel.com/challenge.shtml