Excelling in … Excel? Inside the high-stakes, secretive world of competitive spreadsheeting

The Guardian

4 days ago

Six years ago, Melbourne-based film-maker Kristina Kraskov read an article about an international Microsoft Excel competition and had two thoughts. The first: 'What the hell, that can't be real.' The second: 'There's got to be a film about this – I want to watch it so badly.'
There wasn't a film about competitive spreadsheeting, so Kraskov decided to make it herself. The subject appealed to the director, whose work captures 'different inner worlds that are a bit unusual on the outside', including a short film titled Party in the Back, about a mullet festival.
Spreadsheet Champions, which will screen at the Melbourne international film festival, follows six young competitors from around the world as they head to Florida for the 2023 Microsoft Office Specialist world championship to showcase their skills. It might sound silly, but Excel is an incredibly sophisticated application – according to the documentary, the average person uses only 10-15% of its capabilities, but would-be competitors are required to understand closer to 70% of what it can do.
The competition is built and run by Certiport, a performance-based examination provider, and officially endorsed by Microsoft. It's a two-parter: the first half tests proficiency in formulas, functions and features through a series of complex questions, graded on both accuracy and speed. The second section is a more creative application of this knowledge – as Kraskov puts it, 'understanding the story of the data, or the soul of what it is actually telling you'.
The championship has run since 2002 and is open to students between the ages of 13 and 22. Each competitor first has to qualify as the best in their home country. For such an esoteric endeavour, the stakes are oddly high – the MOS championship only allows competitors to enter once in their lives.
'In most sporting competitions, you have your main players that come back every year and your very set rivalries – but for this competition, they can only compete once, so everyone that's coming through can never come back,' Kraskov says.
'They qualify in their home countries at vastly different times around the world, so it made it really challenging for us – but as soon as anyone qualified in a country that we could go to, we would talk to them on Zoom, and work our way down from there.'
The six competitors in Spreadsheet Champions are Alkimini, 20, from Greece; Braydon, 16, from Australia; Carmina, 16, from Guatemala; De La Paix, 19, from Cameroon (who doesn't have a laptop or wifi, so had to study at school); Mason, 15, from the US; and Nam, 21, from Vietnam. Each contestant has personality quirks which shine through in the film – from the camera-shy and stereotypically 'nerdy' to the charismatic and boisterous. 'Our intention is really about how amazing this competition is – we're not here to make fun of or disparage anyone,' Kraskov says.
Kraskov and the film's producer, Anna Charalambous, spent about a week with each competitor in their home country, observing their day-to-day lives, from home to school, and spending time with their family and friends.
'People reveal themselves a lot if you just pay attention to how they live their lives,' Kraskov says. 'Teenagers are not quite fully formed adults yet, so they don't really connect things about themselves or their personalities – they just live their lives. The parents were so insightful and knowledgable about their kids – it gave us a lot of information about how they would potentially thrive or struggle, and who they really were.'
Many of the contest's specifics are shrouded in secrecy, which posed another challenge for the film-makers. The competition is overseen by a man named – in a wonderful example of nominative determinism – Bing.
'It's so high-level security,' Kraskov says. 'Bing eventually trusted us and gave us questions that would be retired … At the end of the day, he has to deliver a hardcore, secure, world-expert level exam the next year, and our priority is to show the complexity of what it is and what they're doing.'
Participating in the MOS Championship can set these kids up for adult life. Carmina, the Guatemalan competitor, is now 18 and studying mechatronics engineering at university. In the film, she is shown as a bubbly, bright teenager who loves One Direction (she still does) and excels at, well, Excel.
Watching the documentary transported Carmina back to the competition and her younger self – and made her realise what she took from the experience. 'I knew the results already, but watching it again [I felt] a little bit of suspense,' she says. 'I tend to doubt a little bit of myself and with that experience [of competing] I learned to just go into it and try things out … It helped me a lot.'
Spreadsheet Champions had its world premiere at SXSW in Texas earlier this year and five of the six students will be in Melbourne to attend Miff. Kraskov is proud to shine a light on them – everyday people doing something a little different with their lives.
'Celebrities, musicians and models get plenty of attention,' she says. 'But people that dedicate their lives to things that a lot of people don't care about – I find that so much more fascinating.'
Spreadsheet Champions airs at the Melbourne international film festival from 10-24 August; see here for all dates and locations.