Joel Spolsky, of Stack Overflow, Trello, and Fog Creek, did an internal presentation where he just walked through how he uses Microsoft Excel for about an hour.

It’s riveting for two reasons.

First, I learned a bunch of techniques that I didn’t know existed (transpose! named values! oh my!). Unfortunately, many of those don’t apply to Google Spreadsheets, which is worth using due to the simple and powerful collaboration tools. A few of the techniques are universal to spreadsheets, though.

Second, he’s good at it. There is something compelling about watching someone with deep skill and knowledge do their work, regardless of what it is. In the same way, I can enjoy watching a skilled musical perform regardless of my interest and taste in their musical genre.

This style of presentation, featuring a simple tour of the just-beyond-basic features, is a great way to share with co-workers. I’ve learned a ton from watching Stephen use Photoshop, and I got hooked on split-panes in iTerm after watching Malena screen-share in an unrelated presentation.