Happy Spreadsheet Day 2024! VisiCalc 45th Anniversary!

Happy Spreadsheet Day 2024! And a very Happy 45th Anniversary to VisiCalc!

Spreadsheet Day Year 15

The first Spreadsheet Day was on October 17, 2010, so this is our 15th year of spreadsheet celebrations.

And we celebrate world-wide, so it’s  “Spreadsheet Day” ✅ , not “National Spreadsheet Day” ❌.

How It Started

Back in February 2010, I proposed that we celebrate Spreadsheet Day, and asked for suggestions for an appropriate date.

In March 2010, I set up a poll, based on the suggested dates, and the winning date was October 17th.

That date is a tribute to VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet for personal computers. It was released on October 17th, 1979, according to Peter Jennings’ notes.

• Note: To read more about how Spreadsheet Day got started, you can go to the About page.

How to Celebrate

How to you celebrate Spreadsheet Day? Do you dress in green, and spend the day working on Excel projects?

Do you bring a beautifully decorated “sheet” cake to the office, like the one shown below,  from the amazing people at Tiller?

Spreadsheet Day sheet cake by Tiller

Spreadsheet Day Activities

For inspiration, hare a few Spreadsheet Day activities that I suggested in my original post:

• The 50 yard dashboard?
• Rowing competitions?
• All day cell-ebrations?
• Sitting in a Lotus position?
• Pie Chart eating contests?

It’s 15 years later, and those ideas still sound fun!

Dan Bricklin TED Talk

To learn more about VisiCalc, and its development, watch this TED Talk by VisiCalc co-creator, Dan Bricklin.

Excel Past, Present, Future

On Spreadsheet Day 2020, the MS Excel Toronto Meetup had an online celebration, hosted by Celia Alves and Bill Jelen (Mr. Excel).

In the event’s video on YouTube, you can watch an interesting discussion of Excel‘s past, present and future.

The participants are notable Excel experts, including Dan Flystra (developer of Solver), Rob Collie (creator of Power Pivot), and David Monroy (Senior Program Manager on Microsoft’s Excel Team)

Tag Your Tweets

Have fun with your spreadsheets today, and if you tweet about it, you can include this hashtag:

• #SpreadsheetDay

That way, I can find your contributions, when I’m doing the Spreadsheet Day 2024 roundup later.

To see the tweets from last year, go to the Spreadsheet Day 2023 Roundup post.

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Happy Spreadsheet Day 2024! VisiCalc 45th Anniversary!

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