Part of my job has become to teach a semi-regular lunchtime seminar on our database standards and practices. And because it's a lunchtime seminar on database standards and practices, it takes a lot of effort and energy to make it not the most boring thing on the planet. I think I'm pretty good at it. Of course, if the Dunning-Kruger Effect is to be trusted, I would be unable to tell if I wasn't very good at it. Still, it's basically a talk about ways to use our database better, so it's a talk about how to do relatively boring stuff in a less time so you'll be less bored overall in your life.
I think this is a laudable goal. Also, I put lots of jokes in my presentations.
Most of my ideas for future presentations are arcane and won't make any sense to anyone working outside of our database: List and Extractions. Managing Output Sets. Proper Use of Restricted Gifts. Things like that. But during my last presentation, my next seminar just fell into my lap.
In the course of teaching about Restricted Gifts, I right-clicked on something and a context menu opened up, and the crowd went wild. A significant portion of them had never used the menu that opens up upon right-clicking before. I suddenly realized that there are things that I do that are almost second-nature, and each one incrementally speeds up my day. And when I do them in front of others, they treat me like I'm a shaman.
So I've found my calling. Unfortunately, my calling is teaching people how to use computer shortcuts. I'm going to, over the course of an hour, teach my coworkers all the little things that exist in Outlook, Word, Excel, and Windows that will make their job just a little easier to do.
I know some people are beyond help. My old boss was the head of the Development Database at my organization, and she was the single worst computer user I've ever seen. If she wanted to open something on her desktop, she would go down to the Start Menu, go up to the Computer, go into the C: Drive, go into the Windows Folder, and then go into the Desktop Folder. From there, she'd click on the icon.
But most people just need to be shown that something is possible. So what should I cover? Some things will be contingent on the current set up of my particular office, of course.
Certain things I'm definitely going to cover.
The wonder that is the CTRL key. Things covered in this.
The Underline, Bold, Italics family.
Cut, Copy, Paste
Highlight All.
Using CTRL to get around your word document without using the mouse.
Using CTRL Del and CTRL Backspace to delete things faster
Alt-Tab
The Tab Key, and shift Tab.
The Scroll Wheel
Everything Right Click can do for you
Quickly minimizing all windows to get to something on your desktop, or Alt Tabbing to the desktop.
Microsoft Word Hacks
Outlook Hacks
Setting up Filters to Handle Spam
Setting up Filters to Handle Bacn
Ways to Manage email overload
Anything else I should cover that you can think of? Or think I should swap out and do more of instead?