In this edition of our Wednesday Reconnect Series we’re catching up with Ben Currier, a Massachusetts-born Microsoft Excel MVP from 2013 to 2016.
Having relocated to Colorado, Ben currently splits his time between working as a Senior Accounting Manager for Carbon Chemistry Ltd. and managing the company he founded, Excel Exposure. As acting President of the company, Ben credits his time as an MVP for supplying him the experience and motivation necessary to found Excel Exposure.
“Excel is one of those programs that requires a sort of handing down of almost tribal knowledge from workplace to workplace,” he says. “I was amazed how little Excel training I got from my undergrad/grad degrees.”
Ben explains that he gained a great deal of experience and knowledge as an MVP, as well as a desire to create content and to educate. In the time since, his aim has been to direct that know-how and urge towards creating a free, easily accessible training platform to help others skip the typical long-haul Excel education process of learning things bit by bit.
His company’s site offers users the fruits of his recent efforts: a new Excel Essentials course Ben created over the past summer, with over 5 hours of interactive video training. He was also recently featured on an online courses series podcast.
For Ben, being a Reconnect member is wonderful for the opportunity it offers to maintain relationships with some of the smartest and most interesting people in the software and technical industries. He recently volunteered and participated in Denver Dev Day, and tells us how great it was sharing with current and former MVP speakers.
For new MVPs, the words of wisdom he’d most like to share would be a message encouraging them to keep producing content. “It can be very overwhelming worrying about the quality of your content, but the only way to get better is to continually create more and more to improve your skills,” Ben explained.
He tries to live by the mantra of ‘writing for the trash bin,’ and not letting fear of producing something imperfect keep you from producing at all.
As far as his own plans for the future, he wants to continue to hone his skills as an educator. “Now that I've had over 15 million minutes of my voice listened to explaining Excel, I want to continue to figure out the best ways to teach, how to reach both beginners as well as experts, and never stop learning.”
