Microsoft Student Partners

560 Office 2007 Trial CD’s
7 Comp Sci First Years
1 Challenge…

So the other day Mitch and myself received about 80 Office 2007 Trial CD’s each, combined with the 400 CD’s I had left over from last year left us in a bit of a dilemma – how to distribute them all? Our first thoughts went to the Curtin Abacus (Computing) labs, and while they were happy to have a stack of CD’s at their helpdesk, they weren’t willing to actively distribute over 500 disks. Luckily, help was at hand – in lieu of the traditional ComSSA Scavenger Hunt, we were looking for another fun event for our new first years, and what better than to have them run around campus handing out Office 2007 trial CD’s?

The challenge began Wednesday during Common Free time (12-2pm), with seven first years turning up to join in. After each dressing up in the provided pirate gear (yes, we made them dress up as pirates ), and taking a wad of trial CD’s,  the first years ran off to spread the CD’s amongst the populace, while Mitch and myself kept a tally of the number each First Year had dispersed.

As the day wound down, and finding students without CD’s became increasingly difficult, we called a stop to the madness. It had also become apparent who had distributed the most: Frank, with a grand total of 200 CD’s. The other results:

For winning the day, Frank won himself a copy of Vista Ultimate SP1, and all of the First Years got a "It’s Not Piracy" T-Shirt for their efforts. Overall, the day was a huge success, especially for something so spontaneous.

This, however, left us with the problem of what to do with the other 90 CD’s? There was only one solution: donate them to the University; and Curtin’s Abacus Labs (ie the general computing labs) were much happier with accepting the much reduced box.

So, an awesome day of fun, prizes, exercise and education for all!

And, don’t forget, you can get your copy of Office Ultimate for only $75 at http://www.itsnotcheating.com.au

– Daniel
Curtin MSP