News Alert: Bill Gates is officially redeemed from presentation purgatory

Bill was a pretty good presenter at Microsoft events when he spoke without slides, just talking about his passions in technology. He was very honest, straightforward, and committed. I don’t know who did his slide, but everyone I knew at Microsoft used to wince about them… and ignore them to listen to what he was saying.

Having passion about a topic — real passion, not ginned-up I’m-onstage passion — is a key to effective public communication.

He misspelled Conakry though.

Does this epiphany mean he’s going to change the default in PowerPoint to something less bad?

There doesn’t look to be a single slide there that uses the default of anything. Which is good….

Simon

FINALLY!

Crap… this probably means that I might start running out of Bill Gates presenations to use as examples of what not to do.

Wow ! Amazing ! A really plain and powerfull message. I think we would meet a brand new Bill Gates, I just hope, his next keynote would be: “Freedom and Software. What I do wrong in Microsoft, and how I would fix it” xD

This slides are amazing. Just got me inspired to get back to work on mines tonight.

You’re right, he’s truly redeemed himself. A presentation worth a standing ovation (over and over again). Somehow he seems to have done a job far better than Steve Jobs too Redemption at last

you mean ‘garnered’, not ‘garnished.’

great report!

I wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s out done Jobs–but he certainly has caught up to Jobs and Gore and the others. I don’t use his software but I admire his philanthropy and commitment now.

I would LOVE to know who did his slides. I was stunned that it wasn’t Duarte! I wish I could take credit!

“I think it’s because he moved from presenting about his job to presenting about his passion, and suddenly he communicates well.”

Microsoft is not Bill Gates’ “job”, it was his company – he founded it, led it through many years when he could have exited earlier (but I’m sure you knew that already). So it does not make sense why he wouldn’t have passion about that.

Didn’t know he needed redemption.

I’d rather Real and Wonky rather than Fake and Soaring Rhetoric

The problem that seems endemic to all the well-known supporters of ‘zero’ emissions is that of their own basic paradigm: an anthropomorphic world view, which resolves all issues through ‘technological solutions’. At this point in energy-technology-development that solution, given the goal of ‘zero-emissions’ (and zero retreat from market-economy unlimited growth…) translates to: nuclear power–which, by any reasonable measure equals the ‘highway to hell.’

The reality that is generally not faced by the wealthy supporters of ‘zero emissions’ is that once an integrate, ‘closed-system’, becomes totally unbalanced, it will collapse (ex: bacterial over-population of petri dish). To approximate a balanced-system, humans would need to cease all ‘technological’ activity and pursue something on the order of permaculture food production; this is a reality few people have touched on–and for several reasons. First of all, it won’t happen except as a last resort–greed and cultural habits have a lot of momentum. Secondly, it implies a much diminished population, one where centralized control of labor will no longer be possible or even imaginable. In other words, the ‘imperial control’ paradigm will not be possible–a circumstance that is as abhorrent, as it is unimaginable, to the Bill Gates and Al Gores of the world.

One good slide show that he probably had someone else make for him and he’s redeemed for all of the anti-trust violations and illegal practices used by Microsoft the world over to throttle any meaningful competition to what is generally regarded as a mediocre to ok product? It just goes to show how desperate we’ve all become for a real hero with real clout. I want actions. I’m done with words. He should put his billions where his mouth is, and show us real leadership on the issue of climate change. Then I might be more inclined to label him “redeemed” for all of his past shady business practices beginning with Microsoft’s role in the demise of DRDOS.

The video of Bill Gates’ TED talk is now available online – http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html

No surprise that he has come to this. But also about time.

Yes, the world needs to clean-up it’s act, we’ve known this for how long?
Mr. Gates comes along, a product of the mess created by manufacturing, and now says we need to clean it up.
He’s just touting the Al Gore line, the made-up story of C02 gas emissions. The climate scientists are not united on the cause of global weather change, and the Earth changes. Global C02 story is NOT conclusive and no where near that. This is because they can’t prove it to be true, because it NOT true. Climategate proves the dissention and suggests highly that the data isn’t there, and it’s been recently admitted that original data on climate change has been “lost”. It’s a coverup for something larger, something way bigger.
Chris Thomas.

My thoughts echo Steve’s comment: the biggest difference is passion. Yes, the slides were hugely improved but with energy and enthusiasm a speaker can get past mediocre slides but the best slides in the world are lifeless without the passion.