6 ms·
Bill Gates is officially redeemed from presentation purgatory
- mcormier 17y agoWhoever did the slides did a great job.
- conover 17y agoWhile the pictures are cool, I feel that using them as the background for some of the slides distracting. For instance, on the slide that says "26 billion tons of CO2" with the sun peaking around the earth, does the background picture really add much?
- philk 17y agoI think they're so many light years ahead of "here's a whole fuckload of text" that it doesn't really matter. And if you're going to have slides which don't have lots of bullet points you need something to give them visual panache.
- wallflower 17y agoJust submitted this, a personal favorite. Ten amazing presenters and their presentations. Many different styles. Steve Jobs, Dick Hardt, Guy Kawasaki, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Lawrence Lessig, Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Andy Kaufman, Rupert Everett http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2006/08/21/top-10-best-presentations-ever/ http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2006/08/21/top-10-best-presentati... Also, the 10 best that the Readers nominated. Hans Roling, Sir Ken Robinson, Al Gore, Majora Carter, John F. Kennedy, My Name is Joe?, Ze Frank, Douglas Englebart, Steve Jobs, and lastly, Crosby, Stills & Nash http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2006/10/01/top-10-best-presentations-the-readers-choice/ http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2006/10/01/top-10-best-presentati...
- seldo 17y agoI was fully expecting this whole article to be a snarky exposé that he was using Keynote instead of Powerpoint.
- mrshoe 17y agoI don't know what exactly was lacking from Bill's software presentations, but I really don't think it was passion about the subject matter.
- FraaJad 17y agoHe has come a long way since this: http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/it_was_one_of_t.html http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/it_...
- tsally 17y agoLawrence Lessig does presentations like this [1]; I've always been a fan. A great example of this type of presentation done well is Cal Handerson's keynote at Djangocon in 2008 [2], "Why I Hate Django". Previous discussion on this presentation here [3]. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig#Lessig_Method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig#Lessig_Method [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Fr65PFqfk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Fr65PFqfk [3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=305630 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=305630
- psycandrew 17y agoGates Favorite statistics is Childhood Deaths... Guess all that thrash metal never leaves the blood. (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bill_gates_unplugged.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/bill_gates_unplugged.html)
- philwelch 17y agoI don't understand the thrash metal reference but I'm curious. Google only leads me back here.
- acg 17y agoLooks great. I heard in an interview once that Gates would like to win a Nobel prize. This looks like the vice president's route.
- aresant 17y agoHis presentation asthetic reminds me of the Bing.com interface which in turn reminds me of Corbis - which Gates privately owns. He's always had a passion for imaging, interesting to see it just appearing in his presentations and in modern Microsoft products . . .
- joezydeco 17y agoI thought he created Corbis because he wanted to corner the digital art market for picture frames and wall displays. The technology didn't catch up so Corbis became a stock photography house.
- aresant 17y agoYou're probably right. I remember reading in his book "the road ahead" about his obsession with actually using the Corbis collection in his own home, with photos that updated all over the walls etc . . .
- mrcharles 17y agoIs there video of this presentation online?
- MikeCapone 17y agoNo yet afaik. When there is, it will be at http://www.ted.com/talks http://www.ted.com/talks
- vladimiroane 17y agoAmazing slides indeed!
- ghshephard 17y agoUnfortunately, his basic premise is incorrect. Key to every Carbon Management program I've ever read about involves Carbon Sequestration - I.E. Net Negative Carbon reduction. (Think about Planting Trees, growing carbon hungry algae, etc..) Still, a really great presentation.
- roc 17y agoSequestration without first bringing production to zero is a Sisyphean endeavor.
- ghshephard 17y agoThat doesn't make a lot of logical sense. If I can develop an economy in which my gross reduction is 10x my gross production of carbon, resulting in a 9x NET reduction of carbon - why does it really matter if my Carbon Production is zero or not? People tend to lose sight of the fact that it's NET reduction of carbon that we're interested in, not GROSS reduction. I'm fine with an industry putting a million tons of Carbon into the atmosphere as long as it pulls out 1.1 million tons through some mechanism. The fact that Bill's entire presentation is based on a false premise, and that nobody in this thread other than me has called him on it, is disturbing. Pretty slide presentation aside.
- crc32 17y agoI would assume that CO2 per unit energy in his equation is "net of sequestration".
- roc 17y agoWas it a false premise to rein in toxic waste dumping, rather than just concentrating on clean-up technologies? There's that old adage about 'an ounce of prevention', which I think is even more apt in cases such as this, where the 'pound of cure' is an as-yet-undeveloped technology. Mathematically, yes, you could focus on sequestration. But policy-wise, it's inviting disaster to defer today's problems as something to be solved with tomorrow's advancements. And even if a suitable 'pound of cure' is found, it will almost certainly be dramatically more expensive to fix the problem, to say nothing of fixing the collateral damage caused in the interim.
- rbanffy 17y agoMore like "Bill Gates no longer makes his own PPTs"
- brown9-2 17y agoYou think he made them himself when he was presenting Microsoft corporate stuff? If anything, the difference is now he can have a small team of professionals helping him, compared with a bureaucratic army of Microsoft's marketing department.