You may have heard already, Bill Gates received a lot of press for a stunt he pulled at the TED conference last week - In an effort to get the attention of his audience and raise awareness about Malaria, he released a "swarm" of Mosquitoes. Despite being at what has quickly become THE conference to go to if you're rich, smart, or otherwise important - filled with the greatest minds in technology and other things - Gates spoke nothing of technology. Instead he methodically outlines two great problems his foundation is trying to help address. Malaria and Education.
I can clearly tell he has received some good coaching on his presentation delivery skills - as well as his PowerPoint slide design.
In many ways I consider his talk more pragmatic than inspiring or thought provoking -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think its fair to say that he is doing what he is doing because of the position he is in. I am pretty confident that if most of the people I know, ever had his kind of money - they would be doing similar work. (Gladwell argues this point of privilege thoroughly in his latest: Outliers. In which he ironically uses Gates as a case study)
That said, I think that Bill's calculating approach to problem solving will transfer well to problems of more gravity than whether vista works or not. Most important will be his ability to identify and delegate the right challenges to the right people. Maybe Bill is learning this from Warren Buffet - his largest donor.
Gates pulled and "Oprah" and gave everyone in the audience this book:Work Hard. Be Nice. Written by the founders of the KIPP schools. There is all of this talk about what do to, and how to do it. Well taking a closer look at the organizations who are already doing it, seems like a good place to start.
Check out the talk for yourself below - or on Ted.com here.
Addition: They posted the follow up QA with Chris Anderson in the TEDblog here.
I would be interested to see more data on the health and birth rate correlation.
I can clearly tell he has received some good coaching on his presentation delivery skills - as well as his PowerPoint slide design.
In many ways I consider his talk more pragmatic than inspiring or thought provoking -- which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think its fair to say that he is doing what he is doing because of the position he is in. I am pretty confident that if most of the people I know, ever had his kind of money - they would be doing similar work. (Gladwell argues this point of privilege thoroughly in his latest: Outliers. In which he ironically uses Gates as a case study)
That said, I think that Bill's calculating approach to problem solving will transfer well to problems of more gravity than whether vista works or not. Most important will be his ability to identify and delegate the right challenges to the right people. Maybe Bill is learning this from Warren Buffet - his largest donor.
Gates pulled and "Oprah" and gave everyone in the audience this book:Work Hard. Be Nice. Written by the founders of the KIPP schools. There is all of this talk about what do to, and how to do it. Well taking a closer look at the organizations who are already doing it, seems like a good place to start.
Check out the talk for yourself below - or on Ted.com here.
Addition: They posted the follow up QA with Chris Anderson in the TEDblog here.
I would be interested to see more data on the health and birth rate correlation.
1 comments:
I read about his releasing the mesquitos while I was researching Bill Gates for a history project at school (long story).
That was one of those things that I just had to say "wait...what?" on and go back and read again.
It's good to see that he's trying to bring things more to light, such as malaria and such that are ignored in a lot of places simply because they're not a problem.
http://butnowyouknowit.blogspot.com
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