Bill Gates: The Road Ahead..

This week marks the last week that Bill Gates is a full time Microsoft employee and begins focusing his time on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  To me this marks and end of an era and a time of significant change.  This past year I passed the 20 year mark at Microsoft and Bill has always been there running the company and providing guidance on our software roadmap.  Kind of like our techno geek compass.  I was fortunate to meet Bill in the early days in the late 80’s when Microsoft was still a young company and have had many opportunities to see him speak at internal meetings.  I was also fortunate to look after him when he visited Australia in 1998 and 2000 as his personal minder.  This involved being his technical contact and looking after his PC while he was here.  It was both rewarding and stressful at the same time.  I was kind of thinking what if he asks me a really deep technical question?  I’d be dead man.  Fortunately when he arrived for the first visit he just wanted to know how to get an outside line so he could connect remotely into the office.  Whew!  That was a relief.  “Just dial “0” and you’re good to go” was my response.

So this week say goodbye to Bill but at the same time we wish him well in his future endeavours!  I know he’ll rock as always.  So with that check out the video below as a fitting tribute to Bill..

Later Bill..

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Jeffa