IW Executive Prodcast - Bill Gates, Chairman - Microsoft
A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Redmond for a customer briefing. While I was out there, I got the rare opportunity to interview Bill Gates, company co-founder and Chairman of Microsoft. As you might imagine, his time is closely guarded, so I was ecstatic when I got 30 minutes on his calendar. We sat down in Bill's personal office, where I asked him questions focused around the information worker space.
During our session, Bill discusses the future of business productivity applications and how they are being influenced by consumer focused technologies like blogs and wikis. He also explores how the workers from this next generation (digital natives) have different expectations for the tools they will use to collaborate and get their work done. Bill also gives some insight into the next wave of innovation for the Office System, highlighting the work that we'll do in "Office 14" and beyond. Finally, he talks about his transition to "part-time" at Microsoft and what types of projects he'll be working on in the future.
It truly was a thrill to be given the time to talk to Bill Gates. I hope you enjoy the prodcast as much as I enjoyed recording it. For those of you who prefer to read rather than listen, I'll be posting a transcript of the interview as soon as I get time to type it up.
Click the links below to play audio (20:41)
WMA Version
MP3 Version
For more information about Bill Gates, please see his website on Microsoft.com.
Later this week, I'll be interviewing a special guest for IW Talk...this will be a prodcast that you won't want to miss!!! (more about that very very soon) For the upcoming mystery guest, we'll be discussing the future of productivity tools and the direction of Microsoft information worker solutions. To set the stage for the upcoming session, I thought I would re-post my interview with Chris Capossela, who gave a great overview of the value of the 2007 Office System. Prior to the 2007 Office System launch, I was fortunate to sit down with Chris, who is the Vice President in charge of the Information Worker business here at Microsoft.