William H Gates
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
In last year’s TARC Imagine Day, we had the privilege to meet Joe Wilson, Senior Director of Academic Initiatives at Microsoft. Most unfortunately, we couldn’t have met him in a better circumstance. We were all tired, and worried about what’s going on downstairs in College Hall. We were all quiet, and didn’t ask him much.
But he did say something about Bill Gates – which is of his mental capacity. During an event (Imagine Cup finals in Redmond I think), Joe prepare a speech for Bill. Bill read the script once through, just moments before his cue. Bill went on to deliver the speech, reciting Joe’s script, word for word. At that point, Joe got a little worried – he was afraid that if he made a mistake in the script, Bill would just read it right out!
Yeah, that be the mental capacity of the world’s richest man. Perhaps that’s a tiny feat, compared to what Joel Spolsky remembers of Gates:
Then Bill turned to me. I noticed that there were comments in the margins of my spec.
He had read the first page!
Not only that, he had read the first page and written little notes in the margins. Considering that we got him the spec only about 24 hours earlier, he must have looked at it the night before
It gets better..
He was flipping through my spec! (Calm down; what are you, a teenager?) And there were notes in all the margins! On every page! He had read the Whole Darn Thing!
The spec that Joel’s referring to is of Excel VBA at it’s infancy.
After finishing Joel’s article, I had to say, I was kinda inspired. It’s just amazing when you look at Gates’ mental prowess. It’s a peek into what it takes to be one of the world’s richest. I must get off my ass and start working harder!
See also: Gates’ Tech.Ed 08 keynote, also his last public speech. Jump to about 4 minutes into the video for a “director’s cut” of how his last day at Microsoft may be. There’s also a video interview on Channel 9 – Bill Gates: Transitioning into the Future.
