Bill Gates is officially redeemed from presentation purgatory | Hacker News Reader

Bill Gates is officially redeemed from presentation purgatory

blog.duarte.com

114 pointsFraaJad26 comments

Whoever did the slides did a great job.

While 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?

I 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.

Just 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-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-presentati...

I was fully expecting this whole article to be a snarky exposé that he was using Keynote instead of Powerpoint.

Lawrence 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

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Fr65PFqfk

[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=305630

His 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 . . .

I 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.

You'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 . . .

Looks great.

I heard in an interview once that Gates would like to win a Nobel prize. This looks like the vice president's route.

Unfortunately, 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.

Sequestration without first bringing production to zero is a Sisyphean endeavor.

That 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.

I would assume that CO2 per unit energy in his equation is "net of sequestration".

Was 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.

Gates 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)

I don't understand the thrash metal reference but I'm curious. Google only leads me back here.

I 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.

He has come a long way since this: http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/it_...

More like "Bill Gates no longer makes his own PPTs"

You 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.

No marketing department could be that incompetent. Remember: they graduated in marketing and should have strong communication skills.

Decision made by committee can lead to really crazy things

Is there video of this presentation online?

No yet afaik.

When there is, it will be at http://www.ted.com/talks

Amazing slides indeed!

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