Bill Gates’ finally steps down from being the chairman of Microsoft this week. I don’t have anything to add on the technology outlook or implications, but thinking about him reminds me of the several times I was a stone’s throw away from him a couple of summer’s ago.

At Microsoft, it’s not rare to see him speaking or presenting, but there was definitely a sense of anticipation and excitement whenever we did get to hear him. I don’t have the same feeling here at IBM (although the most prominent person I’ve heard speak is Steve Mills, the head of the software group and reporting to our CEO Sam Palmisano), although it may have been the intern exuberance. I wonder if FTEs at Microsoft are like that? The most prominent event is the famous Bill Gates’ BBQ hosted at his house. When I was there, it was only open to people in their graduating year in order to limit numbers. Even then, there was a huge number of people.

The event was pretty crazy, and not just because of the numbers. We had to take coaches from around the campus to a local church to pass through a security check (metal detectors). The organizers were adamant that you could not bring anything metallic so I had to leave my wallet, watch, cellphone, camera, keys, in my office to pick up later! After passing through the metal detectors, we went on smaller shuttle buses, which had their underbelly examined by mirrors before departing to Bill Gates’ house.

The BBQ isn’t even IN his house. It was in his backyard on Lake Washington. Of course I wanted to see in his house after reading about it in The Road Ahead so I went in to “use the washroom”. Alas, there’s actually a conference center in the back so all I ended up going to was the washrooms that executives use (no bidet).

Bill Gates made his appearance about halfway through the evening, and everyone migrated towards him. There were your usual geek-guy-trying-to-be-smart type questions, but really, he’s just a normal executive guy. I was surprised that he didn’t have bodyguards (for ninja interns) or snipers on the roof (for XXX agents coming off the lake). I didn’t ask him any questions, nor did I really feel the need to, because even though we were invited to his house, we weren’t able to connect with him. What I got out of it was this memory that I was *that* close to him and was a Bill Gates Groupie for a night.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: microsoft, stories