Nguyen
Kinh Doanh and Bill Gates at UCLA
On
Wednesday November 27, 1996, Bill Gates was at Ackerman Grand Ballroom,
UCLA. The auditorium was very crowded.
He said, “Computers have been more and more effective communication equipments
and their influences are tremendous.The
clear evidence is today they are in competition and parallel to printing
machines, telephones, radios, and televisions.
The rapid development of computer technology is related to Moore’s Law.”
Moore’s
Law is the empirical observation that the complexity of integrated circuits,
with respect to minimum component cost, doubles every 24 months.
It is attributed to Gordon E. Moore, a co-founder of Intel.
William
Henry “Bill” Gates was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington.
He is the co-founder, chairman, former chief software architect, and former
CEO of Microsoft Corporation. In
addition, Gates founded Corbis, which is developing one of the world’s
largest resources of visual information – a comprehensive digital archive
of art and photography from public and private collections around the globe.
He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc.,
which invests in companies engaged in diverse business activities.
Forbes
magazine’s The World’s Billionaires list has ranked him as the richest
person in the world for the last twelve consecutive years.In
1999, his wealth surpassed $100
billion making him America’s first centibillionaire.
According to the Forbes 2004 magazine, Bill Gates’s net worth was approximately
$46.6 billion. When family wealth
is considered, his family ranks second behind the Walton family.
Gates
is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution.
He is widely respected for his foresight and ambition.
Since amassing his fortune, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic
endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations
and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
founded in 2000. In June 2006 he
announced that he would move to a part-time role with Microsoft in 2008
to begin a career in philanthropy, but will remain a chairman.
In
his April 7, 2006 article for Fortune, he relates, Microsoft has more
than 50,000 people, so when I’m thinking, “Hey, what’s the future of the
on line payment system?” or “What’s a great way to keep track of your memories
of your kid?” or any neat new thing, I write it down.
Then people can see it and say, “No, you’re wrong” or “Did you know about
this work being done at such-and such a place?”
Paper
is no longer a big part of his day.
He gets 90% of his news online, and when he goes to a meeting, he uses
a Tablet PC to jot things down.
It is fully synchronized and has a note-taking piece of software called
OneNote, so all his notes are in digital form.
Four
months ago, Bill Gates visited Hanoi University and over 8,000 students
gave him star welcome. The audience
cheered and gave Gates a standing ovation after hearing him talk about
future hi-tech projects such as tablet computers and mobile phones more
powerful than today’s desktop computers.
In
retrospect, nearly ten years have passed since I met with Bill Gates and
Greg Shaw, his Public Relations Director, at UCLA, but I still remember
Greg Shaw told me, I can speak Vietnamese mot, hai, ba, bon
(one, two, three, four). I asked
him how could he speak Vietnamese. He replied, I have many Vietnamese
friends. They are very diligent,
courteous, and friendly.Vietnamese
are good people and always devoted to the family.
NGUYEN KINH DOANH
AUGUST 2006
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