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Seattle PI reporter Todd Bishop attended today’s goodbye party for Bill Gates held on Microsoft’s Redmond campus and has the audio of Bill Gates’ concluding remarks:
Bill Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer both fought back tears as they concluded a farewell event for the Microsoft co-founder on the company’s Redmond campus this morning. Ballmer presented Gates with a bound scrapbook of photos and memories — acknowledging that no mere parting gift could do justice to the moment. Then Gates addressed Microsoft’s employees for the last time in his full-time role. Here’s what he said.
Since Gates has been gradually weaning Microsoft away from his presence, I’m sure the transition will go off smoothly, but only time will tell if Gates can avoid the curse of founding entrepreneurs who have to come back to straighten out their “babies” when things go awry.
Bill Gates made a valedictory appearance at this year’s TechEd and along with a Steve Ballmer robot had some some development related announcements:
Not on the formal program was a certain amount of uncertainty over the arrival of SQL Server 2008:
He said Microsoft’s SharePoint Server would become the first Microsoft product to use enterprise search from its Fast Search and Transfer acquisition. The delayed SQL Server will be next. "Think of it as SQL Server, but it’s really Fast," he said.
For all the talk of data services, there was still no date on the next edition of SQL Server. Demonstrating SQL Server 2008, Dave Campbell, from Microsoft’s data storage platform division said SQL Server 2008 would be available in the "next month or two."
SQL Server 2008 is due in 3Q so it is not really past its latest due date. Fast Search & Transfer was acquired by Microsoft in January.
Last night was the kickoff of the D6 conference and Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were the opening act. Aside from a little light comedy and some reminiscences, the big news was a teaser for Windows 7 which will have multi-touch support for PCs with the requisite touch screen hardware.
The applications shown seem to be PC versions (e.g. no bar coded foreign objects) of those demonstrated with Microsoft’s Surface table kiosk system (aka "Big ass table") which was demoed last year at D5. Touch screens have been around for Windows seemingly forever via third parties and while it may be useful for kiosk builders to have the support baked into Windows 7, it is hardly the kind of thing that will draw the crowds. Still, it makes a nice demo and that’s the point after all.
Bill Gates delivered his last Microsoft keynote at the International Consumer Electronics Show yesterday and it was fortunately missing a lot of the goofy geek tech of recent years although the more staid and occasionally self-congratulatory tone has drawn some complaints about lack of Microsoft innovation ([1], [ 2]). You can catch the replay video online, but here’s a rundown of the new announcements:
Microsoft yesterday announced a press event on October 16 featuring Bill Gates and Jeff Raikes to launch the next generation of unified communications software or more precisely, “to highlight the general availability of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 and Microsoft Office Live Meeting.”
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