Bill Gates on the road

After speaking yesterday morning at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Bill Gates set off on a whirlwind tour of several Eastern U.S. universities. He spoke yesterday at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with appearances today at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Tomorrow, he's at MIT and Harvard, the school he left in his junior year to work with Paul Allen on their nascent software company.

Here's a transcript of his Illinois speech. As his trip progresses, I'll update this post with coverage from the local papers, TV stations, and wire services in the places he speaks:

Illinois:

• Urbana/Champaign News-Gazette: "Gates stepped to the podium and joked that he was told he couldn't arrive too early on campus Tuesday because most computer science students wouldn't be awake."

• Daily Illini: "Before Gates spoke, about 15 students — one dressed in a penguin suit — handed out hundreds of CDs with Linux software, along with informational pamphlets about the operating system. ... 'It's my way of thumbing my nose at Bill (Gates) and saying "We can do it," ' said Mike Perry, a graduate student and a former intern with Microsoft."

• Associated Press in Urbana (via USA Today): " 'Software is where the action is,' Gates told several hundred students. 'The hardware people are doing their job, they are going to give us the opportunity. But will it be useable? Will it be secure? ... That is certainly something that the software industry needs to deliver on.' "

Carnegie Mellon:

• Pittsburgh Business Times: "Mr. Gates spoke on efforts to solve tough computer science problems to an audience of 750 students, faculty and staff at Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh campus."

• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "The tables were turned on Bill Gates -- if only for a moment. After a speech yesterday at Carnegie Mellon University in which the software guru and world's richest man detailed the trajectory of technology, a student offered him a gift -- a Linux software disk. Related: Gracefully, Gates dances around downloading

• Cleveland Plain Dealer: Gates "laid out a broad vision of a future soaked with Internet connectivity that would feature dynamic improvements to innovations such as speech recognition, artificial intelligence and security technology."

• Plain Dealer reporter Chris Seper blogged about participating in a subsequent interview with Gates: "Splitting a 40-minute interview with Bill Gates with three other reporters is like eating a quarter of a hot dog: you yearn for much, much more." Seper also writes about the Linux CD given to Gates by the CMU student (above) but adds a telling observation: "Gates didn’t have the CD with him when he walked in for his press interview."
  

Cornell:

• AP in Ithaca, N.Y.: "Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates can't understand why everyone doesn't want to become a computer geek."

• Albany Times-Union: "With the products of one corporation -- Microsoft -- arguably at the heart of a wider range of infrastructure than any company has ever been, Gates recognized the importance of getting ahead of those who would exploit Microsoft software's weaknesses."

• News 10 (Syracuse): "According to students, tickets were not easy to get. 'We got an email saying come get tickets from the computer science office and within a half hour of that email going out there was a line out the door ... ' said John Emanuele." (w/video of appearance and student reaction.)

• Cornell Daily Sun: "How a self-professed nerd -- complete with trademark glasses and Mr. Rogers sweatshirt -- managed to keep an audience spellbound while talking about computers is still unclear." Related: The Sun speaks with Bill Gates and Microsoft guru offers tips for success.

MIT:

• IDG News Service, Boston: A student asked Gates what fields he would consider if he were a computer science student today. After drawing laughs for alluding to his decision to drop out of neighboring Harvard University to found Microsoft with Paul Allen, Gates cited artificial intelligence and computational biology as two areas that he would like to study if he were a student again.
  

Harvard:

• Harvard Crimson: "Harvard’s most famous dropout returned to his alma mater yesterday, imploring students to pursue computer science -- and stay in school."
  

Posted by Todd Bishop at February 25, 2004 03:38 PM