Just saw Bill Gates post about his most recent TED talk experience. in Vancouver. It brought back a number memories of intersetions of our lives. From when
- Stephen Abram & I did an article for SLA prior to having Gates keynote their annual conference in Seattle June 1997 — we emailed our questions & published his answers inthe organization magazine & learned he took stacks of books away for his annual retreat & wanted to learn more about how the brain works
- I opened for Gates as a speaker at Mecklermedia’s Internet World conference in New York; well not really but I did a talk on the same stage as he performed after me!
- I introduced Gates as a keynote speaker when I was conference chair of Internet World Canada in Toronto in the late ’90’s & he headed Microsoft (thx to Dave Carter & Natalie MacLean for assistance with that event & still connected with me in different worlds today)
- I watched friend & colleague Donna Scheeder as Presient of IFLA work with many others to to receive money from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fund good library projects in different countries with a view to sustainable communities; the foundation has had a strong commitment to libraries and other programs for many years
You may or maynot lke the man but you have to agree he has made a number of contributions to our world and continues to so! His new book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, should be available soon but in the meantime, do check out is recent TED talk. Definitely makes you think of the future and learning from the past.
