The point rather is that you and I cannot present like Bill under any circumstance. He's been doing it 'the Microsoft way' for a long time and the world keeps on spinning. I am not suggesting that Bill Gates change his presentation style (though I'd pay my own way to Redmond and work for free to help Bill with his next presentation). Bill Gates is a remarkable man, why can't his presentations be remarkable too? Every time Bill does one of these 'PowerPoint presentations' he legitimizes and validates this tedious style of presenting with slides. His style is 'normal' and 'typical' and his presentations are largely unmemorable as a result.
His keynotes are not terrible, they are just very average and unremarkable. I'm sure that's true, but mastering the large keynote presentation on stage still eludes him. My friends at Microsoft tell me he's a pleasure to talk to one-on-one. He's a nice guy and he's certainly a great philanthropist. So I watched this entire Bill Gates presentation recently (twice).
Since PowerPoint 2007 has been out quite a while now I wondered if Bill Gates' visuals and delivery have improved along with the software. It's been almost two years since I wrote this post comparing the approaches to presentation by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
