RE: UKNM: Bill Gates Interview

[Sean Phelan]

>you have one of the best visionaries of our time interviewed, and you come

>out with questions like

>

>"what is your best bill gates joke"

>

>I agree paxman did not have a clue.

>

Hm... yeah, we just got back from Telecom'99 in time to see the interview,

and thought that this wasn't classic Paxman.  But I have to say I was stunned,

amazed and shocked that Bill's PR people let him in front of Paxman at all.


Given that the entire media world wants to interview Bill, and that they

can have their pick of media and interviewers, it was a surprising choice.

However, for the same reasons it was also a real coup for Paxman.  Given

that Jeremy would quite like to keep getting the uber-A-list interviewees,

I think he may have been gentler than usual.


Also, I could not help noticing the excellent timing - Sunday night, 8pm

must be just about peak time for all those ABC1 decision-makers (however,

I know all you media buyers know that stuff inside out... let me know if

I'm mistaken on this).


But I have to say that Jeremy asking Bill for his favorite Bill Gates

joke really appealed to me, and I think Bill missed a great soundbite

opportunity by fluffing it.  He's obviously trying to portray a more

human side (all the stuff about what is really valuable in life, etc.)

and telling a BillG joke himself would have been a good move in this

direction.


Bill was much more interesting in Geneva last week at Telecom'99... Phones

and PDAs as the next big platform, etc. etc.   Microsoft is distributing

a component-level browser WITH SOURCE CODE to cellphone and PDA makers,

which I think is a distinct lurch toward open source.  And it is high-

growth market where they don't have a dominant share and there is LOTS

of "path dependence", so Microsoft is pulling out all the stops...


Cheers

Sean

=============================================================

Sean Phelan

seanmultimap [dot] com

     http://www.multimap.com

phone (within UK): 0171 433 0460      fax (UK): 0171 209 5194

phone (Int'l):  +44 171 433 0460      fax:   +44 171 209 5194 


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