Chris Lie, Bullitt, me, Danu & P. Irvan
I got a call from a friend yesterday about 6 pm offering an invitation to come on Bill Gates speaking engagement. "Yes, definitely!" The presentation will start on Friday at 7.30 am. And everybody should arrive at 6.30 am.
It turns out that lots of people are there, I meet pak Guntur (Paperina), pak Irvan (BD+A), mas Danton (adgi), Mendiola (FDGI), Bullitt, Chris Lee, Shinta (Bubu) and even Arief from Petakumpet Jogja is there. And so many businessman, government officials are there also. More than 2.000 people attending the lecture conducted inside Plenary Hall.
Wimar Witoelar sit in front of me and I also saw Joe Kamdani from Datascrip. Since Kadin responsible for organizing the event, Agus Silaban, Hidayat (Apkomindo), Aninditya Bakrie and many others looks busy preparing the event.
On the giant screen, SBY wearing formal suit entering JCC. A few minutes later, Bill Gates entering JCC wearing... Batik! Wow, what a surprise. Then, all the audience have to wait for more than 30 minutes??? A few friend fall asleep. It seems that everybody had to get up early. Then, SBY coming out from the private room with different clothes, ... Batik of course :)
Later today I learn that SBY and all minister have to find an instant Batik! And everybody have to wait for this :( I guess Bill Gates won't mind to have SBY and everybody wearing formal suit. What a protocoler.
SBY opens the lecture by mentioning about Indonesian future strategy on IT. Mari E. Pangestu as moderator introduce Bill Gates a bit before he is talking about The Second Digital Decade. He shares the vision of convergence, the future of computing through natural interface such as speech recognition and other research done in Microsoft Research and Innovation Center.
He continue with the demo on worldwide telescope, a technology that combines feds from satellites and telescopes all over the world and the heavens, and builds a comprehensive view of our universe. Nice!
See similar demo on TED.
ITB students are invited to speak since they won an innovation software competition creating ABC software. This software use speech recognition and multi mice to teach illiterate people. In closing, they say thank you to Microsoft for the technology they provide. What a good PR!
The Q&A session turns out has already staged. Only 5 previously selected question and people, 2 from sponsors, media and 2 students. The only notable question is from Rene (Kompas) asking about how Microsoft strategy on Open Source. And we don't even understand what the answer is :(
Anyway, it is a smart effort by SBY to have this moment as good PR before the election :) But not as rewarding as I expected. And too many technical glitch from the organizer!
Photo|Video
In my own opinion, there's no use for Indonesia from this Bill Gates's lecture. Although I personally didn't came to see Uncle Bill, but I did watch it on TV (TvONE). From my point of view, Bill only try to market his own company with the camouflage of the Word, IT can maje economy better, and all that bullsh*t thing that he said. And also from my point of view, the government more like to be close to propietary sofware than to open source software. Yes I do know there's such thing call IGOS and all that stuff. But that's only talking, no action. Government said that they to want to implement IGOS (opensource), but at the same time they try to "married" to microsoft. Isn't it ironic? From the IT community, there's a rumor that Bill Gates came to Indonesia to legit all the microsoft software in Indonesia Goverment computer, as in Indonesian word would be "PEMUTIHAN ". Careful guys, when they do it, that means all the software in all Indonesia teritory except the government would be pirated, and the only thing we can do is wait for the weeping cause I beleive there's no such one in this country except they have big bucks, capable to buy legit microsoft software.
ReplyDeleteSwith to open source of Doom.