JAKARTA, BILL GATES IS IN TOWN!

Bill Gates speaks today before three thousand crowds in Jakarta

Convention Center (JCC), Senayan, Jakarta, Indonesia. Speaks
before him in this Presidential Lectures was President of Republic
of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY). The lecture was
guided by Indonesian Trade Minister Mrs. Marie Elka Pangestu.

The third richest person in the world, Mr. Gates, opened his
speech on "2nd Digital Decade" by exploring the rapid changes of
Information and Communication Technology (ICT). He spent
sometime on the process of how he got in touch with ICT in his
youth. At a glance he, then, showed the rapid changes on total
number of Personal Computer (PC) available around the globe
today from 241 Millions in 1996 to 1,1 Billions 2008; improve on
broadband capacity from 0.1 M in 1996 to 264 M in 2006; and
changes on cellular subscriber from only 1 % in 1994 to 41% of
population in 2006. He also mentioned how the capacity and the
capability of PC were doubled in every just two years in last
decade. He underlined that these advances in ICT technology
would not slow down nowadays.

Bill then, illustrated his speech with slides showing how the Next
Wave of Business Productivity would involve unified
communication; social computing; enterprise search; and
business intelligence. He also congratulates President SBY for
improving ICT infrastructure in Indonesia but reminds the country
for improving skills and keep preparing National Plan.

As for Microsoft advances, Bill told the crowd that his giant
company is now preparing Natural User Interfaces software that
could make 4 systems available through speech recognition; pen;
vision or watching; and with gesture from the users. In additions,
Bill assures the audience that in the next decades TV
development will be Internet driven.

Before closing his speech, Bill showed the crowd of how his
company has been trying to make a combination of satellite or
telescopes system with specially designed software to explore the
universe. Bill ends his presentation by giving an example of how
an elementary student can explore the other stars and use the
software to learn more his planet. He also added how ICT can
help leaders and his or her nation to fill the gap on poverty,
education, and health issues.

Bill also underlined that young students should have some

privilege to enjoy themselves in spending their time in the school.
His remark reminds me of my children who have to carry their
heavy bag by hand to bring all of their books. If the bag is not
large enough, they could put all of the stuffs on their backpack
that could alter their bones. So hard the curriculum in Indonesia
and so heavy the books, the children then have to use the rolled-
luggage bag just to make their teacher happy that they do not
leave any book at home.

Speaking before Bill was President SBY who addressing 3 basic

questions. The questions are: (1) How will the world change? (2)
How do we employ technical stuffs to resolve the issue of our
time such as poverty, global warming etc; and (3) How does
humanity issues to be fit in today's rapid changes.

While the participants are instructed to sign in on 0630 sharp in

the morning, the lecture faced the delay for about half an hour
and just started at 0835 WIB. As a matter of fact, President SBY
got in the building minutes before the time, followed by Mr. Gates
10 minutes later. However, both of the speakers were then
escorted to the VVIP room for courtesy meeting. The audiences
witnessed that the President changed his neat dark suits to a
Long Sleeve Batik, just to respect and match with Mr. Gates who
wore a Batik from his hotel on. Hmm.., may be it took sometime
for SBY or his aids to decide for change.

The lecture also provides a half an hour Q/A session. Five

participants ranging from businessman, press, private, and
university students addressed questions to Bill and SBY. When
student asking him about his recipe to progress in a giant
software business, Bill just remind them for not to follow him
quitting from school. He underlined that the student should finish
their college firstly and join any start up company in order to
have a broaden vision for their future.

I do not buy that advice, instead..Bill could have told them just to
quit from school!
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