Cutline Speaks

Bill Gates visits Washington … D.C. that is

posted by Megan on March 13, 2008

This week, the head of Microsoft took a trip out of one Washington, and ended up in another. Since I'm based in D.C., I'm particularly interested in his visit. Primarily, Gates was here to ask Congress for more math and science education spending, more R&D funding, and more visas for talented international workers who want to be in the U.S. -- all issues I agree with.

This morning, he spoke to our local technology community, and I attended, along with a thousand of my closest colleagues. His speech didn't unveil anything particularly new, but it was reinforcement that there is still a lot of innovation coming. So what can we expect in the future? More applications moving online, more collaboration, natural interaction with computers (he's pushing the tablet PC pretty hard), 3D computing, health information on the Web, and more. Again, nothing particularly new here, but it wasn't an in-your-face product pitch, which I appreciate, and it's always nice when tech leaders come to D.C. and visit non-politicos.

So, it was all fairly good, until the end, when they opened the discussion to Q&A and asked reporters not to participate. I know it wasn't a media event, but it certainly sends a message when you publicly forbid certain people from asking questions. I can't imagine there's a question in the world Gates hasn't gotten and handled, so to me, it seemed an unnecessary request. At the very least the conference coordinators could have positioned it a little better: Reporters get access to Gates and his peers; the local community doesn't; let us have our turn!! As a member of the local community, I thought it was nice that a high schooler got to ask Gates a question. As a PR person, I cringed that the Washington Post wasn't able to.

Tags for this post: pr