Steve Ballmer to fill Bill Gates' shoes at CES keynote

By Slimy
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Grand Master

Slimy

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Disclaimer: I rarely post news from my blog. This one time though, I really want to see what Neowinians think about the development. I promise not to do it again for a long time ;)

In January, Bill Gates made his last CES keynote speech, and ever since he stepped down from Microsoft to work full time at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, eyes have started to look for his replacement.

In his last keynote, Gates was helped out by Robbie Bach, the president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, and right then many predicted he would be the new face of Microsoft at the consumer technology tradeshow. Not so. It turns out that CEO Steve Ballmer will be taking Bill Gates' pre-CES keynote at the 2009 International CES, scheduled for January 8-11, and will be giving the speech for years to come. Sony's Sir Howard Stringer and Ford's Alan Mulally will also be giving keynote speeches.

Steve Ballmer will deliver his speech on January 7, 2009, at 6:30pm PST. Ballmer is known for his love for Microsoft, and has given very intense and exciting speeches at company events before. At the same time though, he's a businessman (he was hired by Gates as the company's first business manager in 1980) so it will be quite a challenge for him to talk about the future of technology beyond just what Microsoft has in store. Ballmer may be very passionate about Microsoft, but whether he can pull off the pre-CES keynote as well as Gates did for the last few years is a question that can't be so easily answered.

One Microsoft Way

Grand Master

revvo

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Of course. Who wouldn't love Microsoft or any company for that matter when that company made you worth billions...

Bill Gates is at least a geek and that's who you want in these keynotes. A geek who can talk and promote. Keynotes will suck with the marketing dancing yelling chair throwing Steve Ballmer.

Grand Master

tsupersonic

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Eh, that doesn't hold much value as Steve Jobs was more of a businessman than Woz. Apple is basically Steve's vision.
just think what would happen to Apple if he left the company
Grand Master

Smigit

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I don't believe that Ballmer has the insight for the future of Computing that Gates had.

Both he and Gates have or had 50,000 other employees helping shape the ideas for MS and the keynotes. Content won't be any more or less an issue for Ballmer, it's whether he can give the same level of delivery. Honestly the past few keynotes I saw of Gates while presented cleanly weren't exactly that overly exciting anyway.

Experienced

bobbytomorow

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Both he and Gates have or had 50,000 other employees helping shape the ideas for MS and the keynotes.

Exactly its not as if they go in there floatin on their own personal ideas. lol these are corps bringing in more money than oil. All I meant was that ms needs an injection of cool, and could be from whoever, but something to boost their hip image. We could say mac is dirty and bla bla all we want but one thing most of us have in common is that our software depends on microsoft and it would be great for them to shake that horrid image of imperialist nerd. Most of you will say who cares? But Really i do, I have plugged away using ms, I have plugged away even avoiding apple....but throw us a bone lol.

My 2c

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