I just watched (as I understand it) the first public combined interview of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. It was in front of an audience at the D5 conference. Which is a conference put on by the Wall Street Journal. Now I am not normally a fan of these mainstream conferences because they tend to very investor controlled. However on the same token an interview like this would have never happened without major funding backing it.

Anyway, the interview itself also suffered from mainstream quality of the event, however I still thought that both Bill and Steve said some very interesting things and had a very good line of dialog. And what was really interesting was how the mentality that they projected in person very much embodied the cultures and focuses of their respective organizations. Even in such mature and large organizations there singular influence still controls the values and focus.

The one point that Steve Jobs made that I really agreed with and latched onto was that in the next five to ten years the big innovations are going to happen with specialized devices (like cell phones and tablets) over the traditional desktop or laptop computers.

The one thing that Bill Gates said that I really agreed with was when they were being asked about the idea of the Internet and the browser destroying the traditional software market. He said that those Internet based applications may be the more visible aspect of modern computing, but it will be because the ‘localized’ software will be more transparent. In the sense that the user will still be relying on the localized operating system to function it just will utilize more natural things like speech and visual recognition over traditional WIMP (windows, icons, menus and pointing devices (mouse)) interaction from the user.

I also thought that the interviewers were more disruptive and cumbersome to the dialog of the interview than they were guiding and contributory. Such that at different times both Bill and Steve would fundamentally ignore what one of the interviewers said in order to expand on a thought or topic that they raised between themselves. I know that these interviewers were working in a very restricted environment, with controlled and noncontroversial questions to pull from, but they really seemed to fail in just basic discussion facilitation.

It is a quite interesting discussion to watch. It is even comical to watch how the two would respond to certain thoughts and statements with facial expression and body language but then cool their heads to maintain the professional and friendly atmosphere of the situation.

The full video and transcript is available on the conference follow up website:
http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/d5-gates-jobs-interview

The full video is also available on YouTube (I used these because the player on the main website does not play on the Wii):
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10