I’ve done hundreds of live software demonstrations throughout my career, and I have never really had as bad a demo as Bill Gates did at CES 2005 in Las Vegas. At least Conan O’Brian was funny and able to keep the crowd laughing.
I talked to a few guys that were at the demonstration, apparently they had 5 backup systems, which all failed. Why? Well, turns out they had all the systems plugged into the same power bar, and therefore, all computers went down at the same time. Lesson learned: Have backup systems at multi-million dollar demonstrations with separate power and separate video output feeds.
Some classic lines from this video:
“And right now 9 people are being fired, digitally fired!” – Conan O’Brian
“No, I don’t think we are, that’s the problem when you have the wrong remote control, good thing we only have one though” – Bill Gates
“Well, is anybody going to do anything or should be just move on?” – Conan O’Brian
“Just incredible, I don’t know who’s running things here… Who’s in charge of Microsoft… Oh…” – Conan O’Brian
“Yup” – Bill Gates
“The Yup heard around the industry! Oh my God bill said yup get out of here!” – Conan O’Brian
Watch Bill Gates and Conan below: