Today was a landmark in the history of HEC Paris, Europe’s leading business university according to the Financial Times.

The founder, chief software architect and Chairman of Microsoft Corp, Bill Gates came to say a few words about Microsoft, his vision of the past and the future in the software industry, how he turned out to start up his own business (basically, through reading Forbes and Fortune Magazine when he was young), philantropy, making a contribution, etc. It was actually the second time I listened to Bill Gates live (first time in Israel a little more than a year ago, at Hotel Dan Intercontinenal), and one thing he focuses a lot on is passion (same as Steve Jobs). He’s always asked how he came up with this great idea to develop a platform for people to build their own software on it, and simply answers that he one day with his friend Paul Allen they crossed their taste for mathematics and programming, with their business acumen, and realized they were both sharing a common vision of technology for the upcoming 50 years in the world of technology – which made them enjoy every single day in life from then on.

The lecture was a HUGE success, with basically 99% of all students and professors attending. I arrived an hour and a half early to grab a seat in the main lecture hall, and many of my fellow students listened to what Bill Gates had to tell us through the TV sets broadcasting the event in the main teaching building. See the line an hour before we were granted access to the lecture hall and the photographers all around the place:

Bill Gates’s speech and debate with the guys from HEC student organization HEC Débats were preceded by a truly great presentation of Windows Vista by Microsoft France’s rising star Benjamin Gauthey, and a Windows Vista Product Manager. I was actually amazed by the new gadgets coming out everyday (some of them turning out to be extremely useful and far from being gadgets only), PhotoSynth (but I knew it already), and Excel 2007. On the picture below, Benjamin talking about his animated wallpaper:

Here in this video, my Austrian friend and HEC mate Rupert asking a question to Bill Gates in Germenglish about the future of the Internet, and the appropriate answer from the guy who predicted there would be a computer on every desk at the office and in every home back in the middle of the 70s. Btw, I’m the guy shooting the video (just in case the video doesn’t upload properly, click here):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk1-Pecs27o]

Last but not least, Bill Gates was granted an HEC Paris honour diploma by our Dean Bernard Ramanantsoa without even taking the competitive math exams to get into the school :

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2. Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates in the iWorld
3. Experimenting different strategic paths: do it the Bill Gates way (HBR)
4. Tech Days Season in Paris: Microsoft & Sun
5. GO HEC GOOOOO!!! HEC Paris leads the FT European business schools ranking 2006