Summary: Bill Gates now has a website that offers his thoughts on a variety of issues.

Yesterday Bill Gates launched a website called The Gates Notes (and joined Twitter a short while before).  Some people have said that this is an opportunity to share the mind of the richest man in the world but I might suggest that it should inspire us in our own lives.

The site is sort of a spawn of his yearly letter where he outlines what he is thinking and doing within the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I offer the Welcome Letter below where you can see how he introduces the site.

The topics you'll find include:

• Conversations he's having (with some heavy hitters of course)
• Things he's thinking about (Innovation, Energy/Sustainablity, Pandemics, Haiti)
• What he's learning (he continues to take courses and read - Super Freakonomics and The Teaching Company)
• Where he's traveling and what he's seeing (India)
• The "Curious Classroom" where he engages with students and answers questions.

Look, Bill's not the end-all-be-all but he is clearly a force in the world.  His software created immense value and innovation and his Foundation is doing amazing things (more than most governments).

It does trouble me some that when we ask kids in America who their favorite people are they say Taylor Swift or Tom Brady, and in India and China they say Bill Gates.   Nothing wrong with being inspired by a singer or a football player.  They both have the power to make us be our best or provide great entertainment.  What I am saying is we should also look to great minds as well. 

Here are my takeaways:

1. If you didn't already know it, Bill is a lot more, and cares for a great deal more than computers.
2. The guy makes learning his life.  He continues to embrace the idea that we should constantly learn, especially outside of our career disciplines.
3. Take time to think.  From what I understand Bill periodically spends a week just reading and thinking.  Adopting a form of this practice could be very beneficial though of course challenging to pull off at this level.
4. Microsoft has done mostly 'incremental' improvements since Bill left.  We see this in other companies where the founder has left.  This is where all the energy is going (not to the website but to what the website talks about).