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Bill Gates' Think Week - An inside view

Robert Guth of the Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article on Bill Gates’ twice-yearly solo retreats, known inside the company as “Think Week”.

During Think Week, Bill goes off by himself to small cottage armed with a collection of ideas from Microsoft employees in the form of research papers.  I remember my boss at Microsoft asking me to submit my own papers a few times, but I don’t recall that I ever did.  However, I remember reviewing material that my team was sending.

I’ve always loved the idea of a Think Week, so much so that I called a brief trip last August to a friend’s cabin my “Think Week-end”.

Does anyone do a solo vacation, without family or friends – to catch up on reading or just to think?

Published Mar 28 2005, 03:05 PM by ChuckOp
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TrackBack said:

^_^,Pretty Good!
April 15, 2005 1:19 PM

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About ChuckOp

Charles Oppermann is 25-year veteran of software design. He is the original author of the popular JAWS screen reader for people with visual impairments, and spent over a decade at Microsoft working on accessibility and user experience in the Windows, Internet Explorer and speech product groups. Charles was a representative to the W3C and Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), and the author of two technical books published by Microsoft Press. He has also worked at Cisco Systems, Amazon.com, and is currently Program Manager and Development Supervisor for Consumer Security Products at GFI Software.