Here is a video that many media people have focused on the fact that Bill admits ctrl-alt-del was a mistake.

Here is one example of focusing on the ctrl-alt-del.

Now comes a startling admission about the awkward 3-key command from Microsoft's co-founder, Bill Gates: Control-Alt-Delete was a mistake.

Gates explained during an interview at Harvard University.

"We could have had a single button [to log on to Windows]" Gates said. "But the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't want to give us our single button."

Finally Gates gave up and admitted "It was a mistake." The Harvard auditorium crowd laughed and cheered. Now though some computer experts say Gates is mistaken to call Control-Alt-Delete a mistake.

After watching the video it was clear that Bill has refined his storytelling skills. The video goes through the story of days at Harvard to early days at Microsoft, changes throughout the years, negotiating with IBM where IBM thought 200k-300k over 3 years was the volume and Microsoft was thinking the OS was much bigger, starting the Gates Foundation, leaving Microsoft, what keeps Bill thinking now.

The ctrl-alt-del is a funny moment, but there is many more interesting stories.

I've worked on a lot of executive presentations, and part of why I don't sit in many data center ones is they are so boring and I am constantly critiquing the presentation style and soon lose interest.

If you are interested in making a better presentation consider learning the skills of the storyteller. I just finished this book by Jonathan Gottschall.

Humans live in landscapes of make-believe. We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. It’s easy to say that humans are “wired” for story, but why?

In this delightful and original book, Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate life’s complex social problems—just as flight simulators prepare pilots for difficult situations. Storytelling has evolved, like other behaviors, to ensure our survival.

Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, Gottschall tells us what it means to be a storytelling animal. Did you know that the more absorbed you are in a story, the more it changes your behavior? That all children act out the same kinds of stories, whether they grow up in a slum or a suburb? That people who read more fiction are more empathetic?

Of course, our story instinct has a darker side. It makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories, advertisements, and narratives about ourselves that are more “truthy” than true. National myths can also be terribly dangerous: Hitler’s ambitions were partly fueled by a story.

But as Gottschall shows in this remarkable book, stories can also change the world for the better. Most successful stories are moral—they teach us how to live, whether explicitly or implicitly, and bind us together around common values. We know we are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us.