Simon Thorneycroft and Jonathan Hodgson

Bill Gates workday

Everyone at work is balancing time and resources, whether your own or your teams - so technologies to improve collaboration and efficient working can make a big difference - whether it is videoconferencing, multi-monitors or presense awareness in applications.

So this article on a workday for Bill Gates was interesting,

"The screen on the left has my list of e-mails. On the center screen is usually the specific e-mail I'm reading and responding to. And my browser is on the right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability to glance and see what new has come in while I'm working on something, and to bring up a link that's related to an e-mail and look at it while the e-mail is still in front of me."

Also his use of SharePoint, which is often overlooked as a Microsoft product given how useful having one common standard place for all project/team information can be. Also announcements like the Knowledge Network for SharePoint 2007 could really help a lot of enterprises search their internal resources for expertise.

"I deal with this by using SharePoint, a tool that creates websites for collaboration on specific projects. These sites contain plans, schedules, discussion boards, and other information, and they can be created by just about anyone in the company with a couple of clicks."

Surprising he doesn't have a digital whiteboard,

"The one low-tech piece of equipment still in my office is my whiteboard. I always have nice color pens, and it's great for brainstorming when I'm with other people, and even sometimes by myself."

Especially given Microsoft Research have a number of projects on the go.