Ballmer Rocks!

He came out with a crumpled piece of paper in his hand onto the circular rotating stage and launched in and proceeded to speak from memory for 40 minutes never once referring to his scrach paper. Even though the stage was rotating he still paced the circle---sometimes clockwise and othertimes counter clockwise like a tread mill.  He grabbed my attention from his first sentence and did not lose it until he came down for a landing and left the stage.  By the middle of his talk he tossed his paper into the center of the stage and kept on going.  I wondered if his few words on the paper were just a security for him in case he lost his train of thought.  He clearly did not need it and could have talked for hours keeping our attention. 

The Q&A was superb as well as his first question was about how he would solve the immigration problem in the US.  Note: His talk was not about this at all. He answered the question without pause and I sat in amazement as the questioner seemed satisfied.  The next question he fielded was about how he viewed open source like Linux--again a smart and well thought out answer completely off of the top of his head.  A final queston was about when we would see a pen that had hologram capabilities that we could just throw down and have a hologram appear in front of us.  He answered it by saying that it would happen when enough people thought that form factor would be beneficial to them.   He followed it up by saying that it looks like we have our first person to start the demand for it. 

Here are the 5 reasons why Ballmer rocks as a speaker:

1. He speaks from his heart and mind. 

2. ENTHUSIASTIC about what he is saying.

3. Quick on his feet--no hesitations during talk or Q&A.

4. Totally in the present moment and totally real.

5. Incredible gestures and use of hands and entire body to make point.