14 DAY TRIAL // Bill Gates is currently known as one of the world’s leading philanthropists and it’s easy to see why: he has spent millions of dollars trying to cure some diseases, including polio and malaria, and continues efforts to help the poor through his very own foundation.
So when Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg invited him to take the ALS ice bucket challenge to help raise awareness for Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Bill Gates needed only one second to say yes. But he did everything in his very own geekish way.
In the video you can see here, Bill Gates not only that accepts the challenge and dumps a whole bucket of ice water on himself, but also builds his very own “device” that takes care of everything. Of course, he used this occasion to promote the Surface Pro 3 at the beginning of the video, showing a video of Mark Zuckerberg challenging him on Microsoft’s very latest tablet.
In his turn, Bill Gates challenged Elon Musk, Ryan Seacrest and Chris Anderson from TED to participate and raise awareness for ALS.
Microsoft’s current CEO Satya Nadella also participated in this campaign last week when he accepted the challenge of Steve Gleason, a former NFL player who is suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
“The thing I’m really excited about is what Steve and the team have done to raise awareness for ALS,” Nadella said. “Now, let me take this opportunity to challenge Jeff Bezos and Larry Page to take their own ice bucket challenge. And let me tell you again from personal experience, it’s better to have your head in the clouds than under a bucket of ice.”
The ice bucket challenge has become impressively popular on YouTube in just a few days, and there’s no doubt that the marketing team behind the whole campaign can really be proud of what’s happening right now, as top figures from basically every industry out there post videos on YouTube to raise awareness for this terrible disease.
According to figures provided by the ALS Association, an American dies of this disease every 90 minutes, so companies such as Microsoft, which are investing millions of dollars in new technology which could help cure it, are playing a decisive role.
“Every 90 minutes. But we have the ability to give them quality in life, and that’s something that I’m super proud of, and I’m super proud of the team that’s won this because with Satya’s help we can take the robotics, we can take the Eye Gaze technology, and we can move that into mainstream, and we can give people a quality of life so that they can realize their independence,” Matthew Mack, member of team Ability Eye Gaze that recently won the //oneweek Hackathon, said in a statement.
