Bill Gates away half of its value, as detailed in "The Power of Half". Gates and his wife invited Joan Salwen to Seattle to speak about what the family had done, and on December 9, 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates, and investor Warren Buffett signed a commitment they called the "Giving Pledge." The pledge is a commitment by all three to donate at least half of their wealth over the course of time to charity. Gates has also provided personal donations to educational institutions. In 1999, Gates donated $20 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the construction of a
The Road Ahead (Bill Gates book) a "very expensive marketing technique" where a book is placed on sale in multiple countries on the same day (November 24, in this case), giving the book "an almost sure shot at the No. 1 spot on best-seller lists." "The Road Ahead" got a first printing of 850,000 books in North America and several hundred thousand overseas. It was early enough in the history of the World Wide Web that "The New York Times" thought it newsworthy to report that Gates was going to "conduct on-line forums to promote the book" and Penguin had created a "Bill Gates web site