Starting out with a bang!
On November 6th, 2007, the first (of many) Sun Tech Talks here at Virginia Tech was held. The topic was Sun's involvement in the video game industry and in specific, Project Darkstar. For the talk I could think of no better person than Chris Melissinos, Sun's Chief Gaming Officer.
Chris is an amazing speaker and he did an outstanding job of connecting with the students in attendance. In all, over 60 interested students listened to Chris's presentation. While most of the students were Computer Science majors, students from Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mathematics, and Industrial Systems were in attendance as well. The students ranged from freshman all the way up to Ph.D. candidates.
Jeff Bates, a Sun employee, drove all the way up from North Carolina to see the talk. Also, my father and fellow Sun employee Dave Edstrom came down for the talk and blogged about it as well.
The talk went a little longer than expected, but the students in attendance stayed for the entire presentation. Some even stayed after the presentation, munching on the free pizza and talking video games with Chris. I have been to many presentations like this before and I have never seen students as enthused as those who were present at this one.
The talk started at 7:30pm. Chris was approached by so many students after the talk that we did not end up leaving the room until 11:30pm. The students are still so enthused about the idea behind Project Darkstar and the ease with which it has been made available to students that they have been asking about forming a Darkstar Group that would work on a project using Darkstar as a foundation. More on that to come...
All in all, Chris was the PERFECT person to bring down and start of the year of Tech Talks. He blogged about it here. Also, we have made available his presentation and the audio from it.
Audio from the presentation
Chris's presentation
Here is a picture of Chris and me:
Chris is an amazing speaker and he did an outstanding job of connecting with the students in attendance. In all, over 60 interested students listened to Chris's presentation. While most of the students were Computer Science majors, students from Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mathematics, and Industrial Systems were in attendance as well. The students ranged from freshman all the way up to Ph.D. candidates.
Jeff Bates, a Sun employee, drove all the way up from North Carolina to see the talk. Also, my father and fellow Sun employee Dave Edstrom came down for the talk and blogged about it as well.
The talk went a little longer than expected, but the students in attendance stayed for the entire presentation. Some even stayed after the presentation, munching on the free pizza and talking video games with Chris. I have been to many presentations like this before and I have never seen students as enthused as those who were present at this one.
The talk started at 7:30pm. Chris was approached by so many students after the talk that we did not end up leaving the room until 11:30pm. The students are still so enthused about the idea behind Project Darkstar and the ease with which it has been made available to students that they have been asking about forming a Darkstar Group that would work on a project using Darkstar as a foundation. More on that to come...
All in all, Chris was the PERFECT person to bring down and start of the year of Tech Talks. He blogged about it here. Also, we have made available his presentation and the audio from it.
Audio from the presentation
Chris's presentation
Here is a picture of Chris and me:
