Sitting in my hotelroom the evening of day 3, I create some time for
myself to blog
about the Sun-internal Customer Engineering Conference (CEC) 2006. Although I've been in the IT for some 15 years I'm
still amazed by the sheer endless possibilities we have today. I wrote
up the first draft of this blog while at the general sessions hall,
wirelessy connected to the CEC2006 network,
typing up while Danbert and Technical Wizard Jim Baty address the
crowd... of course others always can do better: one of the 'best blog'
prizewinners wrote and submitted his winning blog from a plane!
For me, the one-word soundbite and takeaway for CEC2006 is inspiring. It is so inspiring to be amongst about 3000 fellow techies! It is wonderful to feel that being technical does count at Sun, that being a geek is valued instead of discouraged. And how many CEOs come on stage wearing a I love Solaris T-shirt??
Anyways, my other takeaway from CEC2006 is that everything we do at Sun these days is about sharing (and about shares in the end but being a geek that's of second importance to me :-) ). Our business model is shifting from making money at the point of purchase to making money at the point where the value of the product starts. So, making most of our software available freely for download is about lowering the barriers to get it. And we'll start earning money off it when a customer purchases support and/or training. This model works given the fact that not a single customer in the world will run his business on unsupported software, or with untrained people.
But I'm diverging a bit here. I had great fun with the other people from Holland on the trip and with a lot of people from my Sun network. CEC is also a great place to network and I'll take home a lot of new contacts. The spirit at CEC2006 as radiated by the execs speaking was one of believe, focus and execution. Every single speaker at the general sessions showed at least one of those, and together they shared a concise, well thought-of, single story.
The rest of this week I'll be at another SUN internal conference: that of the Operating Systems Ambassadors. Expect some more blogging.
For me, the one-word soundbite and takeaway for CEC2006 is inspiring. It is so inspiring to be amongst about 3000 fellow techies! It is wonderful to feel that being technical does count at Sun, that being a geek is valued instead of discouraged. And how many CEOs come on stage wearing a I love Solaris T-shirt??
Anyways, my other takeaway from CEC2006 is that everything we do at Sun these days is about sharing (and about shares in the end but being a geek that's of second importance to me :-) ). Our business model is shifting from making money at the point of purchase to making money at the point where the value of the product starts. So, making most of our software available freely for download is about lowering the barriers to get it. And we'll start earning money off it when a customer purchases support and/or training. This model works given the fact that not a single customer in the world will run his business on unsupported software, or with untrained people.
But I'm diverging a bit here. I had great fun with the other people from Holland on the trip and with a lot of people from my Sun network. CEC is also a great place to network and I'll take home a lot of new contacts. The spirit at CEC2006 as radiated by the execs speaking was one of believe, focus and execution. Every single speaker at the general sessions showed at least one of those, and together they shared a concise, well thought-of, single story.
The rest of this week I'll be at another SUN internal conference: that of the Operating Systems Ambassadors. Expect some more blogging.