Chattin' with the Big Mac (Nealy)
Ive been at Sun almost 12 years now and ironically I had my first face to face chat with Scott McNealy about a month ago.
Scott's presence used to permeate Sun but in the last year, after
passing the "CEO baton" to Jonathan Schwartz, its really Jonathan's
presence that has been felt. McNealy is still Chairman of Sun and is
CEO of Sun Federal but I assumed that he was off doing his own thing
and pet projects like Curriki and had basically disassociated from the
rest of the company.
I was quite surprised then when, while waiting in the Executive
Briefing Center to present Sun's GNU/Linux strategy to a government customer,
McNealy bounded in. As the head of Sun Fed he was there to meet and
greet and field any questions they might have. He asked what myself
and a couple others on the Linux team were there for and I told him we
were there to talk about Sun and GNU/Linux. Immediately he launched
into a detailed litany of all the reasons why Sun is a strong supporter
of Linux distros like Red Hat and SUSE, citing figures and numbers as
if he were the product manager.
Scott was in a great mood and I offered to escort him to the room where
the customer was checking out demos. He took me up on the offer and as we
walked he talked more about our Linux strategy. He asked me to send
him a copy of my presentation and said he would mark it up and send it
back. About a week later I sent him my preso, Im interested to see if
he'll respond.
Either way I was quite impressed with the energy and commitment I saw.
Scott McNealy, still crazy passionate after all these years.
Pau for now...
