Tuesday Nov 21, 2006
Today's Page Hits: 52
Tuesday Nov 21, 2006
This week Jonathan asked his leadership team to personally sponsor one of our top accounts, and then spent time showing his story of why the adoption of Solaris is so important to our strategy. Probably 90% of the leaders in the room are well-equipped to go out and be a great sponsor in a top account. But if you're an HR-ish type, who could easily explain a social constructivist position on adult education, explaining Solaris to a real live customer is, well, intimidating. As I sank lower and lower in my chair, I realized there was no hiding on this one. Damn.
So now I need to take the crash course on Solaris. I'm not going to fake it with a customer. Women of a certain age usually come to realize there's no benefit to faking it ... in anything. I'm going to take some of my own medicine, and take some of the fine courses produced by our own team here at Sun. Some of these same courses will soon be FREE – within weeks – to anyone. I'll write a review on each one as I take it, and let you know if it helps the Solaris novice, non-developer (Basic doesn't count, in my estimation, and besides, that was a loooong time ago). And I'll be honest.
Today I took Harry Winston (you get it – dogs are man's best friend, diamonds are a girl's best friend, ergo Harry Winston the Lab – named after the world's most famous diamond designer). Harry's favorite activity in the world is fetching a ball out of water – and today we went hiking at Del Valle reservoir in Livermore. There's a significant part of the park that allows off-leash dogs, Harry's version of heaven.
So now I need to take the crash course on Solaris. I'm not going to fake it with a customer. Women of a certain age usually come to realize there's no benefit to faking it ... in anything. I'm going to take some of my own medicine, and take some of the fine courses produced by our own team here at Sun. Some of these same courses will soon be FREE – within weeks – to anyone. I'll write a review on each one as I take it, and let you know if it helps the Solaris novice, non-developer (Basic doesn't count, in my estimation, and besides, that was a loooong time ago). And I'll be honest.
Today I took Harry Winston (you get it – dogs are man's best friend, diamonds are a girl's best friend, ergo Harry Winston the Lab – named after the world's most famous diamond designer). Harry's favorite activity in the world is fetching a ball out of water – and today we went hiking at Del Valle reservoir in Livermore. There's a significant part of the park that allows off-leash dogs, Harry's version of heaven.
Once I throw the ball in the water, Harry will run along the shoreline and select the most efficient swimming route to get to the ball, an act of applied calculus, according to mathemetician Tim Pennings, watching his own dog Elvis use the same behavior.
Thus if Harry can apply calculus in his everyday passions, I figure I can take a stab at being able to meaningfully and convincingly promote Solaris. Pre-test = 0, without even taking it. I'll let you know about the post-test.
Karie
Posted by Vicki Tan on November 22, 2006 at 11:38 AM PST #