In about 24 hours I get on a airplane on my way to our 2006 Customer Engineering Conference (CEC). For four days, over 3000 Sun field engineers (Customer Engineers) will be gathering in San Francisco for our annual Customer Engineering Conference.

The CEC, like our customers and the internet, is increasingly becoming a two way experience: an on-line, continuos community. I say "two way" in that the communication and conversation goes in both directions, not just talking heads. Kind of like what Hal Stern has called the read/write web and O'Reilly calls Web 2.0. Participants of the conference will be able to email, SMS, instant message and blog their comments, questions and feedback live to our CEC main stage. What better way to play an active role in such a vibrant technical community. It is all about SHARING the knowledge we all have.

It is going to be fantastic. Lots of technical training breakouts, birds of feather sessions, social networking opportunities and of course a load of fun.

So if the rest of the world experiences a bit a of brain drain feeling next week, it is because the smartest people in the world will be in San Francisco.

See you there! The geeks are back!

Technorati Tags: cec2006

I just got back from spending a few days with some great people. We just finished our "Geek" Executive Advisory Conference (EAC). I call it the geek version because every so often we host the best and brightest CTOs and other technical senior executives from some of the most exciting companies from around the world.

We spent our time talking about technologies that are changing the industry, how Sun's products and technology is performing from their perspective and how our technology direction fits within their world. It was such a great group of technologists. The conversations were great and the energy level was higher then I have seen in a long time. It was exciting to see some of the top companies in the world say things like "Sun is one of the last real innovative technology companies left on the planet" and "Your technology rocks!, I hope the industry follows you". And not all of these companies are, or should I say were, Sun friendly. Some are current customers, some are past customers and some are not Sun friendly at all. However I hope all came away from our meetings with a much better understanding about Sun and our very bright future.