It is that time again. Time for our annual Customer Engineering Conference (CEC). Held this year from October 7th-10th in Las Vegas. I know I probably say this for every CEC, but I really do think this is going to be our best ever conference.

Why? Let me run down some of the highlights for this year:

• The video challenge: Engineers will have a chance to record a brief video about their role as a technology innovator and share their most interesting and compelling stories and experiences.
• Sun Learning Services: SLS will be at CEC doing a number of things, from their speaker workshop, to technical training sessions, to free Java, Solaris and JCAPS certification training.
• The CEC UnConference: A great chance for anyone to propose a topic and speak out about it. A great open forum to voice your ideas and receive instant feedback. Also check out speed geeking at the same time, which is a great way to hear lots of different topics and ideas.
• Fantastic keynotes from Jonathan, Andy, Dave and Don. Plus a very cool industry panel you won't want to miss.

• Second Life: Our first ever virtual CEC. Even if you can't attend there will be a place Sun folks can go to be a part of the conference. Our general sessions and several other technical sessions will be hosted in second life. Also we are audio taping all of our sessions so we plan to post the presentations and audio content in second life as well. Come check out our island and the Vegas style conference center we have built for you.
• Solaris Installfest: We will once again have a Soalris installfest at CEC. So bring your laptops (PC and Intel Mac) and we can flash them with the latest Solaris builds.
• Black Box: We will have the real thing, the Sun Black Box at CEC. Come by and check it out.
• Constellation System: Ever seen a HPC system like this? If not, come by the Pavilion and check it out. Can you say 3456 ports?
• Luminary Track: We will have a special luminary track again this year where we will feature some of Sun's high profile speakers
• Competitions: We will have a number of competitions again this year. Make sure you check them out as the awards are very cool this year
• Interactive: We will continue our interactive experiment from last year, you will again be able to interact directly with our keynote speakers by sending in comments and questions via SMS, email and instant messaging.
• The Party: Hey is Vegas, so we had to have a fantastic party to celebrate our success and to create a place where you can mingle, meet and chat with friends.
• Eco Friendly: This will be our most eco friendly CEC yet. See if you can spot how many ways we addressed Eco into the conference itself.

• We have increased out attendance this year to a record 4000
• We have increased our partner participation significantly this year
• We have launched a new sponsor program this year and this years sponsors include; Brocade, Cisco, HP, Intel, HCL, Qlogic, Symantic, Trend Micro and VMWare
• We will have a new Pavilion this year with great technology demonstrations and exhibitors from APC, AppGate, Emulex, IBM, Layer 7 Technologies, Safari Books, SAS, Scalent, Wipro and of course Sun.
• We had a record number of content submissions this year and CEC will feature over 200 unique technology sessions
• We will be hosting a product launch at CEC! More soon

See, I told you it was great! I plan to blog again this year to give you the behind the scenes views and commentary, so stay tuned.

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