Monday Apr 28, 2008
Did you know that during the 2007
Oktoberfest
there were 6.2 million visitors, 69.406 hectoliters of beer consumed and 58.446 units pork knuckles eaten??
I bet our latest
Sun STAR, Constantin Gonzalez, can tell us many more interesting facts about his home town of Munich, the capital of the German state of Bavaria!
How long have you been employed at Sun and where are you located?
I've been with Sun for more than 10 years now. I live in Munich, Germany with my wife Friederike and my 21 months old daughter Amanda.
What is your current job role?
At Sun, you don't have one job, you have many 
.
I work for Franz Haberhauer's Platform Technology Team in Sun Germany's Global Systems Engineering (GSE) organization and I'm part of the international Technical Systems Ambassador group.
We evangelize new hardware and OS technologies to customers and take back
their feedback to the product groups. Interesting technologies today are
Sun's new CMT processors, x64 systems and of course Solaris. Grid Computing
and Visualization are other favourite areas of mine, as is Web 2.0.
Most of the time, I stand in front of partners and customers and present about
interesting Sun technologies, do pre-sales consulting for customers or
help out in internal projects. For instance, I've been lately involved in
creating a Solaris training curriculum for GSE in europe.
We also have a group blog called Solarium
in which we blog in German about interesting Solaris features, tips and
tricks.
What do you like about working for Sun?
I'm a computer scientist (that's a formal term for "geek") by nature, and
at Sun you get to play with new and exciting technologies every day!
But the biggest part are people. No matter who you work with, there's
always a sense of helpfulness and, well, Sun spirit to it.
Please briefly describe any projects you are involved in that support
Sun's vision to see everyone and everything participating on the network.
There's a podcast we produce in Germany for the system administrator
community at Systemhelden.com. That's german for "System Heroes.com". (There's
also an english version at systemheroes.co.uk). The podcast is called
HELDENFunk ("Hero Radio") and it's produced by a couple of people from
(product) marketing and myself. We feature interviews with interesting people:
Sysadmins, bloggers, principal engineers, Sun partners, etc. By encouraging
people to podcast (and to blog, participate in wikis, etc.), I try to turn
them into active participants in the network.
You may not expect that from someone who's supposed to sell tech stuff, but
the reason that user generated content in web 2.0 is successful is because
it is authentic. You can't create a portal for sysadmins without having
sysadmin/tech type people behind it. Also, it's a great way for me as
an SE to reach a bigger audience than would be possible with traditional
presentations.
Have you had the opportunity to assist customers in creating energy
efficient data centers?
I was involved in introducing customers to UltraSPARC T1 and CMT in
Germany. For example, I worked with a financial customer in showing the
efficiency and throughput benefits of the T2000 for their Java based
application server infrastructure. I've also helped a telco OEM beta test
the T2000 for video streaming to handhelds and it proved to be a great
streaming server!
Do you have a favorite blog or website?
It's amazing how many bright people blog on blogs.sun.com. You could
spend hours reading them! Also, there's some fascinating stuff happening
at the Foresight Institute which deals with
advancing beneficial Nanotechnology. Who knows, we might end up using
tiny rods and gears instead of silicon for very futuristic CPUs...
When commuting or traveling by car, I like to listen to a couple of
podcasts, such as the one from
Extremetech.com, the EGM live podcast, the German
Podcast for Alternative Computer Systems,
the Blick ueber den Tellerrand, which is
a German web-2.0-in-business podcast, or BrainCast, a German podcast about your brain.
Do you participate in any social networking websites?
Yes, sure. In Europe, Xing is very popular. I'm also on
Facebook, LinkedIn and even Twitter.
Please list any Sun or external communities that you are a member of.
I'm a member of the Sun Technical Systems Ambassadors, a worldwide
group of senior SEs that serve as a link between customers and the
product groups for CPU, System and HPC related technologies. I'm also
a member of the German Unix User's Group " GUUG" and
a senior associate at the Foresight Institute.
If you could meet anyone tomorrow, who would it be? Why?
I'd love to meet Rhys Fulber, an amazingly creative electronic musician. He does everything from
electronic to punk to metal to sweet pop and if I had more time, I'd spend it learning to create music on my own .
Other interesting people I'd like to meet would be Robert Scoble, the famous blogger and Ray Kurzweil, the inventor, futurist and author.
Tell us a little known fact about yourself.
My dad is from Chile, my mother from Germany. I was born in Germany, went to
kindergarten in Colombia, elementary school in Turkey and Germany, then I
finished high school in Italy. So I grew up multilingual with Spanish and
German, then added English and Italian to the mix .
Outside of work and family, is there anything that you're passionate about (sports, causes, etc.)?
I'm always passionate about the future. That's why I like to be at Sun and
why I think Web 2.0 plays such a significant role in the world's culture.
At home, I have a lot of gadgets that are "future" to family and friends.
Those are mostly part of our home theater. It's one of those hobbies that are
never finished and where you always find something to improve on: Better
sound, better picture, streaming audio/video from a ZFS file server in the
basement, you know. But it's also one of those hobbies that bridges technology
with people: There's nothing like watching a great movie with family and
friends, nice picture, clean sound, a good wine (or beer, depending on the
movie) and no hassles or endless commercials you'd otherwise get at one of
those crowded multiplexes .
Do you have a blog?
Yes, Constantin's Blooog!
Maybe Constantin will add the
GSE Divas to his blogroll
Thursday Mar 06, 2008
What is this Sun STAR doing in front of a ship in Santander, in the North of Spain? What do you think?? A dedicated Sun engineer will use all available resources to help out a customer or colleague!
Introducing ---> Juan Carlos Fernandez Martin!
Juan-Carlos, how long have you been employed with Sun and where are you located?
I joined Sun 2 Jan 1997 so let me think uhmmmm 11 years, I didn't realize it was so long, it looks was yesterday when I started....
I am located at the Sun office in Madrid, Spain.
During this 11 years we have moved from Torre Picasso in the middle of the city
to Parque Empresarial "Parque Norte" that is not exactly in the downtown but I am happy because it take me 10 min to come
to the office, and 5 min to go back home (Guess why ?)
What is your current job role?
My current role is Solution Architect, but I have been 6 year as Benchmark Engineer, 4 year as System Engineer on Migrations
and last October I moved to Finance Business unit.
Have you had the opportunity to assist customers in creating energy efficient data centers?
In LBS (Life before Sun) I worked for a Siemens partner, and he tell me his biggest dream to see a Mainframe application to run on a Unix system (at the level it was sinix, Unix from Siemens) . I worked very hard for 9 months but when I showed him the results , and how easy it will be implement at the customer data center, he was nearly crying. This was a great moment.
What do you like about working for Sun?
Each new project is a new challenge, where in addition to helping a customer, It allows me to learn something new, so from this point of view I am very happy to work at Sun, and I am always ready to learn anything.
What is your favorite "junk" food?
Without doubt is "Tortilla española", not only tourists who like it, also me of course.
Do you participate in any social networking websites?
Yes, I participate in LinkedIn, Neurona, Xing, but it take me too much time but really now, I only maintained Linkedln.
Please list any Sun or external communities that you are a member of.
From the first days I joined Sun I started as Technical Ambassador, now I would like to continue as Solaris Ambassador but there is not free place for me in this moment, so I am waiting a free slot.
Tell us a little known fact about yourself.
Oh my family, I have a wife and two daughters, the biggest is studying at the Heidelberg University in Germany, so I learn to use
the skype and tools like this, that allow us to be in touch with my daughter.
Outside of work and family, is there anything that you're passionate about?
Always I have curiosity for Mayas, Incas, etc civilizations, so any time I found a book that tell me about this civilizations
I read it without sleeping until I finish. That's really what I like.
Thursday Feb 21, 2008
What do Hamburger Aalsuppe
(eel soup -- without the eel??) and Joerg Moellenkamp have in common? They are both
favorites of Hamburg, Germany!
Joerg, how long have you been employed with Sun and where are you located?
I'm at Sun since July 2001. I'm located in the Hamburg office.
What is your current job role?
Blooded Sunnie .... okay, more formally: I´m a Senior Systems Engineer at Global Systems Engineering. I see my primary role as an evangelist for Sun´s technology at customers and partners.
What do you like about working for Sun?
You see the world (okay, mostly it´s Germany, but I wasn´t in Las Vegas before Sun's Customer Engineering Conference (CEC) 2007 and I won´t visit it for vacation now. I didn´t like the city, the event was cool), the colleagues are nice, it´s paid well and they let you play with cool systems. And well, once you work at Sun you never have to buy a t-shirt or a polo again ... okay ... almost never.
Please briefly describe any projects you are involved in that support Sun's vision to see everyone and everything participating on the network.
A few years ago I invented and developed an secure online payment system for a mobile telephone provider. It was based on challenge-response and deliberate media breaks between web and mobile phones.
In the mean time I worked on many web projects as a networking specialist, as this was my specialty before and at Sun.
I´m an avid user of Web 2.0 services. My bookmarks are at del.icio.us, my favorite music is visible at last.fm, the list of my flights in the past are at flugstatisitik.de. I just
don´t like services based on my actual location out of security reasons. People know where you are at a given time, but they know as well, where you aren´t.
My main project to support that vision: www.c0t0d0s0.org. A blog about Sun, my life at Sun and all the rest. It´s an important part of my life since three and a half years and it´s getting quite successful now. 5000 Visits a day. 500 to 600 subscribers (but: web analytics is to computer science, what astrology is to astronomy).
Have you had the opportunity to assist customers in creating energy efficient data centers? If so, please give us an example.
In LBS (Life before Sun) i worked as Senior Director for Networks and Infrastructure at Canbox Systems AG (Senior ... what a joke, I was 27 at that time). I was the manager and the lead architect for the world wide datacenter project. Two datacenters (in Singapore and Boston) were used one, but the one in Germany (in the nice but small city Oldenburg) was a complete new one. My team worked on more efficient cooling at that time and the usage of the heat in the datacenter to heat our offices. But then came the German version of Chapter Eleven as one of the smaller explosions of the burst of the dot com bubble.
Since i´m working at Sun I help my customers by working together with them to make their datacenter more efficient ... and by selling them CMT servers, of course
Do you have a favorite blog or website?
Oh, my feedreader collects 300 feeds. Hey ... I´m a news junkie. My "A-Blogs" list contains 10 blogs on average. But "favorite blog" is singular. That´s a difficult decision. The blog with the longest history of being in this list is Schneier on Security. This blog is written by the security luminary Bruce Schneier. Yes, the Schneier who knows Alice´s and Bob´s shared secret
What about a favorite "junk" food?
My favorite "junk" food isn´t really junk food in it´s normal definition. It´s a pastry called
Franzbrötchen. It´s made out of flaky pastry dough with cinnamon and butter. This pastry is something local to Hamburg. Just a few kilometers outside of Hamburg it´s getting increasingly harder to buy some.
Do you participate in any social networking websites?
Yes ... I´m participating in LinkedIn and
Xing. Xing is somewhat similar to LinkedIn but more popular in Germany.
Please list any Sun or external communities that you are a member of.
I´m part of the Solaris Adoption team here in Germany. And I try to form a community of people around my blog. Hey, and I´m member of the SunDragons, a dragonboating team founded by some Sun employees.
If you could meet anyone tomorrow, who would it be? Why?
I would like to meet Hector Berlioz, as i want to know if he was really that weird as the massive orchestration of the "Grande Messe" suggests.
Tell us a little known fact about yourself.
The facts I want to share, are already in my blog, and the ones, I don´t want to share ... well, I won´t write them here, either Okay, one fact I didn´t publish in my blog so far: I´m a fan of the German soccer club Werder Bremen, but I´m not a really passionate fan. It´s more like local patriotism, as I lived near of Bremen for a longer period.
Outside of work and family, is there anything that you're passionate about?
I´m an avid semi-pro photographer. You can look at some of my photos on Flickr. In spring and summer I try to get as often as possible on my mountain-bike and try to avoid hitting jaywalkers. I´m a fan of classic music, jazz and electronic music.
*******
Visit Joerg's blog at c0t0d0s0.org: The Sun in a Lighthungry Universe
Monday Nov 26, 2007
When Joel Weise isn't fulfilling his role as Principal Engineer and Chief Technologist for the Global Systems Engineering (GSE) Security Office at Sun, he's enjoying
the view while flying an Enstrom F-28!
How long have you been employed with Sun and where are you located?
7+ years and work in Menlo Park, CA
What is your current job role?
My 'day job' is to promote Sun as the thought leader and strategic provider of secure solutions.
In this role I work with GSE, Engineering, Labs and other areas of the company to research, identify, design and integrate security into various Sun products and services. I act as the Sun Microsystems representative to the American National Standards Institute and work on the X9F4 sub-committee on security. We are currently developing a new standard on Secure Remote Access. I am also the chairman of the ISSA Journal editorial board and help set the editorial direction of the Journal.
What do you like about working for Sun?
Sun is without a doubt the most fun place I've ever worked! Sun provides me with the latitude to work in a number of different engineering and data processing disciplines - I never feel boxed in as I suspect the average 9-5'er is - I'm always given the opportunity to seek out new and different ways to challenge myself.
Please briefly describe any projects you are involved in that support Sun's vision to see everyone and everything participating on the network.
I am working to define Sun Microsystems, Inc. strategy with respect to security and integrity for network-scale systems. This includes the use of autonomic
self defense techniques and adaptive security.
Do you have a favorite blog or website?
I'm a news junkie - Yahoo News, CNN, BBC - anything with the latest news story.
What about a favorite "junk" food?
Burrito al pastor y cerveza negra modelo
but sushi will always do
Do you participate in any social networking websites?
No - being a security geek and privacy freak I do not participate in any social networking sites.
Please list any Sun or external communities that you are a member of.
Within Sun, I am the co-chair of the Security Ambassador community and a member of the GSE Patent Review committee.
Outside of Sun, I am a life member of the Sierra Club and a founding member of the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA).
If you could meet anyone tomorrow, who would it be? Why?
Any of the Founding Fathers or Framers
(e.g., Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, etc).
What exactly were you guys thinking when you were writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?
Tell us a little known fact about yourself.
I collect books on botany and always wanted to be a forest ranger or naturalist.
In the technical world, I am one of the co-inventors of the multi-application smart card (US Patents 6005942 and 6233683).
Outside of work and family, is there anything that you're passionate about (sports, causes, etc.)?
I think of myself as more of the individualist that likes a good challenges - from flying, scuba diving and skiing to camping, geocaching and archery. I like anything that's a challenge with a dash of risk.
Thursday Feb 15, 2007
Mike Briggs was recently awarded the distinguished title of Sun
Principal Engineer. This position represents the point in an
individual's technical career where their contributions have extended
beyond organizational boundaries and beyond the demands of their regular
job function. We have worked closely with Mike in our current role and
couldn't agree more!
How long have you been employed with Sun?
I joined in 1984 as employee 340.
Where are you located?
Alamo, CA about 30 miles East of Menlo Park.
What is your current job role?
My current title is Principal Engineer. My main mission in life at Sun
is to foster collaboration and to enable engineers (primarily customer
facing) to contribute to, and participate in the community.
Past roles at Sun have included Regional Systems Engineer Manager and Technical
Product Marketing Manager.
Please highlight past or current special projects that you have worked
on at Sun.
I'm part of a small team that is behind OneStop and CEpedia. OneStop is
arguably the most successful collaboration at Sun, and the CEpedia is hot on its heels.
I edit a monthly newsletter called the Technocrat that goes out to 2200 subscribers. We recently shipped our 48th issue.
I spend a lot of time with search. This includes coding and architecting
IC Search, as well as hosting search for OneStop, CEpedia, SAE, Sun
Solution Centers, and the Communications and Healthcare Industries.
Name 1 - 2 people (internal or external to Sun) that you would like to
have lunch with.
Neal Stephenson. I'd love to hear how and when he thinks Virtual Worlds and Metaverses are going to become an intrinsic part of our lives.
Favorite blogs or websites?
A VC
TechCrunch
GigaOM
Techmeme
Mike has a personal page on Sun's internal CEpedia site.
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