Through the SOL@Sun (Society of Latinos @ Sun) community I had the wonderful opportunity to host a group of Fulbright Scholars from all over the world. They were visiting Sun and other high tech companies in the Silicon Valley with the purpose of learning about the culture and work opportunities within the industry. Fulbrights from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tunisia, Morocco, Sweden, USA, India, Indonesia and many other nationalities were represented in the group. The talent that was available in that room was pretty impressive; ranging from extremely smart computer scientists to very well trained and quick MBAs.

They were not coming to the valley to necessarily stay as it would have happened a few years ago. They wanted to work and collaborate with a great Silicon Valley company but under their terms. Telecommuting and remote collaboration were really hot items for them. Luckily Sun has made this part of the culture for a long time – all with the purpose of being more flexible, quicker and innovative.


The group was so impressive that Jonathan popped in for a few minutes to talk to the crowd. It turns out Jonathan's father was a Fulbright and he was really excited that this group was visiting Sun. We also had James Gosling who was a big hit with this crew. James is a real rock star - among geeks!


I imagine this mix of races and cultures will be much more common in the Silicon Valley in the near future than it is today -- for the sake of innovation. Today you can see engineering teams collaborating across cultures, time zones and continents. Tomorrow – we need to stretch even more. We must open our doors to capitalize in ideas and innovation coming from all over the world. We need to embrace and unleash the creative side of human capital available at Sun and make our next steps bigger and even bolder.


Thanks to Jim Baty for hosting the meeting and to the Fulbright foundation for making this possible.