Friday June 11, 2004

So here I am browsing through my blogs. I find it amazing how many people actually have read my blog. Am I really that interesting? That was a rhetorical question because I know the unfortunate answer :) I thought I would browse through my the referrer list to find out why so many were coming from osnews.com. I hit a link where one poster stated "Here is a Sun engineer talking about Zones and Resource management".

It hit me at that very moment the power, risk and responsibility of blogging on a corporate web site with my name plastered all over it. First, I have engineer in my title, that's true. I am a Pre-Sales Systems Engineer, which means I am really in sales, not engineering. my role is to help match Sun value to customer problems. I don't necessarily fault the "Engineer" status on the poster at osnews. They got valuable information and I thank them for taking the time to visit Sun's blogs. But I can easily see how unintentional interpretations can stray from reality (please read on before taking offense because its not intended to be offensive). For example, what if I had blogged "I had a problem with Solaris and couldn't get it fixed"? Someone could read my blog and say "Sun Engineer could't fix Solaris problem"? Wow, that would be bad, especially since I am not a Solaris kernel engineer. Perhaps it was a fixable problem and I missed the solution or I simply wasn't finished with the debugging process. If the problem was important enough I would, of course, involve a kernel engineer.

The power here is that I have already reached over 800 hits (100 or so are mine from mucking around). OK, 700 hits. That means ~700 people are listening to what I have to say. Being on blogs.sun.com means that I am representing Sun to some degree. I state in my introductory blog entry that these comments are mine and do not represent Sun Microsystems. But no matter how hard I press that my comments are my own, they will be associated with Sun Microsystems by the readers. This is where the risk and responsibility come in.

I am not perfect. I may misstate something unintentionally or my word things that may be interpreted in multiple ways. My greatest concern is that someday I will read on a web site "Sun official states ..." or "Sun Engineer states ...". While blogging I have learned I should probably be careful how I phrase my words. I must double and triple check my facts before posting, right?

Well, yes and no. I think being paranoid about these things defeats the value of blogging and can quickly become an inhibiter. I will, while blogging, do my best to get things right and leave it at that. Let common sense rule. Just keep in mind that, while I work for Sun Microsystems, my blogs are my own and represent my opinions, and that, well, I am only human.

I have attended two Java User Group meetings this week. The first was the LAJUG meeting where Gavin King and Marc Fluery presented on Hibernate, EJB 3.0, JBoss (the company) and Aspect Oriented Programming. Great presentations.

Last night I attended the Orange County Java Users Group meeting. Prakash Malani (a well-respected local) presented on JSR 168. Pretty high level to get everyone at the same level but also because there sure isn't much to JSR 168. Pretty simple stuff.

Because these are developers, they like to see code and also like to present code. Generally, I don't really care to see code because there is only an hour (or two). The exception is seeing code that makes an impact (such as EJB 3.0 and metatags). I want to understand the high level concepts, impact and direction of technology, etc. UML works just fine for me as well as pattern-speak. I'll pick up a book or google if I want code.

I'll be honest. I don't go to Java User Groups for the presentations. I attend every JUG meeting I can, regardless if the topic meets my interests or not. I go to JUG meetings primarily to network. Meeting people, maintain contacts, etc. I have created some lifelong friendships at the JUGs. One day I'll need something or they will need something and we can leverage each other. I also go to talk to developers to learn about the impact of technologies on their business. "Moving from pure JSP to transformed XML enabled our company to ...." for example. My favorite part of the JUG meetings is when we go off to eat/drink afterwards. I learned more about JBoss from Marc and Gavin during dinner/drinks than I did during the presentation. I didn't go out after the OCJUG meeting this week to spend some time with the family.

In August I'll be presenting on JXTA. In October I'll be presenting on Jini. My personal interest is not J2EE, it is dynamic distributed systems. My presentation style is a bit different. I like to do demos that make a lasting impact. My hope (given time) is to create demos by having attendees bring in their wireless laptops and participate in the presentation by participating in a dynamic distributed system. That, to me, gets the point across more than showing code. Many developers don't understand why Jini and Jxta haven't hit mainstream. They will some day primariy because Jini and Jxta solve problems that haven't hit mainstream. These problems are looming on the horizon for the mainstream.