Thursday June 24, 2004

Today I am heading up to the Java One shindig a bit early. Many of us customer-facing employees ("the field") at Sun will be interacting with an exec or two, product groups and "visionaries" in the "software" area. Primarily around the Java Enterprise System and development tools. Why? I am glad you asked.

Some of it is simply to get a brain dump as to what is going on back at corporate. Company vision and strategies, product strategies etc. In this case we are the recipients of information. But it is not a one-way flow of information.

First off, we in the field pick the agenda. In other words, we in the field know where we have strengths and weaknesses in strategies and products because we work on a daily basis with customers. Our execs, "visionaries" and product groups are also pretty darn in tune with our customers. But we bring a different perspective primarily around pragmatism, real-world scenarios and *constant* customer feedback.

We have been doing this for as long as I have been at Sun (over 7 years). We in the field have provided input that have modified product strategies and changed product priorities. I like to think that we are somewhat responsible for the recent enhancements in NetBeans. I won't say we were not directly responsible, but we provided valuable input on what customers liked and didn't like about NB 3.0+. If you haven't been playing with NetBeans 3.6 or the build tree of NetBeans 4.0, you are missing out. You won't get a better value for web development IMHO.

The other benefit is that we in the field get to interact with other field personnel from around the globe and get an understanding of what other customers are doing. Its a great few days and I look forward to it twice a year.

If you ever have feedback for Sun, email your favorite Sun employee at firstname.lastname@sun.com (generally speaking). Don't forget the forums at developer.sun.com. and BigAdmin. These are also a great place to interact with product groups.