“What do you do for a living?” It's a typical American question that was posed to me in an atypical setting and by an audience that for me, answers the question “Why do you care so much about today's students, since they don't buy your products?”

I volunteer as an Assistant Scoutmaster for my son's Boy Scout troop and go to summer camp for a week immediately following the Fourth of July. The camp food is awful, so one night I convinced my 12-year-old to do the horseback-ride-sleep-under-the-stars experience. He didn't know that my real motivation was gastronomic: the ride included a real steak barbecue rather than Sysco processed food.

The camp employees who prepped the horses, led us on our ride and cooked the food are known as Wranglers. My stereotype of “wranglers” is that they're not the sharpest tools in the shed; otherwise they'd be doing something else. Also, at Boy Scout camp you never really know the age of the staff, as they span from high school to post-college. Between the dirt and natural variation in maturity I had no idea how old our wranglers were.

When we sat down to eat, we made small talk, and the lead wrangler eventually asked me the “What do you do for a living” question. When I evasively answered that I was in “the computer business,” it set off an interesting conversation. He admitted that he didn't know anything about computers but that one of the other wranglers did and was actually writing a video game. All of a sudden my son became very interested because he is very much into video games and has been “writing” the story for a RPG. (I'm still not quite sure what an RPG is, but I learned it stands for “role-playing game.”) The game-writing wrangler wouldn't disclose any details of his game—or about his staff of 18 people—because we hadn't signed non-disclosure agreements. (Where are the lawyers when you need them?)

At this point, the third wrangler, who had remained silent so far, asked where I worked. When I told him that I worked at Sun, the conversation took another twist. He began to tell me things I didn't even know about my company and its technology as it relates to Internet gaming. He then educated me about the pros and cons of Java vs. Microsoft's Silverlight vs. Macromedia something or other. I was amazed how much he knew about all three–and he wasn't even the future video game designer mogul!

When dinner was over, I just had to ask how old these wranglers were. The future media game mogul was 17. The future industry analyst was 15. My effort to avoid camp food became a real-life example of why we at Sun care about today's students even though they don't directly buy our products. Today's student is tomorrow's developer, customer and decision-maker. That much became clear to me that night under the stars.