While I was in Shanghai last month, I was fortunate to meet with some of our Sun Campus Ambassadors. These are full-time students who we hire as interns to learn about Sun technology and conduct evangelism, research and special projects throughout their academic year. We also ask our ambassadors to blog about their work; you can read some of those blogs here. Here's a blog written by the Chinese Campus Ambassadors who are "experts" in areas such as Solaris or NetBeans. These students serve as a resource for their fellow Campus Ambassadors, and use blogging to share their experiences, post tips, and write about aspects of Sun technology.

The best thing about interns, be they full- or part time, is the energy, enthusiasm and fresh perspective they bring, and the insights they can offer into things we may be missing out on in the day-to-day grind inside a company. Our Campus Ambassadors in China are no different. They pointed out that given their knowledge of technology and multi-language skills (both technical and spoken), we should be
giving them even greater challenges to pursue.

For example, Project Sun SPOT (Small Programmable Object Technology) is an ongoing research project at Sun Microsystems Laboratories that gives developers a platform for inspiration and innovation on the device side. In November, the Sun SPOT Development Kit topped the list of InfoWorld's
must-have gadgets for IT pros and technology lovers. We've give a Sun SPOT Development Kit to every Campus Ambassador so they can learn about it. They're also learning about Sun Labs' Project Wonderland, a toolkit for creating collaborative 3D virtual world.

The Chinese ambassadors I met with pointed out that they were some of the only people in all of China that were learning about both of these technologies. They think they could help us make these technologies more successful in China and the world, if for no other reason than the fact that they could help in the translation and creation of documentation and training in Chinese.

Their main message was that they want even greater challenges than what we've asked of them so far. That's a problem I'd love to solve.