I spent Thursday and Friday of last week at the Sun sponsored Startup Camp “un-conference”. This is my first “un-conference,” and I have to say it turned out great. Instead of a conference committee selecting the sessions and managing the event tightly, the un-conference participants themselves suggest and choose the sessions. The format is much more informal, and allows for more interaction and makes the conference very dynamic and relevant to the attendees. I'm looking forward to my next un-conference.

We had a session on Sun Grid Compute Utility at Network.com. The utility computing model is especially relevant to startup companies who have little cash to spare, and want to use it to invest in code development and building value add services, as oppose to investing in expensive IT infrastructure. Sun Grid, as it is today, is relevant to startups that are building services that require high massive computing resources to run large HPC batch-type jobs. Check out my previous blog on “Grid Computing to Build National Competitive Advantage”. It provides examples of companies that are ideal for Sun Grid Compute Utility.

Here are a few photos I took at the event:

© 2006 Kristinn Thorleifsson, all rights reserved

I ran into Danese Cooper, who used to hold the title of "Open Source Diva" at Sun. She's now at Intel working on their open source initiatives. She had an interesting talk on how startups can take advantage of open source software.

© 2006 Kristinn Thorleifsson, all rights reserved