Friday January 04, 2008

So what is this ambassador thing all about?

So what is this Campus Ambassador program all about?

Well if you read Jonathan's weblog on a regular basis you will know very clearly what he thinks we need do to increase the revenue and encourage a community spirit amongst our user base. Many will remember that many years ago this community spirit was very strong in universities across the world. But Linux and Windows have taken over and computer labs are now full of endless machines running either of these operating systems. So what we want to do is get students in universities exposed to our technologies so they can judge for themselves which to use.

The whole ambassador business started with the recruitment of them, and finding people in Sun to mentor them. In November last year there was a kick off event in London where Scott Mcnealy did a presentation and all the people involved in the UK on this program met ( mentors/ambassadors etc). I could not go as I was on holiday but I sent one of my full time employees and Liam who is to be a ambassador for his university now he has returned there. After my return from holiday I asked Andrew to come down and meet me and the rest of our team. We made our plans together, showed him the lab and we had a meeting where I asked the current batch of students to tell him about their experience at Sun and what technology they thought was interesting. Liam did a great presentation on ZFS. I also agreed with Andrew to have regular one on ones with him to discuss progress. Even though he is part time I want him to feel very much part of my team. We have regular one on ones to discuss progress which I also think is important to both of us.

So over the time my ambassador remains at his university he will be setting up a user group and on a regular basis, doing tech demos of technology he is interested in to students who will hopefully come along. You won't be surprised that the first one we are planning is about ZFS . I personally want to demo to the students our Sunray technology which I think would be amazingly popular at any university.

So as events happen I will keep you all posted with what is going on...