When engineers wear suit and tie - Press Conference with Czech Government

When engineers wear suit and tie

Press Conference with Czech Government

I used to wear a business suit, when I worked for my previous employer, but I've completely converted to t-shirt & jeans after joining Sun. I don't miss old times, neither my wife, she doesn't have to iron shirts anymore.

But sometimes you must be compatible with people that you're dealing with, which happened to me last Wednesday. March 15th, I need to record it, it might be the only occasion this year when you can see me as Man in black ;-). 

Interesting Guests

There was a Press Conference and Official Site Opening ceremony with pretty important guests. Starting from the left: 
Jeff Jackson [Vice President, Java Enterprise Platforms & Developer Products], Linda Park [Vice President, Software Lifecycle Engineering & Global Engineering Organization], Tomas Hruda [CEO, Czech Invest], Crawford Beveridge [Executive Vice President People and Places and Chief Human Resources Officer, Sun Microsystems], Ing. Dana Berova [Minister of Informatics, Czech Government], Ing. Jiri Havel [Deputy Prime Minister, Czech Government] and Zdenek Pilz [Country Manager, Sun Microsystems].
Czech newspapers, IT magazines and Czech News TV Channel CT24 attended the conference also (it wouldn't make sense, to organize a press conference without press, would it?)

Why Sun decided to invest in Czech Republic?

Crawford Beveridge started with very nice speech, talking about 'Why Sun decided to invest in Czech Republic?'
So, what are the key factors for investing in Czech Republic for IT company like Sun?

• Talent quality and availability
  
• Ease of doing business
• Operating costs
  

Sure, it was also about NetBeans, small start-up company that Sun acquired in 1999.

I followed up with a presentation about Prague Engineering Center, listing groups that are here and talking about products that are developed in cooperation with other engineering centers  that Sun has around the world. I also talked a little about the history of Prague Engineering Center.

BTW: here is one of the oldest pieces of the code in NetBeans that survived several years (according to Jarda).

NetBeans Mobility  Demo

The most interesting part of the presentation (at least for me) was NetBeans Mobility Demo.

Martin Ryzl did an excellent job there. He developed an application in 3 minutes and deployed it to his mobile phone. Very nice. I hope that all people from press can start developing Java  applications for their mobile phones now.

 Questions?

A couple questions about labor market were answered by Dana Berova and Jiri Havel. Tomas Hruda from Czech Invest talked about incentive programs for IT companies.

Show must go on, break the wall

When all these speeches were over, it was a time for official opening.

Were we going to cut the ribbon? No, no ribbon please!

There was a virtual wall created by lasers. A kind of sci-fi arrangement, very high-tech. Jiri Havel pushed the RED BUTTON and .... the wall disappeared.
Yeah, that's going to be our future - break the wall by pushing a button.

---

Posted at 04:45PM Mar 24, 2006 by Pavel Suk in Prague Engineering Center  |  Comments[1]