Sun's Open Source technologies Seminar @ Kolkata

I gave a seminar on Sun's Open Source technologies on 24th Feb to around 400 engineering students gathered at St. Xavier's College Auditorium, Kolkata. It was organized by SLS through our learning partner - NIIT. Earlier in the afternoon, big banners at the front of Xavier College in the busy up market street of Kolkata gave a warm welcome to me. This Xavier college is at the heart of the city of Kolkata and that made it easier for about 5 colleges around Kolkata to join the seminar. Some students travelled about 4 hours to listen to our technologies and that was quite satiating to know.

To start with, I spoke about the importance of Open Source technologies in the current economy and how Sun's technologies would fare better in the markets compared to other proprietary software. I asked the students some queries on Sun technologies and gave away goodies for the best answers. These students were not at all aware of OSUM, Campus Ambassador program, CFF or Java FX Contest and even java.net. They were glad to know the importance of these activities/projects and showed great interest in knowing and participating more.

I talked about the powerful features of Java language in terms of memory management and its benefits over other competitive technologies in the market. Also, I gave them an overview of Java SE, Java EE, Java ME & Java FX technologies, Netbeans IDE, GlassFish, Looking Glass project, and their features. Based on the audience background and their interests I talked about OpenSolaris features and its current market value. I was glad to evangelise our Java FX product portfolio as none of them were aware of its release.

At the end of the talk students asked many queries ranging from Java, NetBeans to GlassFish and Open Solaris. Also, few of them asked queries on how Sun is making profits out of these open sourced software. At the end of Q&A session, I gave away some of goodies sponsored by NIIT to the students who asked more number of questions. Once I concluded the seminar, atleast 10 students came up to me and conveyed their interest in learning more Sun technologies. I distributed some of the NetBeans+Java EE cds to these enthusiastic students and showed some demos on Java FX, VirtualBox, OpenSolaris and NetBeans. Some of the students wanted to learn more about the value of Sun certifications, training and the value it adds to their career paths. I spent sufficient time with these students at the end of the talk answering all of their queries. I was really glad to see the amount of enthusiasm and passion the students displayed towards Sun technologies.