Seeley's Blog

Today we launched This is Something.  After a couple hours I noticed an increase in hits to this blog, which i haven't maintained since Nov '07.  So for those of you who are wondering, "who is this seeley person?".... the basics are this... i've been at sun for 2 years and came here with the Neogent acquisition. 

I work in Services Marketing for Lara Greenburg. I get to do work with brilliant, creative people like Jeremy Barnish - and the two of us got together to take a stab at an authentic version of updates on stuff taking place in the industry.... an "unofficial" source of news.

We have an opportunity at Sun to make a difference and we're doing so in many ways everyday.  That's one of the things I want to bring out on This is Something.. ways in which Sun is impacting the world... not just flowery "marketing" speak (no offense), but i want to get the very real and authentic stories and messages.... keeping it short and relevant.  

On a personal note, if you've read my previous blog called Perspective, you probably noticed my interest in human-interest stories and the triathlon sport.  I've since registered for the upcoming Wildflower Olympic distance triathlon taking place on May 4th... just 20 days away! 

Anyway, check out This is Something!  We have lots in store. Send us your ideas, comments, let us know if you want to be a guest, and even contribute your own videos! 

Seeley Roebuck

I don't feel so bad writing about a non-Sun topic since it's sort of "after work hours"... but I found this video as I was looking through some of my Facebook networks tonight... this one came up in my User Generated Content (UGC) group.  It's videos like this that give UGC purpose.

And while I don't have a very large following on my blog, my hope is that this entry will at least drive some people to check out the video, and maybe even inquire more... maybe even make a donation.  Whatever happens, this topic definitely covers 2 things I'm very passionate about - 1) making a difference, and 2) pushing your physical limits.

It's been a while since I've written anything in this blog.... However i have been busy contributing on the "social media" front... As you might have seen from previous blogs, I helped produce the CEC Video Challenge project last month.  The results were pretty cool -- a total of 26 video submissions this year as opposed to only 2 in 2006. If you're internal to Sun, check it out at.  

And typical of how I work, I didn't really know JACK about movie creation, how to use a camera, movie editing, etc... but the project sounded cool, so I took it on...  And as life would have it, I was on a fast track to learning a lot of the tricks of the trade. I ended up producing and editing about 19 of the 26 submissions. You can check out the posts on my youtube page.

Some of my favorites... Hal Stern, Khaled El Bizri, and of course, Jim Baty's very popular, The HERE Net.

Anyway, part of my inspiration in writing tonight is to share some info I gathered over the weekend...  Following all the excitement with CEC, I decided to explore the world of videoblogs a bit further... I took a class on Sunday at San Francisco's Bay Area Video Coalition with a guy named Schlomo Rabinowitz. He's one of the early adopters to videoblogs, lives in the bay area, and seems to be very well dialed into the who's who in the "web-next" type space. 

I've created a videoblog of my class from yesterday...   Just pause it as you watch in case they scroll too fast.

More on this topic to come...
Seeley

Hi all!

For all those submitting videos to our CEC Technical Video Challenge, please be sure to send me an email at cec_video_challenge@sun.com so we confirm your submission!  We've already received some awesome videos!!!  To view them all, go to youtube and/or technorati and search for suncec2007.  Depending on the file size, upload time YouTube may vary, as does the time it takes to register the suncec2007 search.

MAIN POINT:  Email cec_video_challenge@sun.com to let us know you've submitted your videos!   If you need to speak with someone directly with questions... call me at x68269.

Thanks,

Seeley Vitacco Roebuck




 

The CEC Video Challenge takes place this week!!! Check out one of the first submissions!  If you're coming to CEC, come by the Burgundy Conference room in the Paris hotel... we'll have camera gear, some MacBook Pros and a couple people ready to help you shoot and post your own video to YouTube!

Just a reminder.... we've got a great set up at CEC this year for all Customer Engineers to produce their own 2-4 min videoblogs!

The objective is to provide a location and the tools for the greatest assets of our company to tell their stories...  It would be awesome to hear about project management or technical areas that have been critical in customer engagements... examples of where we were on time, on budget, and just went way beyond expectations.  But it would also be cool to hear opinions about the topics of CEC - disruptive technology, red shift, eco computing, etc...

After working on this project the last couple weeks, it occurs to me that there's some hesitation over doing a video like this - a 2-4 min videoblog.  It seems like a lot of people are more comfortable shooting a highly produced multi thousand dollar video.... but here's the deal...  today, user generated content is it!  We don't have to spend thousands to get a message across.  That's what the whole 2.0 or "web next" thing is about.  That does NOT mean that the content is not rich and compelling... if anything, a challenge like this video project forces us to make the content "king."

 2-4 minutes... it's just like a blog... but it's a video.  And we're all set up at CEC to help you create your own!

Call me if you're interested in learning more (415-373-1829).  Go to our Cepedia page. Email our alias at cec_video_challenge@sun.com.  OR just come to CEC with some ideas in mind that you want to videoblog about, a buddy you might want to do it with (although that's not necessary)... but at the very least, come by our room at CEC - just 25 feet away from the main stage - the Burgundy Room in the Paris Hotel.

Seeley

small print:
Just a reminder... this is for an external audience... being a "challenge," we're posting all submissions to YouTube - Keeping that in mind, we also need to be sensitive to what we say to our external audience. For some, this freaks people out... for others it just makes them want to suit up!  Game on!

Today was different than 9/11/02, '03, '04 and so on. It seems like each year we focus a little less on the actual events and tragedy on that day. By 10am, I had already spoken with 3 people that didn't even realize today is 9/11.

The reason I'm writing this entry is because I think it's important to remember that there are still many many people in and around NYC suffering. Not just those who lost family and friends, but the heroes who went into the scene to help save people's lives... all the police officers, firemen and firewomen, EMTs, volunteer organizations. Perhaps it's the ex-social worker in me that makes me realize there is so little active advocacy taking place for these heroes. In my effort to find relevant info online, i was amazed at how sparse the actual info is on these survivors that I'm referring to....all those suffering from ongoing respiratory related illness from inhaling the pulverized concrete and chemicals.  Sadly, the attack hasn't seen the last of it's victims.

I hope we all choose to carve out time from our busy lives today to remember 9/11/01.  And to remember those that sacrificed (and are actively sacrificing) their own lives to save ours.  

Below are a few interesting articles and photos essays on some of the Heroes of 9/11....

SoHo Blues - Photo Essays on First Responders 

70% of First Responders Suffer Grave Lung Disease 

Article from Gotham Gazette in NY 9/11 Heroes are still ill... 

Memorial for 9/11 Victims 

It's so nice to see colleagues of mine creating videos like this... taking advantage of newer forms of media and changing "marketing" as we once knew it.  

The SunSpectrum Enterprise Service Plan video gives a brief summary of Sun's support plan - helping our customers maintain their infrastrcutures to ensure constant availability.

I know this has been posted a couple times, but i just came across it on Jeremy Barnish's site and had to post it here as well.. very cool video. Great job to whoever created this! 

I'm excited to announce a new and very cool project that I get to take on in the coming weeks....  All engineers and architects are invited to submit videos of their technical stories at our upcoming CEC.  I'm just excited to have the opportunity to be working on such an interesting project - something that's way off from the more traditional marketing, with reach and transparency.  

I think Jonathan summed it up well with his answer to the ZDNetAsia interview... see 1/2 way down page 2.

More to come...

 

Interesting article from Richard Stacy of Social Computing... 

"To find something comparable," said Rupert Murdoch to Wired Online in July 2006, "you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media - which incidentally, is what really destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite.  Now it's the people who are taking control."

While the article is a bit lengthy, the predictions are thoroughly explained...

1.  The price of traditional media will be cut in half within five years.

2.  The world's leading media organizations won't actually produce content.

3.  The 30-second TV ad will survive!

4.  The rise of specialists and aggregators

5.  The death of the brand proposition and the rise of the brand story

6.  Marketing departments to split into the story department and the conversation department

 7.  The emergence of the category of consumer franchise

8.  The rise of the global micro-brand

9.  The rise of the brand watch communities

10.  The emergence of 'Digital Identity Stress' and 'Digital Schizophrenia' as a recognized medical condition

But why did I post this?  Like many blogs I read every day, I, too, have been reading about this transformation taking place in the way we share and retrieve information.  And I still feel very green to it all.  While there are some really cool new ways to connect with our audiences, it's somewhat daunting.  An entirely new way of conducting business.  Enjoy the article!

First off, my apologies for the delayed blog postings... in the last month I have had the fortunate and beautiful experience of getting married and to have gone on a fantastic honeymoon to Paris, Cannes and Rome.  It was incredible!

Now I'm back! ... and I'm doing a slightly new role with Sun. I am one of the few people in our Services organization with the opportunity to explore this whole "new space" everyone is takling about.... web 2.0, enterprise 2.0, social media, etc... There's a long list of potential names to describe what's happening right now in online interactions, marketing and in the way people conduct business. I have been very enthusiastic about this opportunity - so much so that I even have a neat little list of all these cool new topics I want to blog about pertaining to "2.0" on behalf of our Services lines of business, like Profesional , Managed Services, and Support. 

And now i'm confused... As I was sipping my sugar free lemon flavored water this morning in my San Francisco office, I came upon Marc Andreessen's blog on "Why there's no such thing as 2.0." 

This entry serves as an excellent reminder of caution with how we use these terms.   How we may be limiting ourselves as marketing professionals when we talk about what's happening in "this space." Read the blog. For those interested in everything "2.0," it's well worth the time.

In the meantime, here is my commitment to our amazing community of bloggers at Sun, to those who've read and supported my first few entries, and to our Professional, Managed, Support and Learning Services...  Count me in as one of those regular bloggers whose three main objectives in keeping you engaged are frequency, relevance and community... more to come on those 3 items too!


 

According to  Enterprise 2.0 Conference creators, a recent Forrester Research and McKinsey survey of more than 400 executives found 80% saw Web 2.0 technologies as an opportunity to increase their companies' revenue and/or margins. Companies who make these technologies work for their business today will gain a competitive advantage, while those who don't risk becoming dinosaurs.

Here's a video of some of the execs from the Web 2.0 conference a couple weeks ago in San Francisco.  Discussion is around how the modern web is impacting IT.  Undeniably, these developments are changing corporate culture and creating far more transparency to our consumers.

Web 2.0 for the Enterprise Video

ZDNet Editor in Chief Dan Farber talks to Ross Mayfield, CEO of SocialText; Matthew Glotzbach, product management director of Google Enterprise; and Satish Dharmaraj, CEO of Zimbra, about why CIOs are starting to implement Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise.

So, I'm new to Sun.  And I just started a blog about 2 weeks ago... and somehow i got 200 hits last Friday...  Since then, I've been a little blog-shy.  But when my wonderful fiance taught me how to embed YouTube videos into my blog, i knew I was onto my second wind...

We just wrapped up our event in Second Life on Tuesday, April 24th and it was a huge success!  We filled the TED island and had people show up from all over the world. It was my first event in Second Life and an amazing experience. Thankfully, the vendor we worked with, Clear Ink, were brilliant and knew exactly how to do all the tricky things like build the 3D installations, help our visitors navigate around our landscape and most importantly, stream the audio of John Gage and Cameron Sinclair to the island. 

We're still working on posting some of the archived files and I'll let you know when they're all up. But in the meantime, I wanted to share a recent response we received...  And before I do that...I just want to say how lucky I feel to have had the opportunity to work on such a cool project.  My favorite part was that the entire theme centered on combining humanitarian efforts with the benefits of technology.  That's exactly what the responses have been about...

One example:

Hello Sun Professional Services team,

I wanted to applaud you for sponsoring the recent conversation with Cameron Sinclair and John Gage in Second Life. 

It was an inspiring event, as Cameron is regarded by many as one of the single most important figures in contemporary architecture for the revolutionary trifecta of open-source, sustainable design that is geared to addressing challenges in the developing world. 

There was a strong consensus that Second Life represents an excellent platform from which to develop new projects, collecting ideas and executing collaborative design visions which can then be shared in a ubiquitous manner both in-world and on the web.  There is also a compelling potential for this relationship to grow, with existing projects on the Open Architecture Network web site such as Marlon Blackwell's 'porch dog house' to be re-created and available for free download in Second Life in the same manner that sites such as SLBoutique.com and SLExchange.com allow for the web based purchase of virtual goods.  Alternately, 'built' projects projects could be sold in Second Life, with sales proceeds going back to the Open Architecture Network to fund construction projects in Real Life.  Either option would benefit from the continued support of Sun Professional Services, as both will raise awareness of Architecture for Humanity, the Open Architecture Network, and allow greater access to innovative architectural design solutions for virtual and real world citizens. Thanks again.

Best Regards,

- Chip Poutine
Author, virtualsuburbia.com
Founder, prion design group
Co-Founder, slfoundations.org

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Next, if you'd like to see some of the pre-work that took place to build the installations that were highlighted in our event, go to the following links. These highlight the Porchdog concept and were a contribution by Jon Brouchoud and Clear Ink to Architecture for Humanity's Open Architecture Network.

Hurrican Katrina Relieve, Biloxi Model Home Program, Project: Porchdog

Open Architecture Network - Porchog Photo 1 & 2

SLURL to the location of the build in Second Life

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Collaborative Architecture

Sponsored by Sun Professional Services