Ten site leads gathered at this lovely city of Prague, Czech, for 2 days. Pictured, back row from the left, are: David Marr (Menlo Park, USA) from legal; our host, Pavel Suk; Robert O'Dea of Dublin, Ireland; Erlend Dahl from Trondheim, Norway; KNR of Bangalore, India; Sin-Yaw Wang of Beijing, China; Akira Ohsone of Tokyo, Japan; Didier Simonazzi, representing Alban Rechard, of Grenoble, France; Michael Bemmer of Hamburg, Germany; and Grisha Labzovski of St. Petersburg, Russia. On the front row, from left, are: Michal Geva of Tel Aviv, Israel; Lenka Kasparova from Prague, PM and care taker for everybody; Vidya Srinivasan (Bangalore, India) from finance; Mike Murray (Broomfield, USA), our facilitator and HR representative.

The meeting began by everyone saying their names. This simple act was surprisingly gratifying. People wrote their names in the native language, said it in native tongue, and described how their names were mis-pronounced by Americans, or others. Michal (mi-HELL), a proud biblical female name, became Michael frequently. Grisha took a much more practical approach to create a close-enough name than trying to teach everyone his real Russian one. My name, in Chinese, is simply impossible to teach. Erlend told us how people said his name wrong and I couldn't even tell the differences. This simple made us individuals a community instantaneously. We are all different and we are all together.

At primitive level, all each site wants is a thriving future and a little recognition for the job. Running a site is a job few at headquarters appreciate. Each of us talked about our roles at the site and room is full of nodding heads in agreement. "Taking care" of a site implies devotion, commitment, leadership, and a constant balancing act that is so, so hard (budget, HR, facility, IT, etc.) We all want this part of the job easier, since it is thankless. This summit provides learning opportunities among ourselves and also a forum that people appreciate this job.

Looking around the room, I see representation for almost half of Sun's Software organization: just 10 people. These people do jobs for a concept — a site — that does not exist in Sun's organization. There are fire in their bellies. They all want to make their sites better, make more contribution to Sun, and have more impacts felt. Everyone felt the poignancy of opportunities lost: Sun could have, would have, and should have done so much better. I have lived this for 3 years. I understand the determination and courage required to capture those opportunities. Looking around the room, they do too.

We left Prague with a commitment to gather again in 6 months. I guess each of us understood the length of the journey ahead and wouldn't mind good company along the way. There are many ways to say "see you later," we simply shook hands and waved good-byes.

Cross posted at http://www.nomadicminds.org

Somewhere between Xi'An and Beijing, my friend and her daughter caught a cold — an ordinary travel story except for the treatment she sought.

Traditional Chinese medicine has 4 standard treatment methods: pressure points massage, acupuncture, spot heating, and herbs. Note that surgery is not one of them and the first three are different physical forces on the same system: the "qi" circuitry. Based on a completely different set of theories than its western counter-part, Chinese medicine believes energies in a body govern life, or the healing processes.

To treat colds, one merely needs to unblock the natural balancing hot and cold energies; skin scraping the right areas the right way does just that. The bruises are the proof: the toxins now have floated to the top and will soon dissipate.

Physiologically, scraping damages the skin. When our body tries to repair, it also eradicates the cold virus. It takes a few hundred years to discovered the best areas to stimulate such responses.

Yes, both the mother and the daughter had their skins scraped. (Pictured is my back.) They felt much better the next day. Skins felt just fine, except during hot showers. Small prices to pay, they happily claimed, to be able to enjoy the rest of the China trip.

Jim and Darren blogged about the possibility and probable impacts of very high oil prices. They both focused on consumer behavior.

At industrial level, oil prices will have an even greater impact. Unbeknownst to many, US industries feed on oil too. From California central valley to Iowa corn field to Kansas cattle ranches, regions have specialized into single products. The famed Interstate highway system is the cardiovascular systems of this highly independent organism. Oil is the blood that runs through it, bringing in nutrients for life and haul away wastes for survival.

Americans also depend on oil to generate fertilizers that feed the corn production system: affecting almost half of the foods in typical supermarkets.

Lastly, some one in the "field" told me that the earth actually has plenty of oil for everyone and for a long time. It is just a matter of costs to extract them. The easy oil fields are near depleted. The technologies and operational costs for harder ones require higher oil prices to sustain.

So, drink up, Americans. Chinese and Indians, learn from this.

Cross posted at http://www.nomadicminds.org

Just saw the report that ErWang Temple of DuJianYan collapsed during the earthquake. I took the picture on the left last November.

This temple was first built probably 1000 years ago. Last renovations was around 1908. It completely collapsed this time. Guess it qualifies as a once in a 100 years earthquake.

It is such as sad feeling that what I saw last year is gone forever. I had a similar sensation when the World Trade Towers collapsed during 9/11. I visiited the restaurant on top of them not too long prior to the disaster either.

The TV news showed workers spraying antiseptic over the debris. There are less and less "miracle rescue" stories and more and more on tent cities, heroic logistical efforts, and the national mourning. The whole country stood in silience for 3 minutes a few days ago. Cars stopped and honked at the same time. Many moist eyes, tears, or even crying during those minutes.

I honestly do not know if any government can do better than China handling a disaster of this scale. The actions were swift, organized, transparent, and open-minded. That 3-minute silence touched every citizens and solidified the entire country. Chinese showed their bests. Money poured in; factories mobilized to produce whatever; distribution systems efficiently move goods to the right places, even drop got a receipt from the recipient; civilians blogged, photo'ed, or emailed heart-wrenching stories.

Won't forget this for a long, long time..

Cross posted at http://www.nomadicminds.org

Last year, I learned whiskey from the master. Still an apprentice, I searched every liquor store that came my way for those Crawford mentioned. Over this year, I have found (and drunk) all but Lagavulin, the Islay whiskey.

Of course, my primary search algorithm is to peruse the airport duty free stores. Last week, in San Francisco attending JavaOne, I walked past this store and, what the heck, let's take a look. Hey, on the bottom of the shelf stood this lonely bottle. I snatched it right away.

Wow! Smokey and peaty. This is supposed to be the most distinct one in the Islay category. I enjoyed it quite a lot so far. Honestly, I have only a faint memory on the differences between the 4 of them. I use MaCallan as the benchmark and try to tell the difference between them. I guess I need to hit the bottles now.

Crawford also told me this store to visit. Whoever happens to be at Taipei, do stop by Wonderful Wines and Spirits at 6F, No 200, Sung Chiang Rd (+886 2 2536.8261). Tell them Crawford sent you.

China, at 2:38pm today, had a major earthquake at SiChuan, WenChuan, at 7.8 scale. Few minutes later, at 2:35pm, Beijing's TongZhou had one at 3.9 scale. I was at home and felt the rolling moves. Company evacuated everyone to the nearby open area. I heard no damages.

Fortune magazine's Geoff Colvin agreed with economist Angus Maddison that by 2015, China will become the largest economy, supplanting the USA, of the world. That's 7 years from now.

He noticed that the US supplanting then the largest economy only in 1890, overtaking, guess which country, China. Since technologies will inevitably spread to every corner of the world, population will eventually became the main factor for economy. It is only natural that China to "resume its natural role as the world's largest economy by 2015," taking them 125 years to catch up the lead the US has from industrial revolution and and wars.

I agree with the eventuality of this prediction, but not necessary the exactness of 7 years: more like 20 in my opinion. But this is hardly the main arguement.

The new generation of business leaders, now in their 20s or 40s, must learn to do business in China and with Chinese. 7 years is not that long to master a language, especially when one is not even trying.

Thanks Jim Grisanzio for mentioning. I am adding this line just to send trackback.

I decided to walk the morning of May 6th. On my way to Moscone center I noticed cliques of people carrying the same designed backpack. Tricles became streams; streams merged into torrent rivers. I arrived at 8:15 and decided to browse the bookstore to kill minutes before the general session. When I was done, at 8:25, guards formed a line preventing more people from tailing the queue. They don't want a mob scene when the doors open. The crowd, I was part of them, waited for nearly 20 minutes before it was "safe" to proceed.

I was a resident in San Francisco bayarea for many years but rarely stay in the city. I arrived Sunday night and stayed in a hotel near Union Square, a lovely area full of shopping, restaurants, and activities. When I heard the bell, Tony Bennett's song came to me.

I gasped and ran up to John Gage to shake his hand when he had a break. He was helping James Gosling with their t-shirt launcher. He co-hosted JavaOne's opening session, talked about sensors, instruments, network, and, of course, his favorite subject: Earth. I saw lovely Rita and Fiona who came to help out the OpenSolaris launch. Everywhere are hugs of old friends: Diane and her staff, Solaris people, etc. Whichever Stephen Hahn's disease that made him wear a tie seemed to have infected David Comay too. Oh well...

Ian Murdock opened CommunityOne with eye-catching artistic slides. Rich Green, Jim Hughes, and Jeff Bonwick decisively upstaged him destroying harddisks with sledge hammer, anvil, and power drill, on the stage. The robustness of ZFS kept the system and application running while the boys were having a great time.

Jetlag overpowered and kept me from the OpenSolaris release party. Good thing that Fiona took pictures of everyone having a great time.

It was a pleasant surprise to bump into Lin Lee, Jonathan's newest staff member and an old friend in China. We sneaked out to Yerba Buena park for a cup of tea. As I sipped, I recognized a joke of globalization. I flew 7000 miles to have Chinese tea in San Francisco; my favorite afternoon drink in Beijing is a cup of Java. Lin ordered Lapsang Souchong, a Chinese tea that none of us heard of before. Google showed it to be "正山小种" or "星村小种". This makes the whole tea-drinking even more laughable: the dark tea came from my ancestor's hometown. My father grew up in 星村 (XingCun) and may have named me with it.

JavaOne was even more entertaining. Ian Freed from Amazon demonstrated Kindle, an electronic book the size of a thin paperback. After a few more guests, Jonathan unveiled the special guest Neil Young, the venerable rock singer. Neil Young came on stage with a cap and wrap-around sunglasses. His signature side-burns are all grey already. Instead of singing, he introduced his archive that includes everything about his music since 1963. At the end, he showed a LincVolt vehicle that records all energy going in and out of the old Lincoln when it tours the country. The visual of an aged Neil Young, a pony-tailed Jonathan, and a sleek black-t-shirted Rich Green on stage is just so special and memorable. I was hoping for a song, but got only several needle drops from Neil Young's archive.

Questions from netizens lingered on after the IT168 interview, “How Sun, pioneer of open source, makes money?” I shall always remember Solaris 10. It took almost 4 years and thousands of talented engineer. How do we justify the investment if we open source? I decided to make this the topic for my talk at China's Partner CTO Summit, featuring distinguished guests such as Hal Stern and Jim Baty.

The era of software licensing is over. Now, participation defines community; communities become marketplace; marketplace generates revenue and leads to profit. How do you get people to participate at the first place? You set your software free. Freedom feeds the hunger of creativity and attracts participation.

Communities, however, must avoid anarchy that hampers profitability. For software, this means the necessity of licenses. Free software combined with proper licensing terms creates healthy participation and leads, eventually, to profitability.

This path shapes like a funnel. The mouth needs to be huge for as many and large communities as possible. Over the other end, a much smaller subset of them generate enough revenue. It is always good to have the mouth of the funnel bigger. It is also foolish to expect a high conversion rate, even worse to manipulate the licenses to increase the conversion rate. Never weaken freedom.

The conversion is not automatic. The participants enjoy the software and require a good reason and an easy mechanism to pay for it, directly or indirectly. Google is paid for by advertisements. MySQL collection subscription and service fees. ITune is part of iPod and a channel for Apple's online music business.

Sun first cultivated communities that are interested in our technologies and products. Then we attract developers to create solutions based on those technologies and products. Monetization then starts: entrepreneurs launch businesses with our technologies; hardware products enjoy a bigger market; enterprises still pay licensing fees for various reasons; communities members pay for subscription, support, and services; enthusiasm generates demands for training and consulting services.

OpenSourcing got Sun noticed and media covered. It opens doors previous shut tight. In this complex world of technologies, many larger companies will pay dearly for the what Sun received from open sourcing our software. Hack, I even heard someone saying Microsoft is now open-sourced. Shows how envious they are.

Yes, you will read bad stories from the media. You are probably worrying about the company and its future. That's a good thing that you worry. You may be even worrying about yourself. That's natural.

Yes, we lost money and planned to reduce OPEX (that means we may layoff people) for about 100 to 150 millions dollars. That's lots of reduction and it sounds scary.

Let me suggest a way to handle this news.

Sun Microsystems is in the "knowledge industry." You are very likely a "knowledge professional." This means you compete in this world with what you know. The company competes with the management of its employees' knowledges.

Ask yourself, "Am I learning more and applying what I have learned?" Also ask yourself, "Can I learn faster and more effectively?" (The 2nd answer is always yes. Think of coaching, environment, project scope, etc.)

You should feel the comfort that whatever you have learned is always yours. You should feel the pressure that the whole world is trying to out-learn you. You should compel yourself to out-learn them.

And that will make you a great employee, make the company stronger, and give you the security and a good career too.

Today is number 1,000. Where were you on August 4th, 2005? How have you changed since? Did I play a part in your life? Hopefully nicely remembered.

China teaches. Everyday I soaked up and learned. I discovered things in me that were long forgotten. I watched China, the USA, Sun Microsystems, and other companies and institutes. I smiled, I laughed, I sighed, and, many times, I found myself almost in tears.

Things are happening here with such epidemic boldness. Billions, BILLIONS of people are marching to quiet orders and shaping the earth with forces this world has never experienced before. Clearly, the world does not know how to deal with China. I don't think China does either. March on, nevertheless.

The poor touched me the most. A young man told me that his parents paid for his 4 years of college. Each year cost 3 times their total annual income as rural farmers. After he "made it" in Beijing, he bought 2 houses: one for his own family and another for his elderly parents. He told me that he will never be able to pay them back. I agreed whole-heartedly. Another told me about his college friend who eats only one meal a day. He has 500 yuans to live by every month. When inflation drove up the cafeteria meal to 15rmb (2 dollars), he cannot afford 2 meals anymore. I thought of him whenever I ordered from Starbucks.

I found Chinese entrepreneurs emancipated. For every bureaucratic inefficiency, there is an entrepreneur offering services. For every cent of arbitrage difference, there is a business exploiting it. For every profit margin, there is a hard-working person earning it. Government tries to keep up with infra-structure build-up and found capacity soaked up instantaneously. China will be fully enterprised in a decade or two. The profiting model will then change from "vacuum filling" (claiming a segment as the 1st arriver) to "competitive advantage" (trying to out-do existing players). I am curious to observe the transition then.

I pondered long on the struggle of foreign enterprises, very few did well here. Root causes seem mundane and obvious: they have been inflexible, ignorant, and arrogant. Enterprises tried to import value systems with assumptions: they are poor and therefore must not know better, they are different and therefore must be inferior, they are inexperienced and therefore must be weaker. Educated will see the stupidity of these assumptions, yet corporations repeat them years after years while Chinese are agreeing with them all the way to the bank.

Everything is possible, nothing is easy. Cliché on the lives in China, yet so true. Getting a driver's license, for example, is definitively a blog-worthy topic. Most people resigned to the arbitrary, tedious, and ever-changing bureaucratic processes. For thousands of years, China governs more with processes and less with laws. In fact, the passage of a law means very little until the publication of implementation specifics. The adage "there is a counter-measure for every policies" (上有政策，下有对策) refers to the commonality of law circumvention and a reflection of the chasm between the legal systems and the reality. In China, people spend a large percentage of their attention and resources to circumvent out-dated laws and regulations creatively to get things done. Westerners gasp and Chinese just smile.

Personal milestones happened during these 1000 days too. My mother passed away, a niece married, my 2nd kid thrust me into empty-nester's club, and I re-bonded with childhood buddies. I guess milestones always happen, but China marks a distinct period for these 1000 days. I have been thinking of how to harvest from the learnings more and more these days. This means this phase will be winding down and the next will start soon. A few years from now, I will look back to see another distinct 1000-day period.

How exciting!

Fog completely shrouded ShangHai on the 2nd day. The hotel window, instead of framing the spectacular river-side cityscape, showed nothing: only lights without sources. I thought, "How long will the taxi line at the lobby?"

For 11 consecutive years, China's Ministry of Education and Sun Microsystems jointly held the conference for China higher education community.

The 1st day's morning has 4 Sun speakers, and several distinguished guests from China government. Jason Tong is the MC. Chris Lin, Sun China GM, welcome all attendants. Crawford Beveridge, Sun's EVP, talked about government's role in education and innovation. He started with a history of innovation and showed the trend of urbanization. He showed the list of largest cities in the world: both Beijing and ShangHai are on the list. Joe Hartley, VP of Global Government, Education & Healthcare, talked about personal roles in communities. His speech motivates people to become leaders, activists, or influencers in their communities. It earned a long applause from the audience.

Yours truly shamelessly plagiarized Greg Papadopoulos's Cloud Computing presentation. Greg observed the big trends in education and IT technologies are conveniently, and coincidentally, amplifying each others. I needed to shorten the material for the time. Hopefully, I still delivered the essences of his presentation. Simon See, Architect on HPC, ended the conference with a talk about the trend in high performance computing (HPC).

In addition to keynotes, there were several tracks of interactive sections and about a dozen or of exhibitions on various technologies and products. Overall, the conference was well-attended with IT professionals and professors from universities around the country. This is the 3rd time I participated this event. I am definitely coming next year too.

Cross posted at http://www.nomadicminds.org

HuangPu River carved the lovely Bund, the prime financial real estate since China leased this area to Britain in 1870s. It slices the city into halves.

ShangHai City started from the west side (PuXi) and expanded east, toward the sea. The river exacted a distance tax to PuDong, or the east of HuangPu river. It accepted to be the lesser part of ShangHai.

No more. Its rural land provided growth space for high-tech industries. The adjacency to the new airport and sea ports makes it a better choice of trade, light manufacturing, and the steel industry. PuDong is now rich, modern, and vibrant. PuXi, however, remains charming, classic, and the choice location for the best restaurants.

The necessity of crossing the river is a daily nightmare. Subway network is not yet mature. Tunnels are frustrating. Bridges are inconvenient detours. Then, I found the lovely alternative: the ferry. I like ferries.

There are two commuter ferry lines (and many tourist ones). The shorter one costs 0.50 RMB and the longer one 2. A short wait beacons the boat and begins the leisure crossing. I soaked in busy river activities and understood the role this river plays to the prosperity of this biggest city of China.

Then the taxi thrusted me back to the mega-city's arteries.

Across the Universe Directed by Julie Taymor Pub. Date: 2007

Cross posted at http://www.nomadicminds.org

My iPods collects 128 Beatles songs.

They have cryptic lyrics, but mysteriously beautiful, bringing tears or smiles from the heart. You can't talk when the music is still playing; and have long buried the moment in your heart when the song ended. When the song starts, they all came back up.

Maybe it is a clever musical strung together with Beatles? No, that’s possible only with ABBA. This is Julie Taymor’s interpretations. Nicely done.

She was giddy talking about Paul McCartney at the pre-screening. Oprah joined her like a teenage slumber party girl. "Wow," I thought. "The power of Beatles."