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.