Sun Sales Web Gems

This is an exciting week, not just for JavaOne Attendees, but also for everyone at Sun. Today was the start of CommunityOne, which is a free and open developer conference right before JavaOne kicks off. I just headed over to see today's events and I've embedded a live feed if you want to follow along. Great press is already hitting the wires! This week is all about communities and community building, see you there.

Lately it has felt that Sun is constantly launching new products. Our latest launch introduced the industry's first dual-socket CMT systems based on the third-generation UltraSPARC T2 Plus processor. In fact, 5140/5240 Try & Buy users can save up to 45% if they purchase trial units before June 30!!!!!! Trade ins of all kinds get addt'l 30%!!! Ok, I'll calm down now, but I'm making progress....I almost put that in all caps...

With JavaOne and CommunityOne right around the corner stick close to sun.com/launch for some exciting new announcements. We're ultra aggressive and nimble (especially compared to our larger competitors), we're laser focused on open everything and providing this community what they need....exciting days ahead....let the launch insanity continue!

An important day at Sun, we've hired a new spokesperson! Given recent trends on blogs and the web, I wanted to let you know Sun has scored big in naming him. Commercials are in production...........and yes, this is an April Fool's Day joke (but if it were reality, I'd be psyched as it's an oldie but goodie....)

We go to a lot seminars, mixers, conferences and happy hours (my favorite). And how do you stay on top of all of the places we'll be? I present to you the Web Gems Event Calendar. Below you'll find where the Sun Internet team will be and who we'll be networking with. Feel free to email me if you'd like a free ticket, because usually we are a sponsor and I have a few hookups. Happy networking!

Last week I had the opportunity (thanks to Rossi and Sun's gold sponsorship--my marketing team member and blog partner here on webgems) to attend Web Ventures '08! I was impressed with the event, especially the mix of global web and VC presence. The speakers and panel discussions were great, but the breakout sessions were my favorite part. It reminded me a bit of the demos at SF New Tech Meetup. I love events like these because it's fun to get quick 15 minute overviews of a company and move on (I have the attention span of a typical sales rep). Anyway, the web companies represented at Web Ventures ranged from Facebook and Google to newer companies like education.com and triggit and pageflakes and meebo. I think Triggit won the text voting on best breakout. It was a lot of fun.

When meeting new people and introducing myself as a representative from Sun Microsystems, the overwhelming response was positive (yeah, the "Is Sun viable?" question is long gone). I've been immersed in startups for only 5 months, but over that time period alone, the feedback about what Sun is doing and the overall perception in the Web Industry about Sun seems to be growing...a high five around the mySQL acquisition is the most common response I get. Sun's R&D spend produces products like the Sun Modular Datacenter referenced in a previous post (aka blackbox), OpenSolaris, and a bunch of stuff currently popping around in Sun Labs. As you can imagine, privacy (which if interested contact your Sun Sales Rep and you'll be surprised at the ways we can help), scalability, and garnering funding (especially in the current state of the economy) were topics that most of the time was spent on. I learned alot and gained a few new contacts for my social networks, definitely check out Dow Jones' ongoing series of sessions, wireless is next up!

Look for Sun tomorrow night (we're one of the sponsors!) at tomorrow's new tech meetup...http://newtech.meetup.com/15/ We'll be giving away something, including a request for participation in a new project within Sun that is focused on this community. It'll be another fun night at Club Mighty!