Dow Jones Web Ventures 08
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!
