Photos from my visit to Sun’s Bangalore IEC campus.
Tag Archives: Sun Microsystems
Sun’s SC08 Student Party
The SuperComputing conference every year attracts computer science students from all over the world who participate in various ways: as volunteers, as competitors in things like the Cluster Challenge, as part of SC’s Education Program, and in a Broader Engagement initiative, run by Livermore Labs’ Computing Applications & Research Department. It’s a large and fascinating group, comprising students and educators from all over the world: China, India, Nigeria, Italy…
We wanted to give these students – current and future HPC developers – an introduction to Sun and our OpenSolaris HPC software developers’ stack. But they’re already working hard this week, so we didn’t want to lecture them. Instead, we threw a party!
SC08 Show Floor
SuperComputing 08, held in Austin, Texas, was a huge show and a huge effort for many of us at Sun, especially Rich Brueckner. The Sun booth was humming, attractions included Scott Tokar, a magician, and Rich’s Java Chopper, complete with biker chicks.
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The Glamorous Life
I’ve been told that some of my colleagues envy my job. I admit that it’s a lot of fun – and, when asked what I do, I focus on the positives – but right now I’m mostly tired. This month is the most intense I’ve yet had with Sun. Here’s what it’s looked like so far:
Oct 23: Flew to Minneapolis.
Oct 24, 27, 28: Filmed interviews with the SAM-QFS team at Sun’s Eagan, MN office.
Oct 29: Flew back to Denver, straight into meetings and more office time.
Nov 1-6: Filmed parts of Sun’s Data Management Ambassadors’ conference, fortunately being held near my “home base” office in Broomfield. Especially fortunate because I still had a lot to do organizing the SC08 Student party. Worked long office hours when I wasn’t behind a camera in a hotel conference room. (At least this particular conference room had huge windows, so I didn’t feel like I was in a cave all day.) When I was behind the camera, I was also usually doing something on my laptop, such as running the October stats on blogs and community websites.
Nov 8: Flew to San Diego.
Nov 9: Much-needed day off (it was a Sunday!), went to the zoo. Spent much of the evening on email, trying to finalize details for a blogging contest to be held around an important product launch the next day. Having received no word on a decision by 10:30 pm, I went to sleep.
Nov 10: Woke up and checked email again at 12:30 am, nothing. 5:30 am, still nothing, so I went ahead and mailed it, because the contest began at 6 am Pacific Time. Woke up at 7 to film an all-day ZFS Workshop at LISA.
Nov 11: Flew to Las Vegas for Sun’s Customer Engineering Conference. Lunch with Barton, toured the CEC show floor, hung out and had dinner with my OpenSolaris buds, declined to go to a late show with them, went back to my hotel room, watched House.
Nov 12: Filmed an HPC track that took most of the day, plus one other presentation. In the evening, participated in a Birds-of-a-Feather session on blogging. Disagreement was, er, lively.
Nov 13: After a very bad night’s sleep (my room at Caesar’s was right on top of a disco), got up at 4 am to catch a 6:22 am flight to San Francisco. Lynn picked me up, already dialed in to a staff meeting. In the afternoon, moderated the chat as Lynn’s presentation to Forum 2.0 was streamed online. Had a few ideas about how to do the moderator’s job better, will be writing about those later. In the evening Lynn and I had a meeting with Meena, then went back to our hotel for dinner. Had an extremely hot bath – the cold water didn’t work. At least the bed was very comfortable.
Nov 14: Up early again, interesting news on my iPhone. Hurried to get to Sun’s Menlo Park campus for Lynn’s second Forum presentation, then a dash to the airport for our flight to Austin. Arrived a little before 5, Diana about the same time from Denver, then ran into Matthew at baggage claim. Everyone’s coming to town for SC08. Got our cars, I went to Spankyville, where Ross was preparing dinner for a gang of us.
Nov 15: Up at 8 to catch up on emails and run some party-related errands, then on to film at Sun’s HPC Consortium all afternoon. Ended the day filming an interview with Dr. Jim Leylek. Had a quiet dinner with Dominic, went home and to sleep.
Nov 16: Up early again for the Consortium – first speaker of the day was Andy Bechtolsheim, so sleeping in was not an option! Left early (Peter took over the camera) so I could go help set up the venue for the party. More running around to pick up a tank of helium for the balloons and move our student helpers to the venue. Busy with preparations and then the party (which I think we can count as a success) until about midnight, went home and collapsed.
Nov 17: Woke up at 6:30, my brain immediately whirring madly through all the things I needed to do, though my body emphatically did not want to get out of bed. Made it back to the Consortium by 10 am to continue filming. Left again at 1:30 to go see Ross’ new home, have lunch, return the helium tank, and dash out again to film the opening of the SC08 show floor.
I hope to survive until Saturday, when I leave for warmer climes and something resembling a vacation. I should note that this month has been equally intense for practically everybody at Sun. We’re all looking and feeling a little ragged around the edges by now.
above: I did get to sit down long enough to have a caricature drawn at the OpenStorage Summit
Professional Videography vs. Videoblogging
^ filming at the Open Storage Summit after-party
I don’t claim to be a professional videographer (for one thing, I’m entirely self-taught). I do videoblogging, which is fundamentally different.
From my (very limited) experience, it seems that professional corporate video is, usually:
- thoroughly planned (and likely scripted) in advance;
- involves quite a lot of large, heavy equipment, with multiple people to set it up and run it.
- the people who do this know how to do media, but don’t necessarily know much about what or who they’re filming (nor do they need to).
- filming often takes place in a studio, which may need to be reserved well in advance, or in some other carefully-planned, controlled location;
- professional post-production (editing, compressing, and posting video) can take a long time
- all of this is expensive
Videoblogging, on the other hand:
- eh… not so planned. When I go to an event, I have an idea which talks I want to film, but things usually get added or subtracted at the last minute. Alongside the formal talks, I also try to grab interviews and other material.
- equipment is minimal and light, reasonable for one person to move around and manage.
- a videoblogger is part of the community, and therefore can see and take advantage of filming opportunities as they arise – or create them.
- shooting can take place anywhere – no reservation required.
- post-production is quick and dirty – the important thing is to get the material out FAST
- all of this is cheap
