Personal Bytes

Last Thursday there was a Research event at Sun Labs in Menlo Park. Researchers from Google, Microsoft, HP, PARC and SAP were there.

Arriving at Sun

When we first arrived we had to fill out a form where we were asked about our country of origin. There was a first group containing a list of embargoed countries with the USA, like Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Syria, etc..; a second group, including most of the communist or extreme left-wing countries that, although not embargoed by the USA, are still communist (Venezuela, China, etc..); and then there was a third group basically meaning everyone else (Europe, Africa, Asia, etc..).

As you might be guessing by now, we had to disclose the country we’re from. If we were part of the aforementioned first group we couldn’t enter the building. This is an absolute non-sense. I’ve been to a lot of companies in Silicon Valley and that was the first time such a thing was ever asked! Even worse, someone from Google was about to be barred, wasn’t it for the fact that he actually lives in Europe (albeit being from one of the blacklisted countries).

Sun’s culture

Despite this initial parody, I must say I was pretty impressed with Sun’s culture. After years of listening to the pundits predicting the end of Sun and the staleness of the SUNW symbol, one might think that Sun is just a dull company thriving to survive on a daily basis. Well, that’s far from being true.

Sun still has a very academic feeling. Stanford University Network that gave origin to the company pretty much reflects the company’s culture. Sun is flooded with very bright people walking around, most of them with a huge academic background or a proven career of achievements. People walk like students and more experienced employees seem to act like teachers, always available to chit-chat with whoever asks them for help — regardless or their role or level on the hierarchy. The rooms resemble the University labs — no fixed desks, tons of unordered hardware and very excited people working on their projects.

Besides, they’re really open to the external opinion. During the demos I did a lot of questions and in the end a Sun employee came to me asking for my insights about several things, some were not even related to what was brought to discussion by the demos. They definitely seem to care.

The Presentations

There were three presentations, one given by Ron Ho, a distinguished Engineer. He gave a quick overview of Sun Labs, their long term goals and what’s going on right now.

The second presentation was given by Randall Smith, a physics guy by heart with a PhD in Theoretical Physics that now has turned to programming the physical world. He’s one of the head researchers of the SPOT project (he’s the guy on the picture at the right-bottom on the website).

Finally, the presentation entitled The End of Security that I had already talked about. It was given by a huge name in security, Whitfield Diffie himself. As I previously mentioned, it was a joy to listen to him and for having a conversation too. He’s currently the Chief Security Officer at Sun.

The demos

I’ll just give a quick overview of the demos and then I’ll write a second post describing in detail each one of them.

• Project DreaM
• Sun Media Receiver
• Proximity Communication
• Search inside the music
• Connecting Java to the World: Sun SPOTs
• A Peek into SpotWorld
• Wonderland
• Project Sedna
• Solaris on PowerPC

I’ll get to the details on the Part I of A day under the Sun.