My new gig

I’m excited to start talking about my new job, Vice President of Eco Responsibility at Sun Microsystems. I know this job sounds vague - more details in a minute.

Over the last 4 or 5 years I’ve been getting deeper and deeper in energy and the environment. Part of my challenge has been to figure out how to get involved, beyond local activities and reading lots of books. When you start to take on “a cause” you’d like, if possible, to make use of the skills you’ve built up over the years.

So the opportunity at Sun has gotten me totally pumped. I met with Jonathan and Greg a few weeks ago and found them to have the same passion and concept of how big this could be. While it was hard to leave BEA, it is also nice to get back to Sun where there are still lots of old friends from my previous 8 years there. (and thanks for your welcome back message, Hal, you made me feel right at home!)

So what’s the job about? There’s lots to figure out, but it covers three main areas. The first, and probably biggest near-term, is building on Sun’s momentum with energy-efficient systems. There’s so many cool things to do in this space - I’m excited to dive in. Second is supporting customers who use our stuff in pursuit of helping the world be a better place. Global climate modeling is my current poster child, but there’s tons of great things that we can help make sure our customers are getting the most out of us they can. Finally there’s how we live day-to-day as a company. Can we be less wasteful?

The shape of the job will emerge over the next few months. I’ve been barraged by interested parties inside and outside of Sun, so I know it won’t be boring. I’ll get a blog going at blogs.sun.com soon and will point to it when I do.

Stay tuned, more thoughts coming soon on why this space is going to be hot.