Saturday, May 16, 2009

OneStop is VERY COOL!

Without question, the most popular internal site at Sun Microsystems (this is quantified by both the numbers and the internal employee surveys is OneStop. Mike Briggs, Principal Engineer and Robert Holt do a fantastic job creating the perfect online technical community. Mike and Robert discuss what OneStop is as well as what the Secret Sauce is behind OneStop. Mike and Robert give me credit for suggesting that they start blogging about OneStop, but the idea behind me suggesting this comes from the fact that I know there are many Sun customers who have been shown OneStop by a Sun employee and the customer response is always the same: "This is GREAT!"

I would encourage any Sun customer to check out what Mike or Robert are doing with OneStop and to drop them a comment if you want to learn more about how they run OneStop - it literally is the first and last place most Sun employees go to for information. It is run by Mike and Robert with over 300 all-volunteer army of authors.

Inside Sun Microsystems, the sentence, "have you tried OneStop" is the morale equivalent of RTFM! :-)

Transition Software Genius University to Software University

This page will have non-proprietary updates on the Software Genius University (SGU) to Sun Software University (SU) transition.

A little background history...

Sun SGU grew out of the extremely successful Software Genius Program (SGP). The genesis of SGP was a conversation that Scott Radeztsky and I had in the fall of
2005 when we asked the basic question, "what can we do to help the SEs to
embrace the developer and Sun's software stack?"
In January 2006, we kicked
off the Software Genius Program Council (SGPC) where the SEs in Americas
Software Practice created ten courses, or twenty hours, of software training.
This program had one goal - to ensure Sun's Systems Engineers were properly
equipped with the necessary software knowledge and skills to be successful.

Sun SGU served a very important need when it was announced globally on July 1st
2007. SGU now has 740 hours of course work in it and the best of that content will be transitioned to Software University. There are countless individuals who should be thanked for the (literally) 1,000s of hours that went into Sun SGU. We will continue to make the necessary student competence mappings transitions from the Sun SGU's University certifications levels to Software University's Accreditations much like we did with the global Solaris training that came out of Dan Berg's organization last FY. We will make it very clear regarding the how, when, where, why and what as we go through this effort.

HUGE Thanks to George Selix and Joe Campbell of Sun Learning Services for their leadership and guidance in this transition. We will be transitioning selected SGU content to Software University immediately. Bob Eskenberry, Jerry Neece, Catherine Sees and I will be leading this effort.

SGU's "Learn Once, Work Anywhere" philosophy will continue with SU.

More Details Sun(SM) Software Genius University

Sun SM Software Genius University (Sun SGU) is comprised of three majors:

  • Identity Management
  • Java CAPS
  • Solaris

Sun SGU is designed for two categories of individuals designed for Sun and Sun's Partners:

  • Systems Engineers
  • Professional Services Consultants

Sun SGU curriculum is based on the university taxonomy where upon completion of a year the individual can:

  • A Freshman (Step-1) can give a quality technical presentation.
  • A Sophomore (Step-2) can give a technical demonstration.
  • A Junior (Step-3) can give a customized technical demonstration.
  • A Senior (Step-4) can lead a Proof Of Concept (POC).
  • A Master can lead a customer deployment.

Each Major (undergrad) represents 280 hours of work in a mixture of disciplines with a strong emphasis on hands-on learning.

Sun employees can access Sun SGU.

Partners will have access to Sun SGU in the August timeframe.

Sun SM Software Genius University

Learn Once, Work Anywhere