Riding The Java Wave

Scott McNealy’s Sun Microsystems didn’t collapse because it lacked innovation. It collapsed because the industry moved faster than its business model.

Sun built some of the most advanced technology of its era — Solaris, SPARC, and Java — yet remained dependent on selling expensive hardware just as the world shifted toward cheap servers, open-source software, and eventually cloud computing.

While others turned Sun’s ideas into scalable businesses, Sun struggled to monetize its own brilliance.

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In the end, being early wasn’t enough.

In technology, timing and execution matter as much as vision.

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As cloud computing eventually became the end of Sun Microsystems, it became our next beginning. We moved from Java to cloud seamlessly — years ahead of most of the industry. While others hesitated or waited to see how the market would evolve, we committed early. Many competitors never even attempted to challenge us and chose to remain on the sidelines.

Our CloudEXPO conferences would go on to dominate the cloud media space for decades.

But at the time, Java was everything.

Our premiere issue of Java Developer’s Journal was ready to go to print even before Sun had fully organized its first user conference, JavaOne.

Just thirty days before JavaOne was scheduled to take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Oracle was preparing for its own annual event — Oracle OpenWorld — at the very same venue.

We were media sponsors of both conferences.

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We placed full-page ads announcing JavaOne and Oracle OpenWorld, then sent the issue to the printer.

I emailed Larry Ellison personally, explaining that Java Developer’s Journal was one of Oracle’s media sponsors. We wanted to officially launch the magazine at his event and requested booth space so we could distribute our premiere issue to attendees. Roughly 10,000 delegates were expected.

His reply came back almost immediately, with several Oracle executives copied.

“It’s a lovely idea.”

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From that moment on, we received full cooperation from Oracle’s public relations team. Throughout the event, members of the expo staff kept rushing up to me, smiling, and saying, “Larry said it’s a lovely idea.”

That week, we got exactly the exposure we had hoped for.

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As Oracle OpenWorld wrapped up, we turned our full attention to what came next — the very first JavaOne.

Java had been officially introduced earlier that year. On May 23, 1995, Sun Microsystems unveiled Java at the SunWorld conference.

The announcement ignited rapid global adoption. Within months, Java was everywhere — and Java Developer’s Journalsuddenly found itself riding at the center of one of the fastest technology waves the industry had ever seen.

By then, we knew it.

Java was our big wave.

We had to focus on our newborn baby at full intensity.

For JavaOne, I went all in.

I hired two forty-foot-long billboard trucks, each wrapped with massive, backlit graphics — not only on the sides, but on the rear panels as well, so cars following behind couldn’t miss them.

When the JavaOne conference opened the following month, those trucks circled the Moscone Center nonstop.

Not a single attendee could miss our giant magazine cover announcing Java Developer’s Journal at the first-ever JavaOne — an event that stunned the industry by drawing more than 20,000 participants and selling out the entire expo floor.

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We ordered 1,000 T-shirts and 1,000 coffee mugs from China at one dollar each. We placed mugs on nearly every booth across the show floor.

At our own booth, I stacked 5,000 copies of the magazine.

From a distance, all you could see was a mountain of JDJs.

The night before the show, we stopped for a couple of drinks at a local gentlemen’s club on the way back to the hotel. On impulse, I hired two of the dancers to help work our booth the next day.

When the expo floor opened that morning, they showed up.

We immediately realized we had a problem.

They were dressed exactly as they had been the night before — which is to say, barely dressed at all.

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We scrambled to cover them as much as we could, then I sent them out with instructions to walk the floor and collect business cards from exhibitors.

Less than an hour later, they were back.

There were more than a thousand exhibitors at JavaOne.

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I said, “Ladies, we want the business cards of the marketing managers. Why are you back so fast?”

They looked at me and said, “We didn’t miss a single booth.”

They weren’t exaggerating.

They had collected more than a thousand business cards — from nearly every company on the expo floor.

Those cards became our A-list advertising leads for the next issue.

Almost immediately after they started working the booth, my Motorola flip phone rang.

It was Carmen.

“I hear you hired hookers as booth bimbos,” she said. Advertisers had been calling her all day, reporting that we had dancers working our booth.

When she learned what those two almost-naked college girls had actually accomplished, she paused.

Then she calmed down.

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I paid the girls, thanked them for their help, and asked them not to return the next day.

They had done their job.

Results, after all, tend to speak for themselves.

Our presence at JavaOne was intimidating — at least to our competitors.

The other Java magazine, Java Report, published by Rick Friedman of Siggs Publications, was clearly rattled when I ran into him on the floor.

He yelled, “Java Developer’s Journal is everywhere! I go to the bathroom and see copies stacked on the counter. What are you doing? And what are those monster trucks circling the city?”

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Not long after that conference, Rick sold his company and retired.

I hired two of his senior managers — Larry and Miles.