Scott Speaks



We have a treat planned for tommorow.!
Scott McNealy, chairman and co-founder of Sun Microsystems will open the new and expanded High Performance Computing Virtual Lab (HPCVL) at Queen's on June 15th.The MBA students have been invited to listen to his key note speech that will be accessible to the more than 300 researchers from across Canada.

From Wikipedia:
Scott graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. He received his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. At Stanford, McNealy met Khosla, Joy, and Bechtolsheim and helped provide the necessary organizational and business leadership for the fledgling Sun Microsystems ("Sun" originally stood for Stanford University Network). McNealy is one of the few CEOs of a major corporation to have had a tenure of over twenty years. McNealy enjoys playing ice hockey, a fact that is frequently brought up during interviews and press mentions.

Sun Microsystems Inc. chief executive Scott McNealy plays a prominent role in a Business Roundtable task force on sustainable alternative fuel growth strategies.Along with Sun founder Vinod Khosla he has started his own fund to invest in clean tech companies. Working with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen they are financing a Seattle company that is trying to turn canola oil into diesel fuel.High oil prices alone are not the reason for the spike in interest. Low corn prices and technological advances have made ethanol a potentially cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels. An energy bill that passed Congress last year has also accelerated the adoption of ethanol by forcing oil companies to eliminate a popular gasoline additive, and it mandates that more biofuel be mixed with gasoline.

In the case of Sun Microsystems, the company became interested in energy conservation because of the increasing electricity demands of more powerful computers. Sun Microsystems began to overhaul its servers to use less power after customers said energy costs were rising.
Scott McNealy has stated that oil company executives have threatened him that if he is too aggressive in pursuing alternative fuels, they will lower the price of gasoline right when he tries to get his facilities off the ground and keep it low just long enough to drive him into bankruptcy. This has prompted Scott to seek energy stabilization legislation so if the oil companies follow through on their threat, a tax will kick in to keep gasoline from dropping below a certain level, and the tax on gasoline will be removed when the price goes above that level. Scott believes stable energy prices are essential in getting people to invest in alternative fuel technologies.