McNealy Pushes for Open Standards in Asia
By Rebecca Smith, Office of the Chairman
Scott's travels recently took him to Beijing where he pushed for open standards and open policies to drive economic and social progress. He also met with leading service providers, including China Mobile, a company that will have more subscribers than people in the U.S. by year's end. In a country where less than 20 percent of its 1.3 billion citizens are connected to the Network, the opportunity for growth is as enormous as the city's excitement as it prepares to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.
During his three days in Beijing, Scott met with various Chinese Government officials including the Ministry of Finance and Commerce, discussing the advantages of open standards and open source technologies. Specifically, he called for the merger of Universal Office Format (UOF), a format backed by the Chinese with Open Document Format, a format backed by Sun and 300 other companies. The merging of the standards formats would provide citizens around the world with open access to government documents. Read More
He also met with the Vice Minister of Education sharing ways in which an open source strategy can help the government get citizens in rural China educated and improve teacher training. Immediately afterwards, Scott launched version two of www.curriki.org, a 501c3 that is designed to provide universal, open access to learning. Read more about the launch and Curriki's mission. Read More
Continuing his outreach to the education community, Scott met with the Chinese Academy of Sciences where he witnessed the signing of an agreement to develop and distribute Open Solaris in China and called on the students and researchers to expand the Sun and CAS collaboration to the hardware side.
And, last but by no means least, Scott met with Sun corporate customers, including China Mobile and sina.com. These two service providers, staring at significant growth opportunity, are leading the charge to get China connected to The Network.
The Chairman's travels continue. Stay tuned for the next report from India, where Scott will continue to evangelize open everything in the world's second most populous nation.
For a copy of Scott's presentations in China or further information, email Scott.
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