I had the opportunity last night to attend a gathering of the Sun Microsystems Alumni Association at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA.

It was not just the wonderful food and great location that made this a great event: It was the chance to connect with over 300 former friends and colleagues who had spent time at Sun Microsystems over the last 25 years.

It’s always nice to connect with colleagues you haven’t seen in a long time.  Today, unfortunately, Sun is absent from many conversations about technology leaders and the company no longer commands the presence that made it a key player in computing in the 80s and 90s. But what always strikes me at gatherings of ex-Sun people, is the incredible quality, intellect and high caliber of the people who made Sun such a powerhouse for so many years. Many of today’s hot technology plays were built on what Sun people created and brought to market all those years ago.

Before there was Facebook or MySpace or Ebay or Google or Linux or a lot of other hot names, there was Sun. The industry is better off for all the people who took what they learned at Sun and went off to populate these and thousands of other companies and organizations, small and large, in technology and other industries, in business, education and non-profit.

After all, we were the ones who told the world the network was the computer. Twenty five years later I think they’ve caught on.