EclipseCon is very much a practitioners Open Source Business Conference too!

Someone told me yesterday they were not coming to EclipseCon because one of his engineers told him:

"...the sessions and workshops would be highly technical and pretty far over my head."

At that moment, I realized I have done a horrible job promoting the Business and Industry tracks at EclipseCon. That is unfortunate, because I've done one hell of a good job recruiting for it.

For example, here is the logical Business track for Tuesday at EclipseCon:

• Apples and Oranges or Fruit Salad? A look at open source versus commercial platform strategies. - Tim Wagner, Microsoft and former WTP Project Lead.
• Why did Deutsche Post open source to Eclipse? - Ricco Deutscher, SOPERA and former architecture expert at McKinsey.
• Open Source Meets Open Specifications. - Kenn Hussey, Embarcadero and involved in may Eclipse projects and OMG teams.
• How to Write Video Games and Create Shareholder Value in Enterprise IT. - Robert Lefkowitz, aka r0ml, former VP of Video Games at AT&T and various investment banking houses.
• Eclipse, Open Source, Wall Street and Competition: Big Drama, Big Money. - Brent Williams, Equity Research at The Benchmark Company.
• Four great short talks to end your day:
  • Eclipse In Japan. - Motoki Mori, NEC Soft
  • How to market your Eclipse project when you don’t have a marketing budget. - Marry Ruddy, Founder of Meristic and MIT MSM Graduate
  • Agile Development: A Business Perspective on How and Why it Works. - Damon Poole, Founder and CTO of Accurev.
    
  • UML Modeling in the Open Health Tools (OHT). - Dave Carlson, Independent Consultant and author of "Eclipse Distilled".
    

That's just the tip of the iceberg!

On Wednesday, for example, you have Rod Johnson of SpringSource talking about The Future of Enterprise Java. Patrick Wagstrom of Carnegie Mellon is talking about Value Creation & Cooperative Resource Exchange in the Eclipse Community.

On Thursday, for example, you have Neelan Choksi, former founder of president of SolarMetric (since acquired by BEA) talking about his experiences with What Traditional Businesses Can Learn About Developer Marketing From Open Source. Ian Skerrett from the Eclipse Foundation is leading a panel which includes participants from Boeing and metafinanz on Enterprise Open Source: Making the case for companies to create open source projects.

Can you please help me pass on the message that EclipseCon is very much a conference for everyone in the Eclipse and Open Source community -- technical and business?!

- Don