EclipseCon 2010 - Let's own the Hotel!

Valentines day has come and gone, and we are well ahead of pace to one of the best EclipseCon events yet.

The next date on everyone's calendar should be February 24th - that's the date that we loose our exclusive room block at the Hyatt Santa Clara. After that, any remaining rooms at the hotel are made available to the public, prices go up, and it will certainly sell out in short order.

Every year we get asked by the stragglers to find a loophole to get them into the conference hotel (with 4 extremely busy days and 3 great receptions, who wants to deal with commuting?) Be forewarned, it's just not possible! The only way to ensure a room, is to book it now.

- Don

EclispeCon Keynotes Overview

There's a bit of a story to each of this years EclipseCon Keynotes.

One of the goals of the EclipseCon program committee this year was to put together a program that had a stronger appeal to Eclipse Users than past years. In other words - the millions application developers that use Eclipse based products every day.

The strength of the "Making With Eclipse" sessions speaks to our success. But to really appeal to the enterprise application developer we needed a great keynote. A great keynote from a power user of Eclipse technologies. A blue chip brand. "Sharks with Laser Beams" kind of stuff. Robots. Space. We hit a grand slam when Dr. Jeff Norris, from the Planning Software Systems Group at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory agreed to demonstrate some of the latest systems that NASA has built on top of Eclipse and the technologies they are leveraging from the platform in he keynote "Rocket Science and the Republic".

The second keynote represented an opportunity of great timing. Several people from the program committee had just seen Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin keynote at RailsConf 09, and suggested that "we need someone like him keynoting at EclipseCon". It was a fantastic keynote, and you can see it from RailsConf online, You'll doubly like it if you have Smalltalk on your resume. He has broad appeal to both application developers and tools developers. We were thrilled when he agreed to keynote for us, and his proposal to speak on 'Software Professionalism, and the Art of Saying "No"' seems very appropriate for our group.

The final keynote this year represented a bit of luck in the business side. EclipseCon happens to be a mere 55 days after the close of the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle. Oracle has been a great supporter of Eclipse for a number of years, and the EclipseCon audience is ideally suited for a keynote on the future of enterprise Java. The title of the keynote "Community and Adaptation" is a great fit to our "Making Community" sessions, and I'm confident we'll have a room packed with attendees keen to learn about the adaptation plans of the Java community.

It should be another year of fantastic EclipseCon Keynotes, thanks to all our speakers.

- Don

EclipseCon Early Bird Registration Date Extended to Today

Because the usual EclipseCon early bird deadline (Valentines Day) was on a Sunday this year, we decided to push the deadline out to the end of business today, Monday February 15th, Pacific time.

Last chance, registration prices go up overnight Monday!

- Don

EclipseCon Keynote on the Future of Java

I love the abstract for the EclipseCon keynote titled "Community and Adaptation" from two executives responsible for Java at Oracle - there are some great lines in there.

"The dust has not yet fully settled. But the roar of the stampede has faded in the distance, outlines of broad forms are visible, and apocalyptic anxiety is giving way to rational optimism."

Indeed! This this, and other great content at EclipseCon 2010. Today is the last day to register at early-bird rates.

- Don

EclipseCon Keynote - Rocket Science and The Republic

Very intriguing title and abstract for Dr. Jeff Norris' upcoming EclipseCon keynote "Rocket Science and the Republic". When we asked Jeff to keynote this year, we insisted there be laser beams and robots - will he come through? I can't wait to find out!

- Don

EclipseCon Prizes And Valentines Day

Happy Valentines day to everyone! Just a reminder that Valentines day is the last day to register for EclipseCon at the early bird price, and that is on Sunday, February 14th!

I'm also happy to report on some of the very cool prizes that will be available at EclipseCon this year. These prizes come from various sponsors and members who donate them to the Eclipse Foundation for us to give away at EclipseCon at things like the Community Awards, for the Speaker Feedback raffle and other activities.

• Google - Android devices
• Lego - A couple Mindstorms
  
• Microsoft - Complete Xbox system
• Motorola - Several Android devices of various flavors and models
  
• RIM - Several BlackBerrys
  

There are more to come! If you have prizes you would like to donate to EclipseCon, please get in touch with us ASAP!

- Don

EclipseCon Keynote: Software Professionalism, and the Art of Saying "No"

Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin has confirmed the title and abstract for his Keynote at EclipseCon 2010: Software Professionalism, and the Art of Saying "No". The keynote was inspired from a recent blog post on the topic, inspired by this cartoon from The Oatmeal.

The early registration deadline for EclipseCon is February 14th -- and that's a Sunday, so maybe you should get to it a bit sooner?

- Don

What I'm doing Monday of EclipseCon

I've got my Monday all mapped out (don't forget, the full conference starts early Monday morning!) - and it's all about OSGi and eclipseRT.

First, I'm checking out Paul VanderLei and gang's "Working with OSGi" tutorial, maybe popping in and out as I do some new-member jumpstarts.

After lunch, I'm heading to a interesting looking series of talks -- Apache Aries, Eclipse Gemini and finally an overview of the Eclipse Virgo Project. Hopefully all the speakers stick around to the break for some Q&A.

After the break, I'm going to jump in on some lightning talks - first a couple on SWT, then SOA. Depending on what Microsoft has planned, I might pop in there for a bit and finish off with one of the panels (Panels will be posted on the schedule Monday!)

After that, it's off to the Member and Committer reception, sponsored by our friends at Oracle! Oh, and the community awards ceremony will be there as well!

Rest up, it's going to be a busy week.

- Don

EclipseCon Early Bird Registration Fast Approaching

That right, just 10 days left before the prices jump to the next tier. Register today!

- Don

Intel is EclipseCon Hardware Sponsor

I'm pretty sure the Eclipse Webmasters are going to be happy campers after EclipseCon again this year. Last year they took home a complete gigabit ready network stack (fully redundant, I might add) thanks to Cisco.

This year, they're going to be taking home a nice stack of servers to help give eclipse.org a few more horses under the hood, thanks to Intel! I'm sure Denis & Matt will put all those Gainestown Xeon processors to good work.

- Don

EclipseCon and OSGi DevCon

EclipseCon is proud to co-locate each year with OSGi DevCon. The OSGi Alliance works hard to pick a great track out from the dozens and dozens of submissions to EclipseCon related to OSGi. After doing their work, the EclipseCon program committee often comes over-the-top with some more picks.

If you can't make it over to EclipseCon this year and are craving OSGi content, you should know that there's also an OSGi DevCon event in the UK on February 23 (with JAX).

- Don