Eclipse Ecosystem

Back to Oracle!

2011-04-28T14:57:00.001-04:00

Summary: I’ve loved my last five years at the Eclipse Foundation. It’s time for me to move on. I’m going to Oracle to work on OpenJDK and other things.

The longer version:

It was over five years ago that I joined the Eclipse Foundation. I had just finished an MBA and was working at Oracle in a well regarded technical swat team in Java middleware. The Eclipse Foundation had launched in my hometown of Ottawa, and here I was, eager to learn about open source, the rapidly changing business model of enterprise software, ecosystems and to do something fresh. So I took advantage of this unique opportunity and convinced Mike that I should help run the Eclipse Foundation membership.

My 5+ years at Eclipse were incredibly rewarding both personally and professionally. I’ve made countless new friends and acquaintances from all the organizations that I’ve had the pleasure of working with. I was privileged to be working directly with many great thinkers in the software industry, and learning about how big ideas, like Eclipse, happen.

All the staff at the Eclipse Foundation that I’ve ever worked with have been high performing and maniacal about driving the Eclipse Ecosystem forward. I believe the Eclipse Foundation has done great things by helping hundreds of organizations keep pace with evolving business models and to make available a lot of high value free software. I leave the Eclipse Foundation with complete respect and admiration for every single person there. They do incredible things with limited resources and many constraints. I will continue to be a fierce advocate and supporter of all things Eclipse.

I believe strongly that we are at the beginning of a renaissance period for Java. Once again there is real investment and participation in Java. There is a roadmap that has an immediate impact with Java SE 7, and plans far into the future – with many organizations and stakeholders keen to see it happen. Moreover, I’m convinced that once a world class modularity solution becomes part of core Java, we will see even more and faster innovation. It means great things from the biggest cloud, to the smallest device.

I have a matching skill set to help Java evolve for the decade to come, so I decided to jump at an opportunity to join the Oracle Java SE team. I will be working with OpenJDK and other things. I am truly proud to be working with folks like Dalibor Topic, Henrik Staal, Mark Reinhold and Adam Messinger.

The team I’m on has one simple mandate – keep Java the number one computing platform in the world. Period. I start May 9th, and will post some pointers when I land.

- Don

Announcing EclipseCon Europe 2011, and EclipseCon North America 2012 Program Chair

2011-03-24T16:36:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned this morning at EclipseCon, we're proud to announce EclipseCon Europe, 2011. New name, but same great conference. We wanted to demonstrate the equal importance of both our major events, and decided to unify on the "EclipseCon" brand. Bernd Kolb will be reprising his role as Program Chair and we hope he makes great use of the extra space. We sold out early last year, so plan to register early to avoid disappointment!

Also, we'd like to announce Doug Schaefer (CDT Project Lead) as the Program Chair for EclipseCon North America 2012 (exact dates and location TBA). We've had an excellent run of great Program Chairs who put their own touch on EclipseCon and we're looking forward to Doug's perspective and leadership.

- Don

EclipseCon QR-CodeBreakers Game

2011-03-09T19:36:00.004-05:00

The fun diversion game at EclipseCon this year is EclipseCon QR-CodeBreakers. Grab a QR Code Scanner for your favorite mobile device before the conference to make sure you're ready to play.

Once again there will be some great prizes for those playing along including an XBOX 360 courtesy of Microsoft, and Droid Pro (Global capable) courtesy of Motorola and a bevy of Amazon Gift Certificates courtesy of the Ecl i pse Foundation.

Full details of the game can be found on the EclipseCon website. Not sure what you're looking for? Here's a sample QR-Code, how many can you find at EclipseCon?

- Don

Did I mention EclipseCon is four days?

2011-03-07T10:35:00.002-05:00

I'm pretty sure I did last year, but it bears repeating - EclipseCon is a four day conference. The reason I point that out is that many conferences are 2.5 or maybe a full three days, but we take full advantage of bringing hundreds of people from around the world and pack the week. You won't want to roll in and miss Monday morning (some of the best Tutorials start then), and you won't want to leave early on Thursday and miss the closing sessions.

EclipseCon starts in just 2 weeks, register today!

- Don

Eclipse RoadMap v6 for Review

2011-03-02T15:47:00.001-05:00

Version 6 of the Eclipse Roadmap is ready for community review and feedback. It is currently scheduled to be discussed and approved at the March 21st board meeting in Santa Clara. Please feel free to send any feedback via email, my first.last at eclipse.org.

- Don

...and Amazon make an even Eight.

2011-02-25T09:51:00.002-05:00

I'm very pleased to note that Amazon has gone gold at EclipseCon, making us an even eight for EclipseCon 2011.

Amazon joins Cloudsoft, IBM, Jasmine Conseil, Oracle, SAP, Sonatype and Xored as Gold Sponsors.

The Silver sponsor list is impressive as well as we have Birt Exchange, Amazon Web Services, BSI, Google, Nuxeo, OnPositive, BlackBerry and ZeroTurnaround. Our Bronze sponsors include AccuRev, Froglogic, Genuitec, GitHub, Itemis, JBoss, Juniper, Microsoft, Paremus, Soyatec and TOTVS.

We can't give our sponsors enough thanks and kudos - without them, EclipseCon would not be possible and I look forward to seeing them and learning the cool things they're doing with Eclipse!

- Don

EclipseCon Keynote #3 - On Jeopardy Playing Computers

2011-02-23T15:06:00.002-05:00

The third and final EclipseCon keynote is confirmed, it will be David Gondek, from the IBM Watson Strategy Team. You may have caught him recently on the Nova Documentary called "The Smartest Machine on Earth". Or on countless blogs and geek shows.

We're thrilled to have David speak -- stay tuned for more details shortly!

EclipseCon is just under 4 weeks away! Register now and save $200.

- Don

Eclipse Hot New Product Showcase Filling Up!

2011-02-10T10:24:00.003-05:00

We have some very cool organizations and products participating in the Hot New Products Showcase at EclipseCon, and space is limited. Please let us know if you have a hot new product you'd like to show off!

- Don

Announcing the Second EclipseCon Keynote

2011-02-10T09:16:00.002-05:00

Some of the best EclipseCon Keynotes have been when highly technical, very smart people, who write great code, speak about projects they are passionate about.

In that theme, I'm pleased to announce our Second EclipseCon keynote - "On Apache Hadoop". Todd Lipcon has agreed to come give an in depth look at "big data", something that I know many of us in the Eclipse Ecosystem are bumping into regularly. Our own experiences trying to analyze the UDC data from Eclipse has shown what a challenge this can be.

EclipseCon is March 21-24 at the Santa Clara Convention Center (and Hyatt!) Early bird registration is just a couple days away, so register now!

- Don

EclipseCon Hotel Sellout

2011-02-08T07:13:00.001-05:00

Just a heads up / warning that the Hyatt Santa Clara has 9 rooms left for one of the nights of EclipseCon. We're obviously trying to boost the room block, but there are other events happening in Santa Clara and it's not a certainty.

If you haven't booked your hotel yet, you should do so right away here.

- Don

PS - One of the shortest nights is the Saturday before EclipseCon because of all the European attendees who tend to arrive on Saturday afternoon. You need to act quickly as we have no pull at the hotel once things sell out.

EclipseCon Keynote #1 - "The Java Renaissance"

2011-01-26T10:27:00.003-05:00

I'm pleased to announce the first of three EclipseCon keynotes this year called "The Java Renaissance".

I'm personally glad to see the investment in the Java SE platform growing again, and we asked technical leaders John Duimovich (Java CTO and distinguished engineer at IBM) and Mark Reinhold (chief architect of the Java Platform group at Oracle) to come and speak about OpenJDK and some of the upcoming plans for technical innovation.

- Don

EclipseCon 2011 Tentative Program Posted!

2011-01-13T11:58:00.004-05:00

For those of you who check on EclipseCon.org every day (and I mean, who doesn't) - you may have noticed the program has quietly appeared in increments over the past couple weeks. There are still a lot of tweaks to make, a couple more rooms to put into play and the evening schedule is still being fleshed out. But the bulk of the program is there to explore, and you should do so!

We still haven't notified speakers formally of the dates and times, because we are still making major changes and don't want people to get too tied to a particular time. If you are a speaker, you should still be prepared for your talk time to change. We'll set this schedule in stone around the first week of February.

If you have any feedback, please do send us a note or comment here!

- Don

Eclipse 2011 Board Elections

2011-01-10T14:42:00.002-05:00

Nominations are now open for the 2011 Eclipse board members. Members are elected to represent both the Sustaining (Solutions and Enterprise) Members and Committers.

The final number of representatives depends on the number of Strategic Members as of February 1st this year, but it appears as though there will likely once again be three of each kind of board representative elected.

Nominations must be received by January 28th, 2011. For more information, see the Eclipse 2011 Board Elections page.

- Don

EclipseCon 2011 Submissions AKA "4 Ways to Make Zx's Life Miserable"

2010-11-12T13:18:00.002-05:00

EclipseCon 2011 Submissions are off to a strong start. A couple dozen are already received, and we're awaiting our inevitable hockey stick towards the end. As program chair, Chris Aniszcyk's life in December is going to be miserable - trying to prune and select the best of the best from what I'm sure will be a great set of submissions.

To make Chris' job even more challenging, there are 4 key things you should know about:

Lynn Gayowski likes the idea of making more work for Chris. So she's found a cool Eclipse jacket, fleece or shirt - (depending on your size requirements and availability) - to the 42nd submission to EclipseCon 2011. Keeping in mind we've already received a couple dozen submissions, you should probably submit over the weekend or early next week for a chance. Luck number 42!
The Program Committee often struggles with new topics or speakers that we've not heard before. The EclipseCon Audition Sessions will help address that. It's a great way for people to present a quick 5 minute overview of an idea they have, and give the PC some insight as to if we think it will be a good fit or not. The winner will get a slot in the program, but we'll also be giving other presenters some extra weighting if they do well. The deadline to submit to the Audition Session is Monday, November 15th! Full details can be found here. Even if you're a long time EclipseCon presenter, showing up and presenting a great idea will definitely boost your chances with the PC.
Studying several hundred submissions for each Eclipse event is a lot of work, so we try to break things up with an Early Bird submission deadline. The PC will go through all the submissions made before Wednesday, November 17th, and choose 5 that we think are good representatives for EclipseCon - those 5 early bird sessions are guaranteed to be in the program.
Finally, the absolute submission deadline is November 30th. Given the sheer volume and quality of submissions, it is extremely rare we accept submissions after the deadline -- so don't delay, don't submit to fate, if you've got an idea please submit it today!

- Don

ESE - Whoa!

2010-10-07T07:49:00.002-04:00

I've spent some time over the last day or two digging into what's happening at ESE (Nov 2-4)this year, and I can hardly believe my eyes. All I can think to say is "whoa!!"

Not only are there two great keynotes - but with a bit of star-alignment I see that Jeff Norris has been confirmed as a third keynote. Jeff's keynote at EclipseCon 2010 was regarded by many as not only as the best keynote ever at Eclipse conferences, but by some as the best keynote they've ever seen. I don't want to over-hype poor Jeff because I'm not sure he'll be able to coordinate a Goliath robot running around Europe without causing an incident at NATO. But it is sure to be awesome.

Next, I couldn't help but notice some of the very cool sponsors. BMW? Bosch? That's pretty cool, having more and more consumers of Eclipse technology showing up in force at our events.

I also noticed that after years of being a "2+" days event, we've thrown in the towel and are officially a full 3-day conference. The program is diverse and detailed to be of interest to just about everyone in the Eclipse Ecosystem.

All of this in very friendly, easy to get to Ludwigsburg, Germany, and at a very attractive and friendly registration rate. Unfortunately, our venue is not expandable - there is a very real chance of running out of space. If you are planning to attend, you should confirm right away.

- Don

Eclipse Government Day and Eclipse Enterprise Days

2010-08-17T14:43:00.002-04:00

We're organizing two events this fall in Reston, VA. Reston has the convenience of being a mere 15 minutes from Dulles (IAD) airport.

The first event is Eclipse in Government Day. This event is for individuals working for, or contracting with, Government agencies and departments. This is where I could use your help -- if you happen to have any friends or colleagues that are using Eclipse in Government, please do forward a link to the event wiki page or to this blog. This event takes place on Tuesday, October 12th.

The second event is Eclipse in the Enterprise Days. This is a 2 day event (ending 3pm on second day to give people a chance to catch dinner time flights out) and is focused on IT, Architect and Development manager individuals who are responsible for Eclipse in Organizations with hundreds, or even thousands of developers. The agenda on this event is still quite fluid and I have a few folks representing the enterprise helping me shape out the content -- if you have content suggestions, and/or are able to speak yourself, please do let us know! Details are on the events page. This event is Wednesday/Thursday October 13th, 14th.

- Don

Undisputable Best e4-Rover Mars Challenge Client

2010-03-22T18:23:00.002-04:00

Well, except for the fact I don't qualify for the challenge because I'm a Foundation Staff member, I would say the contest is over.

If you activate Chuck Norris mode in my client, the rover collects all the RFID tokens, beats them into submission, and then runs back and forth over them building a score of Infinity - twice in one turn.

Can you do better? See Lynn for a key and information on how to participate.

- Don

e4-Rover Challenge - So Simple, even an MBA Can Play

2010-03-18T16:52:00.007-04:00

Wow. I was just part of a beta test of next weeks e4-Rover Challenge at EclipseCon, and this is pretty cool stuff. The NASA and e4 teams have clearly been working hard on this. I suspect it's going to become a major distraction for a lot of people next week.

Here's the best part - if I can do it - I can only imagine what you can do with it. And I'm not just talking about getting the instructions and doing a basic run around. I was just hacking around e4 for the first time, adding new controls, writing a lag management API (lag is part of the game, remember - you're controlling something on Mars!) Impressive stuff all around.

Now, where did I put that Prolog-Java code I once had, and can I hook it up to the telemetry API...

Hmmmm, I'm thinking I might not be eligible for the Grand Prize trip to NASA JPL, but it would still be good to teach the whippersnappers a thing or two...

- Don

EclipseCon Trivia

2010-03-15T10:08:00.002-04:00

I wish I was able to pull off Kim's excellent "Committer Collector Cards" idea in time for EclipseCon this year, but alas, it was not meant to be. Hopefully with some extra lead time and agreeable committers to share their likeness, we'll see something in that vein for EclipseCon 2011.

We do have what I think will be an interesting social game again this year - EclipseCon Trivia. A few starter cards will be part of your registration packet, and more become available through the week at lunch, through sponsors, and just having a bit of luck. Trade cards with others to complete sets (Color or Category) and enter to win some cool prizes.

Most questions were designed to make it difficult to find in a search engine, so hopefully you're not bashful about asking around. Prizes include Android devices from both Google and Motorola as well as Blackberrys from RIM and an XBox from Microsoft. For those willing to go the extra mile, there's a full conference pass for EclipseCon 2011 up for grabs.

Full details can be found here.

- Don

Eclipse RoadMap v5 for Review

2010-03-04T14:31:00.001-05:00

Version 5 of the Eclipse Roadmap is ready for community review and feedback. It is currently scheduled to be discussed and approved at the March 22nd board meeting in Santa Clara. Please feel free to send any feedback via email, my first.last at eclipse.org.

- Don

Are you ready for EclipseCon?

2010-03-03T09:47:00.004-05:00

I've noticed an increase in chatter on the #eclipsecon tag on twitter about people getting prepped and ready. We're experiencing our usual late surge in registrations that come in from sponsors and straggling co-speakers who finally have the chance to complete their registrations and make travel arrangements. Here are a few reminders for those of you just pulling things together:

EclipseCon is four days. Four *full* days. There is a programming contest kick-off at 8:15am Monday, and the closing plenary goes until 5:45pm on Thursday. If you coast in late Monday and leave Early Thursday, you're going to miss a lot of cool stuff.
There's only a couple dozen rooms available on the peak nights of the conference at the conference hotel (Hyatt Santa Clara). Moreover, the room block is now open to the public, so it will certainly sell out -- act now, we can't help you after it's sold out. If you're looking for a purely economy room and OK with commuting after the long busy days, the Biltmore and Holiday Inn are popular choices.
There is a Taxi/Ride share wiki set up for those of you looking for a lift.
No matter what Oisin has made you do the night before, get up for the keynotes - lots of coffee will be served, I promise. The future of the Java Community, Eclipse and NASA, and the incredibly popular Uncle Bob teaching us how and when to say "NO" professionally are things you won't want to miss.
Take some time for the activities. We're sure you're going to want to attend every single session - but you'll notice a lot of 25 minute sessions that you can use to take a break if something doesn't catch your fancy. Play some of the conference games (TBA), visit some of our sponsors, and socialize with your peers. For those of you looking for the complete experience, your days will start very early with the EclipseCon Exercise group!

- Don

EclipseCon 2010 - Let's own the Hotel!

2010-02-16T08:53:00.004-05:00

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

2010-02-15T10:03:00.000-05:00

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

2010-02-15T03:00:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-14T06:45:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-12T16:31:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-12T12:38:00.003-05:00

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"

2010-02-10T09:01:00.003-05:00

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

2010-02-04T22:23:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-04T11:05:00.000-05:00

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

- Don

Intel is EclipseCon Hardware Sponsor

2010-02-04T09:03:00.000-05:00

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

2010-02-01T09:03:00.001-05:00

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

Red Hat Goes Gold At EclipseCon

2010-01-28T09:01:00.001-05:00

For the fourth straight year, the team at JBoss (by Red Hat), are Gold Sponsors of EclipseCon, and planning to come armed with some announcements of interest to the Eclipse Community.

Red Hat / JBoss throw a great event of their own every year - "Red Hat Summit" and "JBoss World" are co-located in Boston in late June. I've been to some of their events in the past and they are definitely worth checking out.

- Don

Take Note: EclipseCon is FOUR days...

2010-01-28T07:04:00.005-05:00

EclipseCon has always been a four day event, but this year I feel like it needs to be said in bold italic - EclipseCon is *four* days!

The EclipseCon schedule is posted, you can see the outline for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Note that we're working to put in more details and more search/view options online over the coming days and weeks so that by the time you arrive at EclipseCon you'll have lots of ways to decide how best to allocate your time.

Here are some key things to notice:

Tutorials and Regular Sessions are both available each day this year. So don't plan to blow in late on Monday or you're going to miss some great stuff.
Get lots of rest the week before. Tutorials and keynotes start at 9am each day, and the last BOF / Unconference (details on that later in February) time will end about 9:15pm. Factor in the receptions and breakfasts, and activities like running, and you had better be prepared! And of course, the official end-of-night meeting spot is the Hyatt Bar ;)
There's more good stuff to come! There are still sponsored sessions, more sessions, more keynotes, BOF and Unconference time -- more more more!!

- Don

SAP Goes Gold at EclipseCon

2010-01-25T09:18:00.003-05:00

SAP has confirmed they are going to be Gold Sponsors of EclispeCon 2010. SAP is also going to be sponsoring the Wednesday Poster Reception this year, and we're working out some details to give it a special flair - stay tuned.

SAP has been a key driver for making Eclipse Summit Europe a huge success and I'm thrilled to see them coming big to EclipseCon!

- Don

Cisco Goes Gold at EclipseCon

2010-01-21T10:47:00.003-05:00

A big thank-you goes to Cisco for confirming as the fourth Gold Sponsor for EclipseCon (there are 2 more Gold Sponsors coming, stay tuned). Last year Cisco showed their support at EclipseCon by donating a substantial new networking setup to the Foundation, and this year it's by being a Gold Sponsor!

EclipseCon is shaping up very well -- a very strong program, very strong sponsor support and registrations are also well on track to another great year.

We're going to be closing down the call for sponsors next Friday, January 29th -- so if your organization is at all interested, please do let me know ASAP.

- Don

EclipseCon 2010 Program Update

2010-01-13T12:06:00.004-05:00

The EclipseCon 2010 Program has been selected by the program committee, and we're getting ready to later this week (maybe even today with some luck) to send out all the emails with accepts, rejects and all the extra details that speakers need like agreements, registration information, etc.

I'd like to extend a great thanks to the Program Committee led by Oisin Hurley for their relentless hard work meeting the deadlines under very tight circumstances. It's ultimately a thankless job, but absolutely critical to producing a great event year after year.

When you look at the program this year, I want to point out a few things different than you may have seen in past years.

First, there are three main themes -- Making with Eclipse, Making for Eclipse, and Making Community. There is a pretty even split between "with Eclipse" and "for Eclipse" -- meaning there is a good balance of content interesting to those looking at specific projects, versus application developers looking for more horizontal, integrated or end user perspectives. And then there a good set of talks focusing on building community, and how the Eclipse community relates to and works with others.

You will notice a vast variety of content as usual spanning dozens and dozens of projects, technologies and perspectives. But there was a conscious emphasis on three topics -- e4, Modeling, and Runtimes (and OSGi DevCon content of course!) That's not to say someone from Reporting, or Embedded, or Tools, or Build, or SOA, or whatever won't have an incredibly busy week as usual -- it's just that e4, Modeling and Runtimes were given a bit of extra attention this year in the allocations. This is particularly for the enterprise application developers who frequent EclipseCon. I also like the emphasis on sessions that cross various technologies. For example, there's a tutorial that's going to touch a variety of runtime projects at Eclipse to tell a compelling browser-to-database story.

This year there are 5 parallel tracks in the conference program in larger sized rooms -- in previous years we've had 8 parallel tracks in smaller sized rooms. There are a few reasons for this change -- first, it helped reduce some of the budget risks faced when running an event of this size. But second, we found that in past years there were sessions where just a handful of people (I was at one last year with 6 audience members) were interested. With all due respect to those sessions, we felt those topics might be better served in a small BOF or unconference time. It is critical those niche conversations still happen, so we're going to be doing our best with the Poster, BOF and Unconference time. And third, frankly, sometimes the quality of talks wasn't up to attendee expectations. Going from an 8 track conference to 5 track felt brutal at times, but I feel really good about this program, and I hope you will too.

To help ensure we continue to get lots of perspectives and varied content we made the standard talk 25 minutes. This means more topics in the same time period to help address fewer tracks. I'm incredibly proud of the program committee for sticking to their guns and limiting the extended (50min) talks to just 10, and then keeping room for 90 standard (25min) talks, and 40 lightning (12 min) talks. This means a lot of speakers who were used to 50 minutes to get their point across are going to have to buckle down and be much more concise, and focus just that much more on the quality of their talk.

The schedule (detailed scheduling is still going to be a few days away) is also getting a bit of a makeover. We've shifted the conference to be 4 full days with tutorials, sessions, and unconference content from Day 1. This will allow attendees to go to even more tutorials and sessions than in the past. The big question is -- can attendees keep up with us this year?

Finally, I'd just like to issue an apology in advance to those of you whose sessions we could not accept. We know some of you will be disappointed, but I believe very strongly that we have the best overall program to date.

- Don

New Membership Options for Small Organizations

2010-01-11T13:32:00.003-05:00

I have some good news for existing and prospective members in the Eclipse Foundation who are from small organizations, start ups, etc. The board has approved a change to the Solutions Membership Dues for organizations with Annual Corporate Revenues less than $1 million and not more than ten employees or contractors on staff to be $1,500. Previously, the lowest membership option available was $5,000.

We'll be promoting this a bit more later in the month with a couple other programs we're working on, but I just wanted to give a heads up to those who may be interested!

- Don

Last Day for Early EclipseCon Registration

2009-12-31T07:44:00.002-05:00

Today is the last day to register for EclipseCon at the early registration rates. If you've already submitted a talk to EclipseCon through our submission system, you can sit pat for a couple more weeks -- but the rest of you need to register now to get the best possible price.

REGISTER NOW!

Happy New Years!

- Don

A Sucker for a Catchy Title

2009-12-17T19:29:00.003-05:00

Whoa. Talk about moxie - Dan Martens' EclipseCon proposal "The Coalition Against EMF" looks like an interesting one. Nothing like trying to knock a group off their wheelhouse to get a bit of attention and humor into the conference. Good luck with this one ;)

I've always been a sucker for a catchy or controversial title. Here are a couple of other submissions that caught my eye:
"So you think you can build" - Kim Moir.
"Deploy your own Eclipse Spyware" - Philippe Marschall.
"Your Eclipse Project Website Doesn't Suck (Anymore)" - Denis Roy.
"Modeling Project Runway 2010" - Kenn Hussey.
"Gogo Gadget Config Admin!" - Derek Baum.
"Surely, you can't be tracing?!?" "I AM tracing... and don't call me Shirley." - Francois Chouinard.
"The Stupidity Beyond" - Sven Efftinge, Jan Koehnlein

Think you can do better? There is barely 24 hours left to submit your talk. You now know what you're up against for catchy title, check out some of the early-bird selections to see what you're up against for quality talks.

- Don

EclipseCon 2010 Early Bird Program Selections

2009-12-16T08:40:00.002-05:00

On behalf of the EclipseCon 2010 Program Committee, I'd like to announce the winners chosen earlier this week from all the "Early Bird" Submissions. That is, the top picks from those submitted more than 1 week in advance.

The deadline for submissions is this Friday -- so submit your talks now!

These picks are already accepted to be part of the program, and are a great representatives of the different topics and styles that the Program Committee is striving for this year. Congratulations to those chosen!

Program Committee Top ~~Five~~ SIX Early Bird Picks:

Eclipse to the Rescue - Case Study of Eclipse Technology in Emergency Management
Extended Talk (50 min)

Programming for Lego Mindstorms using Eclipse to take you back to your childhood!
Lightning Talk (12 min)

The good, the bad and the ugly: Eclipse Bugs and how to increase your chance getting heard
Standard Talk (25 min)

Xtext meets e4: Developing an editor for the e4 workbench model
Tutorial (120 min)

Modular Architecture from Top to Bottom
Tutorial (120 min), OSGi DevCon

A world-class Linux IDE: how do we get there from here?
Extended Talk (50 min)

- Don

You know who you are...

2009-12-15T13:05:00.002-05:00

Scott Rosenbaum sent the EclipseCon program committee a BIRT graph of the submissions over time for past EclipseCon's. I summarize it for you below in GraphJam format. You know who you are -- submit now, deadline is Friday...

Deadline looming for EclipseCon Submisions

2009-12-14T10:49:00.002-05:00

The December 18th deadline is looming - so get your talks submitted ASAP. Don't wait, go do it now!

Sonatype Goes Gold at EclipseCon!

2009-12-07T09:02:00.000-05:00

As you can tell from previous posts, the EclipseCon 2010 team had a busy day on Friday as our first three Gold Sponsors fell into place. Sonatype joins Oracle and IBM as our third Gold Sponsor.

I'm looking forward to some hands on Maven at EclipseCon this year from Maven's very own maven maven - JVZ.

Thank you Sonatype!

- Don

IBM Goes Gold at EclipseCon!

2009-12-07T09:01:00.000-05:00

EclipseCon 2010 will mark the 6th consecutive year that IBM is a Gold Sponsor. We can't thank our gold sponsors enough, especially those that return year after year, providing a degree of certainty in a difficult-to-predict business. Given that EclipseCon is a full four day conference (while most other industry conferences are two or three), it's always good to have this predictability to manage the cost risks associated with a longer event.

Thanks IBM!

- Don

Oracle goes gold at EclipseCon!

2009-12-07T08:59:00.000-05:00

Oracle has confirmed a Gold Sponsorship at EclipseCon 2010! Not only will they be Gold Sponsors, but they are also going to make sure the Member and Committer reception is top-notch again this year by sponsoring it.

I'm hoping the Gemini Project is going to get a top billing from the Oracle team this year.

Thank you Oracle!

- Don

Eclipse In the Large Webinar

2009-12-02T02:10:00.002-05:00

Over the last few years I've met some IT departments with some pretty extensive Eclipse deployments. I'm not talking 50 or 100 developers, I'm talking thousands -- tens of thousands in fact. That's scaling out! Moreover, in these environments it's inevitable that more than a few of those pesky eclipse users are going to push the boundaries by working with tens of thousands of source files and integrate hundreds of plug ins. That's scaling up!

We have folks from Cisco, Morgan Stanley and eBay lined up to help share some of their 'experiences from the trenches' scaling Eclipse environments up, and out. If this is an interesting topic to you, you should sign up ASAP.

- Don

Attention Ottawa Eclipse-ers

2009-11-26T16:04:00.002-05:00

The "Lead to Win" program coming from the TIM faculty at Carleton has fostered a lot of technical and business innovation in Ottawa - and has lots of ties to the greater open source community.

There's a recruitment event on December 2nd matching students with local start-ups -> funded by the TIM program! Win win win! If you are a start up or a student in the Ottawa area, please check here for more information.

EclipseCon 2010 Call For Sponsors

2009-11-13T11:17:00.003-05:00

EclipseCon 2010 Call for Sponsors is off to a record start. Google, Instantiations, BSI AG, Genuitec, Froglogic and Purple Scout were all fast off the draw to secure their support - more are in process. The prospectus is available - if you're thinking of sponsoring EclipseCon this year as we've consolidated the Exhibit area to be more integrated with the conference and space is definitely limited.

- Don

What Oisin Said (about EclipseCon 2010)

2009-11-09T15:31:00.003-05:00

Here is a great blog from Oisin last week about EclipseCon 2010. If you haven't read it yet, you should.

He hits on some very cool points like the call for submissions being open, and some changes to the layout and format of the 2010 program. I love working with Oisin - knowing where you stand at all times + tact + wicked humor = a positive experience. The EclipseCon crowd are definitely in great hands, yet again.

I've spent the last week diving into all-things-eclipsecon, including a pilgrimage to visit the various folks in Portland and am thrilled with some of the improvements planned for this year. Definitely what Oisin said - but here's some things other tidbits too:

Attendees are going to be able to attend more tutorials this year. Last year you could attend at most 2. This year you'll be able to go to 4. That's because there's less parallelism, and more time to the conference (insert multi-core joke here). More hands on = goodness.
More "unconference" content - instead of 4 BOF sessions like last year, attendees will be able to hit 6 unstructured sessions. There's some creative ideas on how to use that extra time this year - stay tuned.
There is a drive by the program committee to make speakers more concise. Oisin knows that attendees don't just want more content, they want more GREAT content. So he's been cracking the whip on the program committee to ask our speakers to be more concise. Being more concise will hopefully reduce fluff and allow more great talks to make the program.
The Sponsorship and Exhibits area is going to be a bit different this year as well. More details on that later this week, but basically we're doing away with the 'destination exhibit area' and integrating it more into the event - ESE style.

- Don

ESE 2009 -- Sponsorships are going fast

2009-08-17T10:50:00.003-04:00

The announcements about tomorrow's deadline for submitting ESE proposals, and Bjorn's kick-starting of EclipseCon 2010 reminds me -- we're hitting the home stretch for ESE Sponsorships!

We are closing in on 20 sponsors and just a few choice spots remain, and there are still lots of add-ons available for those who are looking for a bit more (Lanyard Sponsorship anyone?)

Interested? Have a look here for more info!

Ralph sent a great slide deck showing some venue and event details -- you can see it here.

- Don

Eclipse Membership providing bulk of Galileo Bandwidth

2009-06-23T10:44:00.002-04:00

A big thanks to all those Eclipse Foundation members who will be providing the bulk of the bandwidth for the Galileo release this year. Their support helps us keep eclipse.org humming fast (as best we can for a release week) and offers users many paths to very fast downloads.

How is this for fast? EclipseSource has implemented Yoxos on Amazon CloudFront which promises to be a very fat pipe. Oracle and Actuate are making use of Akamai for their bandwidth. Moreover, Amazon has generously donated use of their bandwidth to the Eclipse Foundation to help take a lot of pressure off our Mirrors – Thanks Amazon!

That’s not to mention the other dozen (or so) members who have pledged to provide as much blazing bandwidth as they can including Blu Age, Genuitec, IBM, Intalio, Innovations, Itemis, Obeo, Polarion, Sopera and Zend!

Hope everyone has a fast and happy download experience tomorrow!

- Don

Eclipse Summit Europe 2009 Call for Sponsors!

2009-05-06T09:54:00.002-04:00

Things continue to go very strong for Eclipse in Europe. So well, in fact, that we already have 16 sponsors lined up for Eclipse Summit Europe 2009! Kudos to Ralph and his incredible Rolodex and hard work.

Mark your calendars -- October 27-29th once again in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

We would love to get to 20 sponsors in time for the CFP process -- if you're interested, please check out our sponsorship page.

- Don

Eclipse Weather Forecast

2009-02-05T10:26:00.002-05:00

At an event late last year I ran into a few folks from the LinuxFoundation who told me about their "Linux Weather Forecast". The Linux Weather Forecast is a way to try to capture at a high level some of the major activities and directions of the Linux ecosystem. Given how fluid and dynamic things are, "weather forecast" is a great metaphore. It doesn't need to be written in military precision terminology, can be updated on the fly, yet gives a pretty good synopsis of weather or not you should bring an umberella to work or not.

Hence, we've launched an Eclipse Weather Forecast. The goal is to present some high level information that provides a good synopisis of what's evolving in our own ecosystem. It's meant for both technical and buisness decision makers as a one stop spot to get a feeling of what the new trends are. The forecast will be update periodically as conditions warrant -- and definitely around major/minor release milestones.

Please send and feedback and suggestions to weather@eclipse.org.

- Don

EclipseCon Keynoter Banned from CNBC

2009-01-15T10:09:00.003-05:00

You may recall Fake Steve Jobs, who keynoted EclipseCon 2008 last year. Yesterday, he was banned from CNBC for daring to call out a reporter for being "punk'd" by Apple over the last six months regarding Steve Jobs health.

Dan talks for the first minute or so, and then things get interesting at around 3:20.

So, will any of the EclipseCon 2009 Keynoters find themselves banned on CNBC in the following year? I think things are going to be less controversial this year, but you never know ;)

- Don

Draft Roadmap for Review

2008-12-01T08:55:00.000-05:00

A draft of the 2008 Road Map is now available. (Link active just during the community review before it's moved to it's permanent home). The road map is a living document which will see future iterations, but a snapshot is recorded each year and labeled.

Please send any comments you may have to 'membership' - at eclipse.org.

- Don

Save the Dates - Upcoming Eclipse Membership Meetings

2008-08-27T10:49:00.003-04:00

As the summer holiday season winds down it's time to start planning fall schedules in earnest. Therefore, I wanted to make sure we got on people's calendars ASAP! The membership was pretty clear that these meetings are important but we need to try to line them up with other activities to make travel justification easier - so we've worked hard to that end. Read on!

We're holding an Eclipse New Member Jumpstart and Membership Meeting on Monday, October 27^th in Reston VA. These meetings are conveniently located at the same venue and just prior to EclipseWorld 2008. If you’re going to EclipseWorld, definitely plan on arriving early to attend these meetings for an opportunity to keep ahead of all the happenings in our Ecosystem. And if you're looking for more justification to your Management to go to EclipseWorld, let them know you plan to attend the Members Meeting just prior.

Also, we will be holding our first ever Members Meting and Jumpstart in Europe on November 17^th in Ludwigsburg, Germany. These meetings are conveniently located at the same venue and just prior to Eclipse Summit Europe. I hope we have a really strong turn out and strong involvement so we can make this an annual meeting. Given all the new members coming from Europe, I have no doubts it will be. Again, the correlation with ESE will hopefully help justify the trip and vice versa.

Full details on agenda, participation and how to RSVP for the Members Meeting will be emailed later in September.

- Don

Comparing "Global Wine Wars" to the Embedded and Mobile space

2008-08-20T09:14:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite MBA case studies was "Global Wine Wars: New World Challenges Old" (don't be cheap, spend the $6.95 and read it...). The key point from the case is that to compete against France's dominance in the wine industry, Australia et al repositioned the mindset of wine buyers from region to grape variety. No longer do people go into a liquor store to buy a Bordeaux, they go in to buy a Merlot. You don't go in looking for something nice from Burgundy, you go in looking for a nice Chardonnay. And for a couple of decades now France has been spanked repeatedly in the global markets for wine.

Is something similar going on in the Embedded and Mobile spaces? Is there a slow repositioning happening in purchasing behavior from "region" (the hardware - "iPhone" vs "BlackBerry" vs "Motorazr" vs "Nokia Nxx") to "grape variety" (the software stack - "Symbian Foundation", "Android", ....)?

- Don

A Great Scholarship Opportunity For Eclipse Ecosystem Research

2008-08-06T10:21:00.000-04:00

Lots of great companies in the Ottawa area have spun out of the hard work and entrepreneurship of Carleton University. OTI and The Object People are just two that come to mind (both organizations ultimately fostered the teams that built a lot of the Eclipse Platform and EclipseLink respectively).

Carleton's "Technology Innovation Management" masters program (TIM) is fantastic - over the last few years we've worked with a number of students and faculty in this program, and have learned a lot from their research. Lots of great stuff on ecosystems, open source business models, collaboration models, intellectual property models and so on.

Here is the good news - the TIM program has a number of scholarships available starting as early as this fall -- and you can do this while continuing your current job. A great way to earn a Masters Degree while diving deeper into the dynamics behind Eclipse. A great career boosting opportunity.

If I didn't have two Masters degrees already, I'd be all over this :) If you're at all interested, please check out more about the program and feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

- Don

Needed - Eclipse User/Committer in Knoxville TN

2008-07-30T10:27:00.000-04:00

Following in the tradition of Eclipse Couriers, a new restaurant has opened up in Knoxville TN called "The Eclipse Restaurant and Bar".

This new restaurant is located in a spot that used to be "The Maxx" Restaurant, but I guess that is now out of business.

Now - Here is the mission. I've noticed on Google Maps "Street View" that this restaurant has a large street sign. What I want to know is -- did they update it with a new Eclipse Sign and Logo? IF they did, I desparately want pictures for our "brand hijack" slide deck.

Free Eclipse Shirt to the first person who can track down 6400 Kingston Pike in TN and let us know either way - with pictures. You can email me at donald - and I work at Eclipse.org. Bonuses if you have lunch there and let us know how the food is and take pictures inside too :)

- Don

Eclipse Membership 3.0

2008-07-24T14:23:00.001-04:00

I imagine 1.0 would be the initial consortium board and 2.0 would have been when the foundation was launched as an independent foundation almost five years ago.

Today begins the next chapter in our Membership as the new Eclipse Foundation Bylaws and Membership Agreement have been overwhelmingly approved by the Membership at Large.

95.8% were in favor of the proposed changes (157 votes)
4.2% voted against the changes (7 votes).

Quorum (2/3rds of membership at large) was easily achived. Thanks to all of the members who took time to vote.

So what changes? There are three major changes to our membership structure (2 related to the vote, and 1 by board resolution last month):

1 - "Add-In Providers" are now known as "Solutions Members". A simple name change, but it more accurately reflects the kind of organization the membership represents. Our members have said that marketing they are "Add-In Providers" to IT consumers made no sense -- but marketing they are "Solutions Members" is much more intuitive. It also suits our growing training and services membership better.

2 - A new membership class "Enterprise Membership" is created. This gives us an opportunity to attract a broader membership base of organizaitons not traditionally associated with Software. We're working on some benefits and bundles to offer resources related to helping Enterprises with open source Intellectual Property, enganging with open source communities and support for launching their own forays into open source. We plan to formally launch this new membership class later in 2008 with a bit of a splash - but for now, we now finally have the structure to support it.

3 - By virtue of board resolution last month, any organization can now become an Associate Member - it's not just restricted to non-profits and public service organizations. This means small and mid-size organizations who don't have commercial offerings with Eclipse, but want to show support for the ecosystem, have an easy way to do so.

For full details on the changes, you can see the Vote 2008 page.

- Don

Thank you to the Member Distros!

2008-06-27T09:36:00.000-04:00

I haven't been blogging much lately - not really since EclipseCon. To be honest, the quality of the blogs on Planet Eclipse has made it quite intimidating -- there is lots of great material here every single day. In all the recent Ganymede "back patting", let's not forget to thank each other for the great material that shows up here so consistently.

Now - on to my point. I'd like to thank Genuitec (Pulse), Innoopract (Yoxos), Intalio, Itemis, Obeo and Oracle for their rapid support of providing bandwidth for Ganymede downloads and member distros. Gigabytes of traffic are diverted to their bandwidth costs which helps us all - and downloaders in our ecosystem have a chance to see some of the great products and services our membership provides while watching the bits fly.

- Don

My First BlackBerry App

2008-03-19T19:20:00.000-04:00

Kudos to the BlackBerry team and their support of EclipseCon this year. I was able to break free this afternoon and write my first BlackBerry app -- and you'll see that the app is of an incredibly important function -- voting for the best Eclipse Foundation Bobblehead.

Lynn won in a landslide.

- Don

Microsoft Supernova

2008-03-19T12:28:00.001-04:00

Read the details from Sam's Keynote from Sam himself here.

Money quotes:

On Higgins: "We share a commitment to building a user-centric, privacy-preserving, secure, easy-to-use identity layer for the Internet."

On SWT: "We’re committing to improve this technology with direct support from our engineering teams and the Open Source Software Lab, with the goal of a first-class authoring experience for Java developers."

On the future - "There will be more to come from the conversations that Eclipse and Microsoft have begun."

- Don

And the Special Guest Speaker Is......

2008-03-19T12:06:00.000-04:00

...none other than our very own Steve Northover, father of SWT. Apparently there is confusion over if it was real Steve Northover or Fake Steve Northover, but either way it is cool.

- Don

EclipseCon - My Head is THIS BIG!

2008-03-19T10:03:00.002-04:00

Ralph is right! I am incredibly happy with EclipseCon. Tuesday always blasts off with an upbeat trajectory bringing us into Wednesday "moving day" where lots of really cool stuff is going to get done in all the nooks and crannies of the conference.

Kudos to Genuitec for their imaginative promotions this year -- the bobble heads were a really neat idea and their Monopoly game was also very clever and built nicely on the EclipseCon spirit of "meeting people you otherwise would not".

BTW - If you're reading this email before the Microsoft Keynote this morning, you won't want to miss it - grab a seat now in the front row. I've heard rumors that a guest speaker has been added to join Sam Ramji during his talk, and you won't believe who it is....

- Don

Fake Steve Uncensored -- EclipseCon Keynote

2008-03-18T19:10:00.000-04:00

Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs) rocked EclipseCon in his opening keynote this morning - the satire and humor kicked off what will be a very busy and intense week.

Dan mentioned there were a few slides that he yanked because they were a bit on the edge. Blame me if you wish. Curious as to what they were? Here are links -- please only follow if you have a wicked sense of humor and understand satire.

Regarding my management style

Bam! Borg makes Yahoo its bitch.

Woof!

Get on your feet!

Microhoo merger images keep pouring in

Yahoo: Borg deal is "frosting on a double-layer suck cake."

- Don

Mike and Janet -- Doing the Impossible!

2008-03-13T09:59:00.000-04:00

Mike (with loads of help from Janet) did something today that they teach in Business School to be impossible.

I've spent the last 6 months openly mocking Mike (and to a lesser degree Janet) mercilessly about their efforts -- and yet it paid off, they achieved a goal I was taught to be impossible.

I was wrong. In honor of their efforts, I made a $200 donation to the Canadian Cancer Society this morning and will be taking the Ottawa Foundation office out for beers on the next available opportunity.

Have no clue what I'm talking about? Dying to know? Donate $75 or more to the Canadian Cancer Society, email me your e-receipt and I'll personally phone and tell you.

- Don

This blog post has nothing to do with EclipseCon or E4.

2008-03-12T08:59:00.000-04:00

Just a heads up for those of you who don't follow the Phoenix Project mailing list every day - you will notice as of this morning a new 200x200 slot on the right nav of Eclipse.Org dedicated to promoting the Strategic Members of the Eclipse Foundation. You'll also see Ecosystem content served by Google Ads and over time Foundation programs may also appear there. Content is served completely at Random and if you're trying to figure out more about it, read about it on the Special Programs page.

- Don

JBoss Goes GOLD at EclipseCon

2008-03-05T09:08:00.000-05:00

If you've been to EclipseCon.org recently, you may have noticed we have a new Gold Sponsor - JBoss!

JBoss grabbed the last of the pedestals and the Exhibit Hall was officially sold out as of last week.

In addition to some pretty neat give aways for the Tuesday night reception (you'll have to show up to see, but you'll want to be one of the first 300 people in attendance to get one), JBoss is also donating this very cool dual boot Linux/WinXP laptop as a prize for one of the conference activities!

Very cool, thank you JBoss!

- Don

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

2008-02-28T14:46:00.000-05:00

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

Another EclipseCon Schedule Easter Egg - Gamma and Wiegand

2008-02-21T10:37:00.001-05:00

As I noted yesterday, there are some hidden gems in the EclipseCon schedule. Here's one that is easily overlooked -- Erich Gamma and John Wiegand are both speaking on Tuesday afternoon as part of the Jazz Developer Track of the IBM Developer Day.

- Don

An EclipseCon Schedule Easter Egg...

2008-02-20T13:47:00.000-05:00

There are lots of hidden gems in the EclipseCon 2008 schedule. One great example is that BEA has arranged to have r0ml at EclipseCon again this year in a new talk titled "How to Write Video Games and Create Shareholder Value in Enterprise IT".

I have a question I'm dying to ask r0ml this year -- how exactly does one become the "VP of Video Gaming" various global investment banking houses?

- Don

EclipseCon 2008 Lanyard Sponsor

2008-02-19T13:15:00.000-05:00

I would like to thank Birt Exchange by Actuate for being the EclipseCon 2008 Lanyard Sponsor. Until I started helping organzie Eclipsecon sponsorships I had no idea what a Lanyard was, so for my friends who have no clue what a lanyard is, they're these:

Actuate is well known for having very cool conference schwag -- the item to get from Eclipse Summit Europe was the "T-Equalizer" shirt -- keep your eyes peeled for this and other schwag at EclipseCon:

- Don

Power-up in the Cloudsmith Power-up Lounge

2008-02-14T01:24:00.000-05:00

Were you at EclipseCon last year? If so, you may remember the popular Cloudsmith Power-up lounge -- a very comfortable and social area at the top of the escalator with excellent wireless coverage and a multitude of places to plug-in and recharge batteries between sessions.

Thankfully, Cloudsmith is a Gold Sponsor this year and the Power-up lounge will be bigger and more, uh, powerful than ever!

- Don

BlackBerry Developer Day at EclipseCon 2008

2008-02-11T08:32:00.000-05:00

"Developer Days" are a new addition to the EclipseCon program this year. The BlackBerry development team is sponsoring a "BlackBerry Developer Day" on the Wednesday of EclipseCon.

There will be an overview of the BlackBerry development toolset in the morning session (after Sam Ramji's keynote go to the BlackBerry Developer Day room if you're interested). After the lunch break, there will two opportunities to sit down and go hands-on with the tools and write your own apps.

Space is very limited for the afternoon sessions and I guarentee this is going to be standing-room-only for the hands on parts. There is an option to Register for this developer day as you're registering for EclipseCon.

BlackBerry is also sponsoring the Poster Reception on Wednesday night. Should be a fun and interesting day!

- Don

Can you help promote EclipseCon, because apparently I'm too obtuse

2008-02-07T18:07:00.000-05:00

Man am I embarassed.

I just did a keynote session at the STAR meeting at the NADA conferece about what makes Eclipse work and Eclipse as a platform for Innovation. I think it went over well and I even managed to pull out some Gena Gershon material and sort of made it work, I feel vindicated (long story and I am digressing).

But as I was about to start the keynote, someone from OMG said "you're going to plug EclipseCon I assume?". DUH, no, I had not thought to plug EclipseCon because I am obtuse (or as Bjorn would say, I am a constant source of disappointment).

I put in a plug for EclipseCon and sure enough a couple people in the audience tweaked on their love of CDT and said they plan to register.

So -- Are you helping to promote EclipseCon? Especially to audiences you might not think of (like Automobile Retail Software folks)? Just grab a graphic from the friends page, throw it on a slide and let people outside our usual suspects know about the event!

- Don

Check our new screaming fast AMD Hardware at EclipseCon

2008-02-06T14:33:00.000-05:00

If you've kept an eye on the Eclipse newsfeeds lately you might have seen that AMD is contributing several Quad-Core AMD Opteron based servers to the Eclipse Foundation and we'll have one on display at EclipseCon in the registration area.

Denis is going to be running our EclipseCon Mirror site on some other AMD hardware that will also be on display at the show.

I'll leave it to Denis to describe the nitty gritty on what's in the all of the boxes we are receiving, but you should know when it was all confirmed Denis was dancing around like a giddy school girl. :) Apparently we need a new rack to hold it all!

Thanks again AMD and be sure to look out for their display in the Registration area!

- Don

Meet you at the Skyway Playzone or Teamprise XBOX Lounge?

2008-02-05T23:34:00.000-05:00

Something very new and cool at EclipseCon this year, Skyway Software is sponsoring a Playzone in the Exhibit Hall -- Foosball tables, hoops and after the conference someone will win them as prizes!

Just a little further down the row you'll find the XBOX lounge -- courtesy of Microsoft and Teamprise. After the show? Win them as prizes too!

So if you need a meeting place during EclipseCon -- pick now -- "I'll meet you at the [Skyway Playzone | Teamprise XBOX Lounge]".

Thanks much to Skyway Software, Teamprise and Microsoft for these great sponsorship ideas!!!

- Don

A German St. Patricks Day at EclipseCon

2008-02-04T21:11:00.000-05:00

What will the menu and atmosphere be like when four of our very cool Eclipse members from Germany sponsor the "EclipseCon 2008 Members and Committers reception" on March 17th at EclipseCon? Now imagine this -- the head chef at the Hyatt Santa Clara is himself German and says he's up to the challenge.

I happened to have rolled by the Santa Clara Convention center today in between meetings and I can't explain it, but there is already an EclipseCon buzz building...

- Don

Why you need to book for EclipseCon right freaking now...

2008-01-21T20:06:00.000-05:00

I am headed to the Bay area in a week and a half and went to book my trip over the weekend. WHOA boy, it was tough -- hotels full, car rentals over booked, ideal flights close to capacity.

The point is -- ZX is right -- we are back in the not-so-glory days where hotels, airlines and car rental places call the shots if you're not prepared.

Avoid disappointment (and save major $$$), book now. I just booked my flights, car and hotel, still lots of space and flexibility, but book soon!

- Don

Off to Colorado Software Summit

2007-10-19T21:21:00.000-04:00

I'll be at Colorado Software Summit next week -- if you're going to be there, drop me a line. It's one of my favorite events each year, lots of great content and absolutely commercial free.

Eclipse talks scheduled include Developing an Eclipse Plugin by Paul Tremblett, and Eclipse Java Persistence Platform: The Full Monty and Eclipse JPA: Getting Chocolate in the Peanut Butter by Doug Clarke. Plus there's talks from Eclipse members Google, Iona, RedHat and Oracle.

And of course the annual bonus where Simon Phipps makes thinly veiled slags against Eclipse that the audience confuses it as internal SUN criticism. Like last year when he insinuated Eclipse had a "diseased governance model" but everyone assumed he was talking about SUN's plans for Java. Or maybe he actually was self effacing SUN and I am too paranoid :) This years "A Straw Model for the Future of Open Source" should be a treat :)

- Don

Eclipse should be a minor deity

2007-10-19T19:38:00.000-04:00

As usual, it's difficult to search out Eclipse release content because Eclipse also means cars, aeroplanes and peoples names -- but in case you're on Facebook and looking for the Eclipse groups you should be looking for "Eclipse should be a minor deity" and "Eclipse Committers".

Why join yet-another-place to share information? Simple - as Lynn puts it "A newsgroup - but with embarrassing photos! I like it!" It's not a very active group, but the pictures of Gunnar trying to look like he's "working" on his cell phone while on a beach are classic :)

- Don

Steve Jobs* Keynote at EclipseCon

2007-10-19T10:30:00.000-04:00

Last month I blogged a question asking why people in the OS community love Apple so much when I personally see them as evil and a pure proprietary play. It just didn't make sense to me. Based on the traffic my question generated and the detailed responses, it was clear I had to look more closely at this whole "apple thing".

I thought "Why don't we approach Steve Jobs to do a keynote at EclipseCon 2008". Let's invite him out to interact with the open source community. I was thrilled when I heard that he had agreed to do the opening keynote! But apparently there was some confusion amongst the program commitee and we accidentally signed a fake Steve Jobs. It should be an entertaining keynote nonetheless. :)

If you're not already a fan of fake Steve Jobs, you should be. Namaste. See you at EclipseCon!

- Don

Chris Keene doesn’t get Eclipse…

2007-10-18T14:17:00.000-04:00

...and therefore I don't think he gets Ajax either.

I feel bad for Chris -- I'm sure what he was trying to say made sense in his head, but it just came out as a spew of ignorant and defensive drivel. I would expect more from a CEO.

Chris has made the mistake of thinking of Eclipse as just the "champion of the heads-down Java server programming world" (sic) and missing everything going on around it. That's soooooooo 4-year-ago thinking.

Chris, there are two dimensions to Eclipse. The technology and the ecosystem.

On the technology front, there are over 80 projects with many great exemplary apps - he's stuck on one. Take a look at what's going on in the CDT project, PDT project and with DLTK. Chris mentions a goal of "democratizing development" -- he should look at the BIRT project whose primary interface is a pretty darned intuitive Report Builder, so simple even an MBA can figure it out. Yes, of course there is still lots of "Java server" programming projects but it often relates to OSGi. For example, the EclipseLink project - which is from the Oracle TopLink family. I'm sure Chris remembers TopLink.

Then there is the Ecosystem. Eclipse enables innovation networks. Look at the CDT project -- lots of contributors, lots of innovative products. Eclipse is a factor in many parts of the supply chain of the Embedded world because of it.

I would never be so arrogant to say "Ajax needs Eclipse" like Chris implies, but let's take a step back and generalize. Take a look at this slide on why the Software Development Model is broken. Hypothetically speaking of course, imagine if Chris's development team went off and spent god knows how long building useless "infra" with little or no differentiating value. Maybe in some relatively unpopular programming language with all kinds of gnarly embedded proprietary APIs that would be very difficult for his new hires and acquisitions to learn and extend. Meanwhile, Chris's competitors are competing on a common platform, building with well known tools and APIs (making hiring and acquisitions easier) and tapping into a developer mindshare that Evans says is over four million people. Seems like a more successful proposition.

Chris claims that Eclipse is an "evolutionary dead-end" from a "web 2.0" perspective. Tell you what - I'll report back in a year on the progress of the Members participating in the Eclipse Ajax ecosystem, and he can do the same for Active Grid, and we'll see who's ahead, and who's dead.

- Don

ESE Sponsor Reception -- RAP-y and Google-iscious

2007-10-11T09:30:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Google for sponsoring the ESE Sponsor Reception last night. It was a great event and I had a chance to meet a lot of the European Ecosystem that I don't have much opportunity to meet.

After the sponsor reception, Innoopract hosted a RAP 1.0 Release Party. If you haven't heard of the Rich Ajax Platform project at Eclipse, you should go check it out.

- Don

ESE Live Webcast

2007-10-10T03:22:00.000-04:00

Very cool. *Nothing* beats being here and the networking and social interactions that happen, but thanks to the generosity of spreed and the Stuttgart Region Economic Development, select talks from ESE will be broadcast live between 9am and 5pm GMT+2 on October 10-11.

Check out the Eclipse Summit home page for details on how to join.

- Don

ESE Update

2007-10-09T08:27:00.000-04:00

Well known Eclipse blogger Gunnar demonstrates my "pasta solves all catering problems" theory by enjoying a nice plate of Spinach noodle pasta.

The morning symposia have wrapped up and everyone is settled into the afternoon sessions. The most attended session in the morning was Modeling -- the afternoon seems to be lead by a dark horse -- Server-Side Eclipse.

- Don

ESE Underway

2007-10-09T03:41:00.000-04:00

Eclipse Summit Europe is off to a great start. Unfortuntaely, double the attendees we expected showed up for the Symposia today, and so the local catering team is desparately trying to come up with a double lunch order. I'm predicting a lot of pasta today.

The compeople booth is setup already and there is a teaser on the Riena Project -- which is looking like a really cool and innovative project. I remember saying lots of times last year "Wouldn't it be really freaking cool if you could decide where to deploy RCP apps transparently after they were developed - as either a fat client, over the web, or mobile?"

Thanks to all the sponsors who made this event another great success. Here are a couple of the BandXI guys - up bright and early.

- Don

Can Member Meetings be effective Online?

2007-10-02T10:07:00.000-04:00

I just closed down and collected the feedback from the Members meeting held recently in Chicago. One particularly well thought out comment noted several reasons why they beleive travel to the USA is not ideal, and then noted:

[meetings] could be held on-line just as effectively as "being there"

I strongly disagree. One of the key responsibilities I have to the ecosystem is as a mediator -- to make connections between people and organizations that otherwise would never happen. To try to get people to see different sides to problems and opportunities that they wouldn't otherwise see. I just can't imagine how to do that over an online forum, even in some of the more marketing-honey interactive-type worlds like second life. I understand the comments from an "information push" perspective, but I beleive more value comes from the networks that get established.

What are your thoughts? As with my position on Apple, I'm willing to admit I'm missing something.

- Don

$268,000 to sponsor EclipseCon?

2007-10-01T13:13:00.000-04:00

Eclipse Summit Europe is just 1 week away and EclipseCon 2008 is quickly ramping up. The call for EclipseCon 2008 Sponsors is now posted.

As in previous years many of the items are First-Come-First-Serve and First-Come-First-Choice so do not delay getting in touch.

If you have exhibited at Previous EclipseCon’s I would like to draw your attention to one important new sponsorship option available this year – your own branded Developer Day. A dedicated long-talk track for an entire day (6 long talks of your choice). If you’re interested in exploring this option, please let me know ASAP.

- Don

Why do people I respect like Apple so much ?

2007-09-25T11:02:00.000-04:00

I honestly can't think of any organization in history that has been more closed, proprietary, controlling and just outright evil than Apple.

Why do many people I respect in the Open Source community have Apple hardware? Why do they seem so gleeful when bragging about having and using Apple products?

I'm clearly missing something. Please enlighten me.

- Don

The Aptana Public License

2007-09-05T12:48:00.000-04:00

There's been a few comments regarding Aptana's Public License:

http://ketan.padegaonkar.name/2007/09/05/source-opening-of-open-source.html
http://mea-bloga.blogspot.com/2007/09/source-open.html
http://www.evolvedlight.co.uk/theaptanaopensourcestab-in-the-back

Paul Colton from Aptana has opened up a dialog on his blog and on the Aptana Forums.

- Don

Five Committer Meetings in September

2007-08-29T09:48:00.000-04:00

We worked hard this quarter to co-locate some project committer meetings with the Members Meeting and Marketing Sympoisum in Chicago (September 19,20). The good news is that there are going to be five face-to-face meetings happening -- the bad news is that they're not going to be co-located because of various travel, timing and event constraints. Here are the five meetings happening that I'm aware of - please pile on if I've missed yours:

Need help arranging a meeting? Get in touch with us at the Eclipse Foundation.

- Don

Upcoming MOTODEV Summits

2007-08-28T09:17:00.000-04:00

When I was LinuxWorld a couple weeks ago I was able to write a mobile app on the new Eclipse-based MOTODEV studio (with some help from the Motorola folks at their developer day event). It looks like Motorola is taking their show on the road with events in San Jose (September 10,11), London UK (November 9th) and Beijing, China (November 12).

If you're in the area -- you should check out the details.

- Don

LinuxWorld Update and writing my first Mobile App!

2007-08-09T11:32:00.000-04:00

Things are going pretty well at LinuxWorld. In summary, the conference itself seems to soft in attendance, the events and things surrounding the conference (like the exhibit hall) seem to be rocking.

On Tuesday, ACCESS (formerly PalmSource) hosted a developer day showing off their Linux platform and also their developer tool chain based on - of course - Eclipse.

Yesterday, Motorola also hosted a developer day and formally launched MOTODEV Studio. I was lucky enough to snag a new MOTORAZR v8 earlier in the week and wrote my first Mobile app for it. MOTODEV studio is based on - Eclipse of course. The MOTORAZR v8 is Motorola's new Linux based platform.

Today I'll be checking out the Wind River developer day and tools for their Linux platform -- guess what it's based on? :)

- Don

Going to Linux World

2007-08-01T21:21:00.000-04:00

Rather last minute, but turns out I'll be going to LinuxWorld next week. If you're going to be there, drop me a note and hopefully I can get a chance to meet you somewhere and say hi -- there's been quite a few new members lately that I haven't been able to meet yet, maybe next week will be the chance. Email me at donald at eclipse, which is a dot org.

- Don

Eclipse Members Meeting -- Can it appeal to committers?

2007-07-30T12:23:00.000-04:00

Eclipse Members Meetings -- can (should?) they appeal to committers?

The Eclipse Foundation holds quarterly meetings of the membership. In June and December these are 1.5 hour teleconference calls and usually we have about 80 lines in use and about 130 people. I know from surveys and responses that committers make a good % of the attendees. The teleconferences follow a pretty consistent script -- Mike overviews the Eclipse Foundation state and activities, Bjorn updates Projects, Ian updates Marketing activities and then we have a couple of new member introductions.

Our March members meeting occurs in-person, runs a full day and takes place the day before EclipseCon. We usually have a couple of guest speakers, dive deeper into some of the newer projects, and we have a really good committer turn out there even though we loose some people to tutorials and other parallel meetings.

However, looking over the last two years, the September Members meeting has had a low turn-out of committers -- it is mostly the Company Representatives, Delegates and Marketing teams that attend. The September Members meeting runs 1.5 days and starts off with a Marketing Symposium. We have lots of great guest speakers and networking opportunities. People say that the September Members meeting is one of the best events they attend all year for a multitude of reasons, but ultimately because Ian packs together such a kick-ass agenda. Even with a 100+ attendance, if there is not a strong committer representation, we don't feel the September members meeting is all it can be. The strong mix of skill-sets and perspectives in the Eclipse Ecosystem is one of the things that make it tick.

There's a few things working against us. First, travel budgets are tight overall, and there are lots of interesting things going on in the fall like Eclipse Summit Europe, Eclipse World, OS Summit Asia and others. It seems easier to attend Eclipse Members Meetings when there is something else coincedent (like EclipsEcon) to justify the trip. Second, "marketing" is such a dirty word that I fear running a "Marketing Symposium" in conjunction with the meeting autmatically makes many committers tune out the invitation -- even though much of the content is highly relevant.

So we're trying a few things different this year -- there are going to be a couple of project meetings running in parallel with the members meeting. The Committer reps, Bjorn and I are going to be leading a break-out meeting during one of the afternoons titled "Fine Tuning the Eclipse Committer Experience". And last, but not least, I'm going to be agressive with the message that the September Members Meeting is not just for the "suits".

What are your thoughts?

- Don

Damn Europa, damn and new membership pages...

2007-06-27T17:50:00.000-04:00

I've spent pretty much an entire year typing "Europe" and then going back and correcting it to be "Europa".

Now that Eclipse Summit Europe planning is in full swing, I find myself typing "Europa" all the time and having to go back and change it to "Europe".

Luckily there aren't many words that conflict with Ganymede...

Just a heads up that the new Eclipse.org membership section has exited beta and is now launched. Check out the new ways to explore the membership and learn more about the ecosystem.

- Don

Congrats to ZX!

2007-05-25T19:28:00.000-04:00

I think many people in the Eclipse Ecosystem know Chris Aniszczyk (aka "Zx"). What you may not know is that our infamous blogger, commiter, board rep and planeteclipse.org maintainer won $100,000 today in a business case competition! Congrats!

Apparently beers are on Zx next time we meet :)

- Don