Eclipse Ecosystem

ESE 2009 -- Sponsorships are going fast

2009-08-17T16:50:00.003+02:00

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

2009-06-23T16:44:00.002+02:00

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!

2009-05-06T15:54:00.002+02:00

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

2009-02-05T16:26:00.002+01:00

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

2009-01-15T16:09:00.003+01:00

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

2008-12-01T14:55:00.000+01:00

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

2008-08-27T16:49:00.003+02:00

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

2008-08-20T15:14:00.000+02:00

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

2008-08-06T16:21:00.000+02:00

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

2008-07-30T16:27:00.000+02:00

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

2008-07-24T20:23:00.001+02:00

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!

2008-06-27T15:36:00.000+02:00

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

2008-03-20T00:20:00.000+01:00

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

2008-03-19T17:28:00.001+01:00

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......

2008-03-19T17:06:00.000+01:00

...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!

2008-03-19T15:03:00.002+01:00

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

2008-03-19T00:10:00.000+01:00

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!

2008-03-13T14:59:00.000+01:00

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.

2008-03-12T13:59:00.000+01:00

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

2008-03-05T15:08:00.000+01:00

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!

2008-02-28T20:46:00.000+01:00

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

2008-02-21T16:37:00.001+01:00

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...

2008-02-20T19:47:00.000+01:00

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

2008-02-19T19:15:00.000+01:00

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

2008-02-14T07:24:00.000+01:00

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