Arrived yesterday evening in Antwerp, check in, take a walk. The area in the neighborhood (south-side) wasn't too lively, hope that the downtown area provides more fun. What I've seen from downtown on other visits was actually quite amazing. Just coming in by train is an experience, waling up the stairs in that wonderfully architected train station.
Devoxx is great. Sold out with 3´500 attendees and a good line-up of partners it shows me that Java is not dead. I feel that I'm pretty much the oldest person here, close to double the age as the average attendee age. Having the conference hosted in a large movie theater is great for good audio and video all over the place.
The organizers have made a great effort in 'electrifying' the conference. Custom made electronic voting machines that go with your NFC arm band, stand-up terminals for the program (sponsored by Oracle as it looks like), TV-screens everywhere with the latest announcements, , movie evening with the new James Bond movie Skyfall. Looks like they have vast resources to put into lovely things.
Some things are too colorful and to fast for me. But I guess it's ok for the kids. Oh - and not to forget: The program is packed, and so are the rooms. Folks I talk to seem to think that the program is pretty good! They don't even mind the bad sandwiches.
So the concept works. It actually seems to work well enough that it got exported to France. And we'll also see a Devoxx UK next year, as I understand. Congratulations to Stephan Jansen and his team. What started as a JUG event has become a great series of conferences!
I also feel sad around the conference though. There's only one talk on the program about Eclipse. Working for the Eclipse Foundation I wonder what happened. Have we lost the contact to the Java community?
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Monday, November 12, 2012
Eclipse Demo Camps Fall 2012
Just looked at the Eclipse Demo Camp site on our wiki to make my travel arrangements for the fall. Because the demo camp season is coming up!
So here is what I'm going to do, applying some optimization algorithm of my own. I will start with demo camp Dresden on the 20th. This will give me enough time on the train to do all my email that is still lingering from EclipsCon in my inbox. Going back from Dresden, I will stop in Braunschweig and attend the Bredex party, a demo camp in disguise. Now I would have loved to go to Poznan afterwards, but due to a personal appointment that I cannot move I have to skip. But I'll try next year!
The week after, I'm definitely going to the Yatta demo camp Kassel in the wonderful Circus Rambazotti, and I'm toying with the idea to go to Fraunhofer Berlin as well. But I'm not sure yet if this works out!
The week of December 2nd you'll meet me in Munich at the EclipseSource demo camp, where Max and Jonas will put on a great party I hope. Including some fun that involves a Kinect.
Now what about you? Have you made all your plans? Go find you demo camp, it's fun. Look up the list on our wiki and register.
So here is what I'm going to do, applying some optimization algorithm of my own. I will start with demo camp Dresden on the 20th. This will give me enough time on the train to do all my email that is still lingering from EclipsCon in my inbox. Going back from Dresden, I will stop in Braunschweig and attend the Bredex party, a demo camp in disguise. Now I would have loved to go to Poznan afterwards, but due to a personal appointment that I cannot move I have to skip. But I'll try next year!
The week after, I'm definitely going to the Yatta demo camp Kassel in the wonderful Circus Rambazotti, and I'm toying with the idea to go to Fraunhofer Berlin as well. But I'm not sure yet if this works out!
The week of December 2nd you'll meet me in Munich at the EclipseSource demo camp, where Max and Jonas will put on a great party I hope. Including some fun that involves a Kinect.
Now what about you? Have you made all your plans? Go find you demo camp, it's fun. Look up the list on our wiki and register.
Monday, October 22, 2012
ECE 2012: Starting Soon
Just arrived in Ludwigsburg a couple of hours ago. Weather is great, the trees ave the fall colors, temperature is very nice. A golden October day.
At the Ludwigsburg Forum, the staff is tearing down from a industry show that ended last night. While the current status doesn't create a lot of confidence that we'll be all set in another 12 hours, I have seen it now many times, and to my surprise they managed to get everything set up just fine and in time.
People are starting to arrive in the Nestor hotel next to the Forum. Most of them have been attending before, but just a minute ago I ran into a guy from the US. It's his first time in Germany and obviously the first EclipseCon Europe. He's trying to hide his excitement - or is he feeling a little overwhelmed? In the hallway the packages that the sponsors sent in are piling up.
So, in a couple of hours we will start. I believe we got a good program, we have the folks from the OSGi community invited, and we got some good social activities planned for the evenings. Food's usually good, beer will be served. And my Adrenalin level is going down.
I'm hoping for a good conference.
At the Ludwigsburg Forum, the staff is tearing down from a industry show that ended last night. While the current status doesn't create a lot of confidence that we'll be all set in another 12 hours, I have seen it now many times, and to my surprise they managed to get everything set up just fine and in time.
People are starting to arrive in the Nestor hotel next to the Forum. Most of them have been attending before, but just a minute ago I ran into a guy from the US. It's his first time in Germany and obviously the first EclipseCon Europe. He's trying to hide his excitement - or is he feeling a little overwhelmed? In the hallway the packages that the sponsors sent in are piling up.
So, in a couple of hours we will start. I believe we got a good program, we have the folks from the OSGi community invited, and we got some good social activities planned for the evenings. Food's usually good, beer will be served. And my Adrenalin level is going down.
I'm hoping for a good conference.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Saying "No" Nicely
EclipseCon Europe 2012 starts in about two weeks, and lots of attendees are figuring out which talks to add to their personal ECE schedules. There are lots of great talks, so it's not easy. But it's one of those "good problems" to have.
Another good problem the ECE program committee had back in July was deciding which talks to accept from among so many excellent submissions. Accepting talks is the most obvious task of a program committee. Declining talks -- carefully and thoughtfully -- is less obvious, but even more important.
Anyone who's had a talk declined knows it's disappointing, and that can't be avoided. But declining talks well can prevent a disappointed submitter from turning into a demoralized submitter who won't try again.
This year's ECE program committee left comments on every declined submission, explaining why it was not accepted. They answered a lot of follow-up questions to provide more detail. This task was considered essential, and the accept/decline emails didn't go out until all the comments were added.
The expectation -- and hope -- is that by declining talks well, we encourage new submitters to try again, and keep our EclipseCon content fresh and interesting.
Another good problem the ECE program committee had back in July was deciding which talks to accept from among so many excellent submissions. Accepting talks is the most obvious task of a program committee. Declining talks -- carefully and thoughtfully -- is less obvious, but even more important.
Anyone who's had a talk declined knows it's disappointing, and that can't be avoided. But declining talks well can prevent a disappointed submitter from turning into a demoralized submitter who won't try again.
This year's ECE program committee left comments on every declined submission, explaining why it was not accepted. They answered a lot of follow-up questions to provide more detail. This task was considered essential, and the accept/decline emails didn't go out until all the comments were added.
The expectation -- and hope -- is that by declining talks well, we encourage new submitters to try again, and keep our EclipseCon content fresh and interesting.
Monday, September 24, 2012
EclipseCon Europe 2012: We need your help!
From October 23 to 25, 2012 the Eclipse Foundation will hold the 6 7th edition of our annual European Eclipse Conference.
EclipseCon Europe is all about community - learning, exploring, sharing and collaborating on the latest ideas and information about Eclipse. Contributors, adopters, extenders, service providers, consumer, business and research organizations alike, gather to share their expertise and learn from each other.
Networking activities lead to synergies in the community, from giving and receiving help on specific technical issues to generating new business opportunities. Sponsors of Eclipse Summit are an integral part of the entire event, participating in an exchange from all areas of their organizations from technical to management.
Last year we celebrated Eclipse's 10th anniversary together with more than 550 attendees at EclipseCon Europe. This year the conference theme is open innovation: how enterprises, researchers and other organizations use Eclipse to develop innovative products and solutions.
We are also co-hosting the European OSGi community event and are extending a special welcome to the International OSGi community. And, again we are proud to have a solid technical program, but we won't just be networking and listening to technical talks. Let us surprise you with our evening program! Details will be published in the early part of October.
How can you help? Simply, spread the word. Please forward this blog post to your peers, colleagues and business partners. Invite them to join us for EclipseCon Europe 2012. Or simple put the attached JPEG to the announcement board in your hallway.
For more information, please visit the conference website http://www.eclipsecon.org or send me a quick email.
Thank you in advance!
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Polarsys IWG: Welcome the Participants
It's been almost a year that the OPEES participants made the decision to continue the efforts to build and maintain an open platform for the engineering of embedded systems (see also http://topcased.org/) as a industry working group within the Eclipse Foundation.
A joint team from the Eclipse Foundation and the OPEES project has been working on preparing all the materials needed for the group to get started. For instance, the charter of the IWG and the participation agreement have been negotiated and approved.
In late spring, we were able to start the acquisition of participants. Today I would like to welcome the companies that have signed the agreements and now constitute the founding members of the Polarsys IWG:
A joint team from the Eclipse Foundation and the OPEES project has been working on preparing all the materials needed for the group to get started. For instance, the charter of the IWG and the participation agreement have been negotiated and approved.
In late spring, we were able to start the acquisition of participants. Today I would like to welcome the companies that have signed the agreements and now constitute the founding members of the Polarsys IWG:
- Airbus, steering committee member
- Ericsson, steering committee member
- Thales, steering committee member
- Intecs SpA, participating member
- Obeo, participating member
- Soyatec, participating member
Now that we have reached critical mass, the time has come to take the next steps. Information on these activities is available in the Polarsys mailing list as well as on the Polarsys blog. The next face-to-face o meeting of the group is planned for October 22nd in Ludwigsburg, Germany.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
My Demo Camps Week-of-June-18
Wednesday: SAP Walldorf, with happy hour :-)
Thursday: Siemens and EclipseSource Munich, good food and drinks as well
Friday: BSI Zurich, would be surprised if there wasn't any food and beer in the informal part
Thanks to all the organizers
Thursday: Siemens and EclipseSource Munich, good food and drinks as well
Friday: BSI Zurich, would be surprised if there wasn't any food and beer in the informal part
Thanks to all the organizers
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Better than Soccer?
Just hopping from demo camp to demo camp. Last week it was Ilmenau and Nuremberg, this week it's Kassel and Hamburg (where I am right now).
Nuremberg and Ilmenau are new. So it was to be expected that they were not too crowded. True for Ilmenau, but the planners in Nuremberg didn't have enough chairs.
As every year, I'm learning a lot. Not just about Eclipse technology. But also about the fact that people come to the demo camps despite of the competing European Soccer championship. I had expected that people actually would drop out and watch soccer rather than listening to XText or Code Recommender talks.
Now to be fair: The demo camp here in Hamburg was originally planned for yesterday. Only when the planners found out that the game Germany - Netherlands was scheduled for the same evening, they wisely changed to today. And I'm really grateful. I would have had a bad conflict!
So now everybody won: The demo camp in the nice Speicherstadt location has about 80 participants. I could watch the Germans win 2:1 yesterday. The only people who actually lost was the Dutch team. Oh well ...
Nuremberg and Ilmenau are new. So it was to be expected that they were not too crowded. True for Ilmenau, but the planners in Nuremberg didn't have enough chairs.
As every year, I'm learning a lot. Not just about Eclipse technology. But also about the fact that people come to the demo camps despite of the competing European Soccer championship. I had expected that people actually would drop out and watch soccer rather than listening to XText or Code Recommender talks.
Now to be fair: The demo camp here in Hamburg was originally planned for yesterday. Only when the planners found out that the game Germany - Netherlands was scheduled for the same evening, they wisely changed to today. And I'm really grateful. I would have had a bad conflict!
So now everybody won: The demo camp in the nice Speicherstadt location has about 80 participants. I could watch the Germans win 2:1 yesterday. The only people who actually lost was the Dutch team. Oh well ...
Monday, June 11, 2012
If I had a free wish today ...
What would I want? That some wizard shows up here in my little office in Zwingenberg and helps me to install the FOSSLC recording software on my notebook.
Why? We could do some many wonderful recordings of all the interesting sessions happening at the Eclipse Demo Camp series. As an example, look at the recordings from the Eclipse Demo Camp in Ilmenau last week.
Boy, would that be cool.
Dear FOSSLCs - when do we get a version for the Mac?
Why? We could do some many wonderful recordings of all the interesting sessions happening at the Eclipse Demo Camp series. As an example, look at the recordings from the Eclipse Demo Camp in Ilmenau last week.
Boy, would that be cool.
Dear FOSSLCs - when do we get a version for the Mac?
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Schedule June 4 - 15
Demo camp season is now starting for real.
On Monday, June 4th I'll be traveling to Leipzig, where I was invited to talk about Open Source Software at the university of Leipzig. Then I'll figure out how to get from Leipzig to Ilmenau for the first Ilmenau Eclipse demo camp on the 5th. In case you've never been in Ilmenau: It a nice university town in the middle of the Thuringian forest , a quite attractive area in the new provinces.
On the 6th I'll attend another first, the Juno demo camp in Nuremberg. Both demo camps have between 20 and 30 people registered at the time of writing. It would be great if you could drop by too!
The following week I'll be in Kassel on the 12th and in Hamburg on the 14th. The organizers of the 2 locations always come up with some interesting ideas: So will the event in Kassel take place in an actual circus, and -well- for Hamburg I'm still waiting for the location to be announced ...
For information on all Juno demo camps, please check out http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_DemoCamps_Juno_2012
On Monday, June 4th I'll be traveling to Leipzig, where I was invited to talk about Open Source Software at the university of Leipzig. Then I'll figure out how to get from Leipzig to Ilmenau for the first Ilmenau Eclipse demo camp on the 5th. In case you've never been in Ilmenau: It a nice university town in the middle of the Thuringian forest , a quite attractive area in the new provinces.
On the 6th I'll attend another first, the Juno demo camp in Nuremberg. Both demo camps have between 20 and 30 people registered at the time of writing. It would be great if you could drop by too!
The following week I'll be in Kassel on the 12th and in Hamburg on the 14th. The organizers of the 2 locations always come up with some interesting ideas: So will the event in Kassel take place in an actual circus, and -well- for Hamburg I'm still waiting for the location to be announced ...
For information on all Juno demo camps, please check out http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_DemoCamps_Juno_2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
Leaving for Toulouse
The next couple of days I will be in Toulouse.
What's happening there?
On Wednesday, the Eclipse Auto and Polarsys Industry Working Groups will conduct their Face-To-Face meetings, in the morning they'll meet separately and in the afternoon they will get together. The most interesting topic of the joint meeting will be the progress made in the Automotive IWG's work package 5.
And then on Thursday I'll attend the Eclipse Day Toulouse, New Edition. Don't be afraid, I won't do a presentation, but my colleague Ian Skerrett will talk about 10 years of Eclipse and beyond.
Then technical talks all day, covering a variety of Eclipse related technical topics.
Hope we all will have a good time!
What's happening there?
On Wednesday, the Eclipse Auto and Polarsys Industry Working Groups will conduct their Face-To-Face meetings, in the morning they'll meet separately and in the afternoon they will get together. The most interesting topic of the joint meeting will be the progress made in the Automotive IWG's work package 5.
And then on Thursday I'll attend the Eclipse Day Toulouse, New Edition. Don't be afraid, I won't do a presentation, but my colleague Ian Skerrett will talk about 10 years of Eclipse and beyond.
Then technical talks all day, covering a variety of Eclipse related technical topics.
Hope we all will have a good time!
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Dear Friends of Eclipse
I cordially invite you to our Eclipse Demo Camp Juno (Summer 2012) series.
As every year, many organizations in Europe have volunteered to organize a demo camp in their city. Where and when? You find out on our Wiki page when the excitement comes to your town!
What is a Demo Camp?
It's an informal "After-Work" event, where you'll see a lot of code, and hardly any PowerPoint slides! Before, during and after the talks is enough time to network, have a drink and a bite to eat.
What is your role?
Well, you can either participate, listen, eat and drink and have a good time, or you can present what you have. Please add yourself to the respective wiki page or contact the local organizers to either register as a participant or as a speaker.
New and Noteworthy Locations
I'd like to point you to locations that don't have a long history yet. They need your participation, and they need the exciting community presenters, so please take a look and see if you want to come (only demo camps with fixed date and location):
As every year, many organizations in Europe have volunteered to organize a demo camp in their city. Where and when? You find out on our Wiki page when the excitement comes to your town!
What is a Demo Camp?
It's an informal "After-Work" event, where you'll see a lot of code, and hardly any PowerPoint slides! Before, during and after the talks is enough time to network, have a drink and a bite to eat.
What is your role?
Well, you can either participate, listen, eat and drink and have a good time, or you can present what you have. Please add yourself to the respective wiki page or contact the local organizers to either register as a participant or as a speaker.
New and Noteworthy Locations
I'd like to point you to locations that don't have a long history yet. They need your participation, and they need the exciting community presenters, so please take a look and see if you want to come (only demo camps with fixed date and location):
- Manchester (UK): http://wiki.eclipse.org/Manchester_Demo_Camp
- Illmenau (Germany): http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_DemoCamps_Juno_2012/Ilmenau
- Nuremberg (Germany): http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_DemoCamps_Juno_2012/Nuremberg
- Cluj-Napoca (Romania): http://wiki.eclipse.org/DemoCampCluj
I look forward to meeting many of you in May and June!
Ralph
Monday, April 23, 2012
May 2012 Schedule
Just took the time to go through my travel schedule for May.
An I get pretty excited, there's a whole lot of interesting events coming up!
While it is not really in May yet, I'm looking forward to traveling to Düsseldorf on Thursday, April 26 for the Eclipse evening of the Java User Group Düsseldorf. If you don't have plans for the evening yet, come and join us. You'll hear some from me (keep it short, Ralph) and then the more interesting technical program including talks about Eclipse 4 (the next big thing), XText (modeling magic) and the ALM / delivery productivity gains that you can experience with Eclipse technology. After the talks there shall be some beer, right?
Early May will get me to Italy. On May 2nd we are invited at an air-defense engineering school near Naples to speak about Open Source in general and Polarsys in particular to the staff there. Would be great if we can get them to join the Polarsys community.
On May 4th we will attend the Eclipse Day in Florence. The folks from RCP-Vision have put together a quite rich program for you. But really doubt that it was too hard to attract speakers to come to Florence in May :-)
From the 22nd to the 25th I will be in Toulouse. Here we have a lot of stuff going on: On the 23rd we'll have parallel meetings of the Automotive IWG and Polarsys, and on the 24th the next edition of the Eclipse Day Toulouse will take place.
As not all the information for Toulouse is available, please register to the Auto IWG - and the Polarsys mailing lists if you would like to know more about these events.
I look forward to meeting you.
PS: I was making my travel arrangements for Toulouse over the weekend. Be advised that the many hotels in the city are already sold out. You better move fast if you don't want to stay at the airport :-)
Thursday, March 22, 2012
One More Thing
Before I leave for EclipseCon tomorrow, I'd like to point you to -actually- a couple more things:
- The organizers of the Eclipse Day Toulouse have issued their call for sponsors and the call for papers
- The organizers of the Eclipse Integrated Development Day in Berlin have done the same
- And the organizers of the Eclipse Testing Day 2012 are also looking for sponsors and talks
So please contact them if you are interested in any of the subjects.
Then, quite a few companies have shown interest in organizing an Eclipse Financial Day around the October timeframe. Please contact Manuela Duft from compeople AG (or me, in case you don't have her email address) for further details.
And last, but not least: If you consider to organize a Juno demo camp in May/June, please let us know. You can send an email to democamps@eclipse.org.
See many of you in Reston!
Friday, March 16, 2012
Almost off to EclipseCon
Only a couple more nights to sleep, and then I will be off to EclipseCon 2012 in Resten, VA.
I'm pretty excited about going: A new venue, a new town (I have never been in the Washington area before) and quite a number of interesting talks. And a whole bunch of Europeans will be going to be there again, not to mention the special meetings that we were able to organize.
One we haven't talked much about yet: I'd like to invite you Europeans to have a beer with me on the 29th in the evening. I'm not sure about the location yet, so please add yourself to this Doodle poll. That would help me to find a proper place :-)
Don't forget that -as every year- we will check passports at the entrance to see if you qualify.
One more thing: If you can't wait to get an Eclipse beer, join us at the Eclipse Stammtisch Kaiserslautern. There's only a few seats left!
Ralph
I'm pretty excited about going: A new venue, a new town (I have never been in the Washington area before) and quite a number of interesting talks. And a whole bunch of Europeans will be going to be there again, not to mention the special meetings that we were able to organize.
One we haven't talked much about yet: I'd like to invite you Europeans to have a beer with me on the 29th in the evening. I'm not sure about the location yet, so please add yourself to this Doodle poll. That would help me to find a proper place :-)
Don't forget that -as every year- we will check passports at the entrance to see if you qualify.
One more thing: If you can't wait to get an Eclipse beer, join us at the Eclipse Stammtisch Kaiserslautern. There's only a few seats left!
Ralph
Sunday, March 4, 2012
CeBIT (Reloaded)
Just packing for CeBIT 2012, where you will find me for the next 6 days! But it won't just be the Eclipse Foundation, the Foundation will be joined by Actuate, BREDEX, EclipseSource, itemis, MicroSoft and TaskTop (see full press release).
We look forward to our brand-new booth that has been designed to give the visitor a good look at all the exhibitors. We will have really nice showcases, and we will have interesting offerings to show!
And if you are interested in learning more about the Eclipse Foundation, come on. I'm more than happy to talk to you about our latest initiatives like the Automotive Industry Working Group, the aerospace lead initiative PolarSys or our Long Term Support IWG.
Ralph
We look forward to our brand-new booth that has been designed to give the visitor a good look at all the exhibitors. We will have really nice showcases, and we will have interesting offerings to show!
And if you are interested in learning more about the Eclipse Foundation, come on. I'm more than happy to talk to you about our latest initiatives like the Automotive Industry Working Group, the aerospace lead initiative PolarSys or our Long Term Support IWG.
Ralph
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Automotive Industry Working Group News
I wanted to take the opportunity and inform you about things going on in the Eclipse Auto-IWG. We had a face-2-face meeting in Stuttgart at ETAS GmbH. We have made a lot of progress with the work packages as you can see from the meeting minutes and the updates made on the wiki.
In addition, we were listing to presentations from Stefan Voget (Continental) about EATOP, a potential Eclipse project implementing EAST-ADL, a presentation from Bosch India on an OSEE for Automotive package that they have created and finally from Oscar Slotosch from Validas in Germany on tool qualification. All the presentations are already available or will be made available at http://wiki.eclipse.org/Auto_IWG#Documents.
I'm also very pleased to welcome Validas AG from Munich, Germany and The Virtual Vehicle Competence Center from Graz, Austria as new Solution Members to the Eclipse Foundation. They have expressed strong interest in participating in the AutoIWG, and we are very happy to have their industry know-how and experience on board.
Is Eclipse important to Automotive and is Automotive important in Eclipse? Looking at the program of the upcoming EclipseCon in Reston, Virginia, I note that Ford's "What's next guy, Mr. Prasad and Peter Semmelhack, founder of Bug Labs will talk in their keynote presentation about the App Development Platform of the future car.
And in the 'normal' program, I can also find quite a number of talks that are of interest to the automotive crowd.
And last but not least, we will have an 'automotive meeting' at EclipseCon. Please add yourself to this Doodle poll if you are interested in participating or presenting.
Ralph
In addition, we were listing to presentations from Stefan Voget (Continental) about EATOP, a potential Eclipse project implementing EAST-ADL, a presentation from Bosch India on an OSEE for Automotive package that they have created and finally from Oscar Slotosch from Validas in Germany on tool qualification. All the presentations are already available or will be made available at http://wiki.eclipse.org/Auto_IWG#Documents.
I'm also very pleased to welcome Validas AG from Munich, Germany and The Virtual Vehicle Competence Center from Graz, Austria as new Solution Members to the Eclipse Foundation. They have expressed strong interest in participating in the AutoIWG, and we are very happy to have their industry know-how and experience on board.
Is Eclipse important to Automotive and is Automotive important in Eclipse? Looking at the program of the upcoming EclipseCon in Reston, Virginia, I note that Ford's "What's next guy, Mr. Prasad and Peter Semmelhack, founder of Bug Labs will talk in their keynote presentation about the App Development Platform of the future car.
And in the 'normal' program, I can also find quite a number of talks that are of interest to the automotive crowd.
And last but not least, we will have an 'automotive meeting' at EclipseCon. Please add yourself to this Doodle poll if you are interested in participating or presenting.
Ralph
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