Thoughts on JavaOne 2008

Just finishing up this years edition on JavaOne. Some thoughts…

• JavaFX was definitely the main message from Sun. The Sun keynote was full of JavaFX demos showing spinning pictures. It reminded me of 1998 spinning Java logos in applets. Sun appears to want to go head to head with Adobe and Microsoft for the hearts and minds of designers and web programmers. Unlike Cote, I think they are too late and I am not sure anyone really cares about JavaFX.
• JavaOne is usually full of announcements from the major vendors, this year was the exception. In fact the Sun and Oracle keynotes were non-events; kind of boring.
• One thing that was very surprising to me is that there was little discussion about openJDK and open source Java. Last year it was all about open source Java. I know Sun is still committed to openJDK, it was just surprising the absence of discussion.
• OSGi did really well at JavaOne. Lots of people were clearly interested but most people have no idea. We still have a long way to go to educate people about Equinox and OSGi but things have started.
• The Eclipse party at the Thirsty Bear was a great success. Thanks to everyone that came.
• I also went to the eBay party. eBay is a huge Eclipse user and they are doing some neat things. btw, eBay is looking to hire some Eclipse experts. If you are interested send me an e-mail.
• Once again we gave out 750 t-shirts at the Eclipse booth. Thanks to everyone that came by the booth. It is great to hear from all the enthusiastic Eclipse users. See you next year.

New resource for Eclipse newbies

DZone has just released the first set of their Refcardz, including a ‘Getting Started with Eclipse‘. It looks like a great resource for anyone starting in Eclipse.

Nitin from Dzone was kind enough to drop off some of the Refcardz for the Eclipse booth at JavaOne; they proved to be very popular. Lets hope they do more of these for other Eclipse projects.

Organize an Eclipse Demo Camp

We are organizing another series of Eclipse Demo Camps.  Last Fall we had 30 Eclipse Demo Camps and they turned out to be great community events.

This time the demo camps are to celebrate the Ganymede release.  We already have events organized in 15 cities but I’d like to see even more.   Details on organizing a Demo Camp are here.   btw, we are having the Ottawa demo camp, on June 26 the day after the Ganymede release.  Should be lots of fun and I plan on buying Pascal lots of beer for the great p2 work.

Glassfish Running Inside Eclipse

Two weeks ago the Glassfish team announced their upcoming v3 version would be running on OSGi. Now Ludovic has a demo of Glassfish v3 running inside of Eclipse; I gather running on Equinox. Not sure about other people but this just seems so cool for many different reasons. Hopefully I will get a demo next week at JavaOne.

Redmonk Unconference

Last year at JavaOne, the highlight for me was the Redmonk Unconference.  It was a great venue to network, learn and discuss issues relevant to the open source community.  The guys at Redmonk do a great job of bringing together the technologist and the business/marketing types into one place.

I would recommend to anyone going to JavaOne to try to make it to this year’s edition.   My goal this year is to get a better appreciation of how people are using twitter for their community.  Mik Kersten is also planning to talk about task focus programming.  See you there.

SpringSource Annnounces New Application Server Based on Equinox

SpringSource has just launched a new application server, called SpringSource Application Platform, that is based on Equinox, Tomcat and Spring.  The key thing is that it is not a Java EE application server but one that has been designed for modular development and deployment.

InfoQ has a good write-up about the announcement and Dana Blankenhorn has provided some coverage.   It will be interesting to see how this announcement is received in the Java community.  The Spring guys have a great reputation and community, so it will definitely get attention.

Of course this is great news for Equinox and OSGi; lots of innovation coming for this platform.

JavaOne Pavilion Passes

I have some JavaOne Pavlion passes to give away.  If anyone wants a pass to access the exhibit hall, please send me an e-mail.  (ian at eclipse dot org.)

Eclipse Sessions at JavaOne

JavaOne is in two weeks.  Once again, the Eclipse Foundation will have a booth, be giving away Eclipse t-shirts and having our party at the Thirsty Bear. Besides free Eclipse SWAG and beer, there are also some interesting Eclipse related sessions at JavaOne:

• The Many Moons of Eclipse, Tuesday, May 6 12:10pm – 1:10pm (TS-5040)
• Introducing eBay’s Scalable Innovation Platform, Tuesday, May 6 3:20pm – 4:20pm (TS-7550)
• Developing JavaTM Persistence API Applications with the NetBeansTM IDE and EclipseLink Tuesday, May 6 4:40pm – 5:40pm (TS-5400)
• Developing and Supporting a Plug-in for Eclipse, the NetBeansTM IDE, and IDEA
  Tuesday, May 6 8:30pm – 9:20pm (BOF-5193)
• The NetBeansTM Platform Compared to the Eclipse Rich Client Platform
  Thursday, May 8 9:30am – 10:30am (TS-4895)
• Using a QVT Approach to Automate a UML2 to J2EE Transformation
  Thursday, May 8 9:30am – 10:30am (TS-7466)
• Mylyn: Code at the Speed of Thought
  Thursday, May 8 10:50am – 11:50am (TS-6421)
• Open Source Development Tools for the JavaTM Platform, Enterprise Edition, Web 2.0, and SOA
  Thursday, May 8 4:10pm - 5:10pm (TS-7479)
  Friday, May 9 2:50pm - 3:50pm (TS-7479) **** I wonder if this is an error since it has two time slots but the same session id?
• Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist, Friday, May 9 1:30pm - 2:30pm (TS-5555)

btw, whomever designs the JavaOne conference site should really think about making it easy to link directly to the sessions. I tried but it didn’t really seem possible.

Ganymede Launch Plans

I am starting to work on the launch plans for Ganymede.   I have a lot of respect and admiration (especially their graphics) for the way Mozilla promotes Firefox, so it was great to see Paul Kim blogging about their plans for Firefox 3.

I agree with Paul, that having a mix of traditional pr activities and grassroots outreach activities is important.   For the Ganymede launch we will do some traditional pr outreach and for grassroot outreach we are planning a new series of Demo Camps, a blogging network similar to last year and I hope a series of videos about each project.   What else should we be doing to launch Ganymede?

btw, if anyone wants to help with graphics for Ganymede, we have opened a bug to solicit ideas.

Does Open Source Participation Open Career Opportunities?

A blog post on CIO.com is making the point that participation in an open source project can help kick-start your career.  I often find that individual developers like to work on open source projects, since it is fun and even ‘cool’.   The ability to get peer recognition and immediate feedback can be a great motivator.

Howewer, I had not thought about the aspect of corporate career progression.   Does anyone have good or bad experiences their participation in an open source project helping their career?