Sign the Eclipse Birthday Card

In addition to the Eclipse birthday parties, we are setting up an electronic birthday card and Eclipse Product Wall of Fame. I am hoping this will be a good way for individuals to show their support of Eclipse and to showcase all of the Eclipse based products and services.

We haven’t publically announce the birthday card but we are asking some individuals to add a greeting or product before we go public. This way we can get any bugs out of the system before too many people see it. So I thought my blog readers, all three of you, could help out by adding your own greeting to the card.

Eclipse and Josh in Antarctica

Josh Reed made it to Antarctica and sent me a picture of his new Eclipse sweater. It is keeping in warm, while sleeping out in -40 degree weather!

Josh is keeping a blog about his experiences in Antarctica. It seems like he might be the first Eclipse user at the South Pole and even using the Eclipse update manger to push out new releases.

btw, I’ve always wanted to go to Antarctica, so I find it interesting to read his blog.

Two Eclipse Webinars: RCP and Mylar

Next week we are organizing two webinars.

The first will be Mik Kersten, project leader of Mylar, introducing the concepts of the task oriented UI that Mylar adds to Eclipse. This is pretty cool stuff and a great example of the innovation that is happening at Eclipse. If you are interested in attending, the webinar is October 25, go here for registration info.

The second webinar, is Wayne Beaton doing an in-depth RCP demo. The idea is to basically do a code walk-thru of an RCP application. The intention is to help introduce the concepts of an RCP application to those people that are considering using it. This webinar will be held October 26, you can go here to register.

We are actually going to do a series of RCP webinars this Fall. The nice thing is that they are being sponsored by IBM, Instantiations and Palamida. It is great to have their support!

Eclipse Birthday Parties Update

We have had great response to the Eclipse 5th birthday parties. So far we have parties in 21 cities in 10 countries. Take a look at here to see if there is a party located in your city. Feel free to RSVP and take part in the festivities.

btw, we expect to have more cities posted over the next couple of days, so check back early next week.

Another first for Eclipse - Welcome to KPIT Cummins

KPIT Cummins has just joined the Eclipse Foundation as an Add-in Provider. This is the first time a company in India has joined the Foundation and I hope there will be many more. It is also interesting to see that KPIT claims to have reduced their development costs by 40% due to the use of Eclipse.

There is a large Eclipse community in India. The new Eclipse Magazine is published in India. Dilip Thomas is the managing director and he is also hosting an Eclipse 5th birthday party in Bangalore. If you are in Bangalore and want to participate in the festivities, make sure you RSVP to birthday-bangalore@eclipse.org.

What type of marketing does Eclipse need?

We are starting to plan for 2007. Part of the process is to identify the key programs we would like to implement during the year and therefore ensure we allocate the budget and resources appropriately. I am putting together a plan for the marketing programs.

Obviously the Eclipse Foundation has modest marketing resources, so I want to make sure we focus on high impact activities. Therefore, I am interested in what people think are the important marketing programs that the Foundation should undertake in 2007.

To give you an idea, in 2006 we used our resources on things like press agencies, trade shows, seminar series in the USA, webinars, podcasts, writing case studies, swag and sponsoring Eclipse community meetings. What else should we be doing to help grow the Eclipse community and spread the word about Eclipse?

What are the key events in the history of Eclipse?

We are getting ready to celebrate Eclipse’s 5th birthday. I am curious what people think are the important events in the history of Eclipse. Maybe a key release, important article or white paper, conference, what else?

Considering, I am a relative newcomer to the Eclipse community, it would be great if some of the oldtimers (and newcomers) would share their perspective?

Eclipse is turning 5, Help Us Celebrate!

Believe it or not we are coming up to 5 years since Eclipse was first made available as an open source project. It was November 7, 2001, when IBM made available for download the Eclipse project. Lots has happen since and I think this birthday is a cause for celebration.

What best way to celebrate but to have a birthday party. Organizing one big party for the Eclipse community on November 7 would just not work. So we decided to encourage the Eclipse community members to organize local birthday parties. This will hopefully be a great opportunity for you to meet other Eclipse enthusiast in your home town.

There are already birthday parties being organized in Boston, Dallas, Portland, Ottawa, Shanghai and Stuttgart. It would be great to get more parties organized around the world; maybe in places like Toronto, Raleigh, Paris, London, Stockholm, San Francisco, Tokyo, etc. The Foundation is offering to help pay for the cost and help promote the party. Check out the details here.

Eclipse RCP Heading to Antarctica

There is really a lot of cool things that are being developed on Eclipse RCP. Case in point, Josh Reed sent me an e-mail about his RCP based application called PSICAT, graphical editing software for stratigraphic columns and visual core description diagrams. Basically, this is what geologists use to describe drill cores. However, the really cool thing is that PSICAT is going to be used in Antarctica as part of the Antarctic Geologic Drilling Project.

I am pretty sure Eclipse is now being use on all the continents.
Neat to see that Josh is using RCP on the Mac.

Josh is actually heading to Antarctica on Monday, so we have sent him an Eclipse fleece to keep him warm.

Case Studies: Using Eclipse RCP for enterprise applications

We have just released 3 more Eclipse RCP Case studies.

The highlight is JP Morgan’s use of Eclipse RCP to build an internal platform for creating banking applications. More than just creating individual desktop applications, they are using RCP to create an generalize platform that all new custom applications can reuse and extend. I really see this as the future for RCP and software development in general. JP Morgan seems to be leading the way.

Not to be overshadow, we also have two other case studies from Nulogy and RPC Software. Nulogy is an ISV that is creating Distribution and Logistics platform for consumer package goods companies. Organization, like Unilver, are using Nulogy’s Eclipse RCP based product to help with their logistics management.

RPC Software is another ISV that has an ERP system for furniture distributors. They are able to use the extensibility of Eclipse RCP to deliver customized versions of their applications in a very cost efficient manner.

It is really exciting to hear how RCP is being used to build and deploy real enterprise applications. I am thankful to the individuals from JP Morgan, Nulogy and RPC Software that shared their stories for these case studies.

btw, I am always looking for other examples that can be used as RCP case studies. If you have deployed a RCP application and you think it would make an interested case study, please send me an e-mail to ian at eclipse dot org.