Eclipse Case Studies: More Help for the EclipseCon Program Committee

The EclipseCon Program Committee will be hard at work over the holidays.   They have until January 9 to review 430+ submissions and select about 150 talks for the final program.  Given the success of my recommendations for the Early Submissions, I thought why not give them a helping hand.

My vote goes to having lots of case studies at EclipseCon.  I enjoy hearing how people use Eclipse for building cool applications.  Therefore, here are the case studies I found in the EclipseCon submission system:

Creating Dynamic Enterprise Applications with Eclipse RCP – Cerner Healthcare is using RCP to build their next generation healthcare software. What is one of the hottest IT topics in the US:  Healthcare and a major player is using Eclipse RCP.

Case Study: SRM 2.0 – A next generation shared resource management system built on OSGi and Spring DM – St Jude Hospital has create a lab management system using OSGi and Spring DM. Looks like they migrated from JavaEE to the new OSGi architecture. I need to see this presentation!!

Modeling the World – If you want to move an oil rig, then model it first – Modeling the movement of oil rigs at Marintek

My Unmanned System is Eclipse Powered – unmanned surveillance systems for things like border security.

OneBench Reloaded – Pushing the (OSGI) Modularity Story in an Enterprise-wide Rich Client Stack – JPMorgan is a long time user of Eclipse RCP.  OneBench is a great case study on the power of RCP and I’d love to hear the update.

Use Xtext to Automate PBX Stress Testing – An interesting use of XText; DSLs and XText have a huge amount of interest.

Eclipse Modeling at Deutsche Boerse AG – More XText goodness, this time at the German Stock Exchange.

Practitioner Report: Migrating a large modeling environment from UML/XML to GMF/Xtext – Okay, another XText case study. A German billing center for pharmacies migrations to GMF/Xtext.

SDOL an Exclipse-Based DSL – State of Montana using Eclipse to create a DSL. Did I mention DSL and Eclipse is hot?

Eclipse meets Systems Biology – Using Eclipse RCP technology to predict the effects of drugs and mutations.

Eclipse to the Rescue – This case study was one of the early bird selection, so we get to see some pretty cool RAP and RCP applications for doing emergency planning simulation.

CRM for Mobile Customers With Eclipse – Besides being a cool RCP app in a cool space, they are using EMF, BIRT, p2, and maybe b3. Looks interesting.

Elexis – Private Practice With Eclipse – RCP application for patient records.

My apologies if I have missed some case studies.  Please feel free to add them as a comment.

EclipseCon PC no need to thank me.  You have a tough job, since I know there are lots of other really interesting submissions but please make sure I get to see some of these case studies.

Building a Marketplace Client

The next step for Eclipse Marketplace (MP) is bringing MP direct to the Eclipse user desktop.  We want to build a MP client that will be distributed in all of the Helios EPP packages.   Instead of navigating to a separate web site, the Eclipse user will have an integrated user experience to discover Eclipse solutions.

We have already started a discussion about the MP client requirements.   Please feel free to add your thoughts to the discussion.

We want to have the MP client built in time for Helios.  To make this happen, the Eclipse Foundation has a budget to fund the development work.  Therefore, we are now asking interested parties to submit proposals for creating the MP client.

Some details about what we would like to see in the proposals:

1. The requirements for the MP client will be documented in this bug.  The final list of requirements will be determined with the developer/organization building the MP client and the Eclipse Foundation.  Each proposal should describe the approach the developer/organization will take to fulfilling these requirements.

2. The intention is for the MP client to become a component of the EPP project.  All the code developed will be open sourced and the developers building the code will be expected to follow the Eclipse development guidelines.

3. Each proposal should describe the experiences the developer/organization has with building Eclipse solutions that would be relevant to a MP client.

4.  The MP client needs to be finished in time for Helios.  Therefore, a feature complete beta needs to be available by March 19 (Helios M6).

5. The developer/organization will be expected to support the MP client through Helios SR1, SR2 and the 2011 release train.  Support will include bug fixes, testing and release engineering for the new releases.

6. Each proposal should include the cost for the work.

7.  Proposals need to be submitted by January 15, 17:00ET.  Send your proposal to me at (ian dot skerrett at eclipse dot org).   We will make our selection by January 29.

Feel free to contact me or leave a comment if you have any questions.  We are on a very agressive timeline but I am very excited about this next step for Marketplace.

My Picks for the EclipseCon Early Bird Sessions

Last night was the deadline to have your EclipseCon session proposal considered by the Program Committee (PC) for one of the 5 early bird selections.  The good news is the PC now has 131 sessions to consider, the bad news is they have to make the selection by December 14th.  Luckily, I am not on the PC but I thought it would be fun to give them my recommendations for the talks:

1. Xtext meets e4: Developing an editor for the e4 workbench model – There is a lot of interest in e4 and Xtext, showing how you can use XText with e4 is an example of the future of Eclipse.
2. Modular Architecture from Top to Bottom – OSGi, Equinox, EclipseRT are hot topics but education on how to create proper architecture is key.  Both speakers know their stuff on this topic.
3. Groovy for Java Developers – Groovy is one of the cool new languages for developers.
4. Eclipse to the Rescue – I have seen Austin speak before.  He presents a very compelling case study of using RAP, RCP and Equinox.
5. Eclipse Modeling at Deutsche Boerse AG – We need more case studies at EclipseCon and this is another good story of using Eclipse modeling technology to solve real world problems.
6. Use XText to Automate PBX Stress Testing – Gustavo is a super smart guy and is doing some real world stuff.  This looks like a really compelling case study.
7. It’s a Dynamic World – Bringing Animations to SWT – e4 and SWT need to have animation support to be compelling for modern UIs.  This looks like an interesting solution.

Some comments about my selections:

• If I didn’t select your talk please don’t be offended.  Remember I am not on the PC and frankly my opinion might just be the kiss of death for the talks I mentioned.
• For the alert reader, I did indeed select 7 talks instead of the 5 the PC need to select by Dec. 14.  Once again proving that I am happy to not be on the PC and making very tough decisions.
• I could have easily selected another 7 talks.  Once again I am confident EclipseCon is going to have another great program.

The real deadline for submissions is December 18, so now is the time to get your proposal written and submitted.  Also, don’t forget that the early registration deadline for EclipseCon is December 31.

A Successful Open Source Fundraising Campaign?

Chris Aniszczyk has written how we have been doing more to solicit financial donations from the community.   In particular, we’ve added the Donate Now buttons to our download pages; which happen to be our high traffic pages.  Chris raises a good question on how far we should go with our ‘pan handling’ and I encourage everyone to provide feedback.

However, I am also interested in what is considered to be a successful open source fundraising campaign?  How much money should we be able to raise; from how many people?  Wikipedia’s multi-million annual campaign is at the extreme end.  I also noticed the GNOME community raised $25,000 this past year, up from $6400 the previous year.  Therefore, I thought it might be useful to share our results  since mid-July.

• Over a period of July 17 – Nov. 30 we have raised US$9916 from 601 individuals.
• We typically get on average 3 donations per day and the average donation is $21-$24.
• The donations are pre-predominately from Europeans and North Americans

What are we doing to accomplish these results?

• We have a Friends of Eclipse program that people can join for $35.  ‘Friends’ get direct access to the Foundation download servers which in practice gives them 24hr jump on a new release.  The Friends program is an annual commitment, so we actively ask for renewals.
• In July, we added the Donate Now buttons to the download pages.   As Chris describes they are also being added in other places on the site.  The first iteration of the Donate Now buttons were $2, $10, $20.  After 4 weeks, we changed the $2 to $5.  After the change, the average donation went from $8 to the current $21-$24,  number of donors dropped considerably but the overall revenue raised only increase slightly
• The closest thing we have done to a ‘marketing campaign’ for donations was before the Galileo release encouraging people to become Friends to get early access.   Overall though we are pretty modest on promoting the fundraising; so far no banner ads or pop-ups. 

Some questions I have:

• We quote in US$.  Does it make a difference to allow the donor to quote in their local currency?
• Wikipedia seems to do an annual campaign.  Are campaigns that last for 1-2 months the key for getting more donors or do you have a constant appeal for donors.
• How important are the benefits of the ‘Friends’ program.  For instance, if we added a t-shirt but raised the price to $50 would we net more money?  What other benefits have organizations offered.
• Are there ‘magic’ words to use in the appeal that will attract more donors?

There you have it?  I am interested in knowing what other groups have experienced or done.  What are the best practices for open source fundraising.  I certainly don’t claim we are a great model but I am hoping that by sharing our experiences we can get better.

Oh btw, Eclipse is a great community, lots of dedicated, hard working individuals, producing awesome, fantastic open source software.  I’d like to thank everyone that has already donated to make Eclipse an even better place.  It would be great to have even more people donating money back to the community.  Please DONATE NOW.

Eclipse Marketplace is Now Live

I am very pleased to announce that Eclipse Marketplace is now live.  Thanks to everyone that provided feedback as we rolled out Marketplace.   A big thanks to Nathan Gervias who has done a great job making Marketplace a reality.  The results are fantastic.

When we first started the project we set out the following goals:

• Dramatically increase the usability of through improved navigation and graphic design.
• Make it easier for solution providers to manage their product entries.
• Provide better linkage between EPIC site and the vendors’ update sites.
• Host EPIC on a new content management system.
• Offer benefits to members of the Eclipse Foundation

Marketplace goes a long way to meeting these goals.  Besides being hosted on a modern CMS (Drupal) some of the key features include the following:

- We have introduced the concept of an individual Favorite list.   This is to allow users to keep track of the plugins/product/solutions they want to follow.  We also create a composite p2 repo for each favorite list, so it helps users find the relevant update sites.

- In the era of crowd-sourcing, we wanted to find a way to show what are the more popular solutions and allow people to share their favorite lists.   Therefore,  we have a created  Top Favorite lists and enabled the ability tp explore other people favorite lists.  User can also share the url to their favorite list, ex. here is mine.

- Search is also dramatically improved.  Now, i you are a long-time EPIC user you might say ‘the bar was low’  .  Marketplace uses Apache Solr for search and filtering.   It is now a lot easier to refine your search criteria based on license type, product maturity and category.

- One thing that always bugged me about EPIC is that plugins could only be in one category.   Now, plugins can be in multiple categories and you use tags to navigate between categories.  In the future we plan to add user defined tagging and a tag cloud.

- Users  can now use Eclipse Bugzilla accounts to login to Marketplace.  No one needs yet another username/password to remember, so you can now reuse your existing Bugzilla account.

We plan to continue to add new features to Marketplac e in 2010.  Let us know what you think and what you would like to see added.

EclipseCon Early Bird Session Selection

We are all driven by deadlines.  Each year the large majority of the EclipseCon session proposals are submitted the last two days before the deadline.   However, having session proposals come in earlier give the program committee and the entire community more time to review and comment on the proposals.

To encourage earlier submissions, we have created a new deadline, called the early bird deadline, to encourage people to submit proposals by December 10.  The incentive is that the program committee will select 5 talks from the proposals submitted by December 10th.    So instead of being 1 proposal out of 300-400 (usually the number we get ech year) , you will be 1 out of 56  (# at time of writing this blog).   To sweeten the deal, we will make sure the 5 speakers are properly dressed at EclipseCon in Eclipse shirts.   No time like now (or this weekend) to actually get that session proposal written.

btw, there is another deadline looming; December 31 is the deadline for early registration.  Save the $300, save youself the grief of registering on New Years Eve, just take the 5 minutes and register now. 

Eclipse Community Awards 2010 Edition

Nominations are now open for the Eclipse Community Awards.  Each year at EclipseCon we put the spotlight on a select group of individuals, products and projects that represent the best of the Eclipse community.   Each year, we have some great and well deserving winners.

This year we are making a few changes to the award categories, introducing some new ones, retiring and combining some of the existing ones.  The new categories are for eclipse.org projects.  In the past we did not recognize specific Eclipse projects but now we are.  We now have two Eclipse project awards:

1. Most Open Project recognizing the eclipse.org project that best represent the spirit of an open, transparent and diverse project community.    We all want eclipse projects to be open, transparent and diverse but which ones are doing a great job?
2. Most Innovative New Feature/Project recognizing a feature or proejct that has been released in the last 12 months.  I like to call this the ‘Shiney New Toy Award’.  Eclipse has lots of great new stuff but what has caught the attention of the community?

Both awards will be selected by a vote in the community.  Nominations will be open until January 29 and voting will start February 1.

The Individual Awards are:  Top Contributor, Top Committer and Top Newcomer Evangelist.  We have decided to drop the Top Ambassador since it often created confusion with the Top Contributor awards.  The Top Contributor award  is for individuals that are contributor to Eclipse as a volunteer, ie not being paid to do the work.  The first two awards are selected by a vote in the community.  Nominations are now open.

In the Technology Category, we have 4 awards: Best Open Source Developer Tool, Best Commercial Developer Tool, Best EclipseRT Application,  Best RCP Application.   All of these awards will be selected by a panel of judges.  Organizations are encouraged to nominate their application before January 29.

One aspect I enjoy about these awards is learning about new products, projects and applications in the Eclipse community.  I trust this year will be no different.  Please remember nominations close January 29 and the winners will be anounced at EclipseCon.  Details about the awards and nomination guidelines are available here.

Looking for a Good Writer

I am looking for someone to help write case studies about organizations using Eclipse and EclipseRT .  The ideal person would have: 1) background in technical writing,  2) knowledgeable about Eclipse and 3) extra bonus: experience writing case studies.  I expect this to be casual part-time work over the next 3-4 months, so it will be ideal for someone that has another job or contracts.

If you are interested or know someone that is interested send me an e-mail at ian at eclipse dot org.

[UPDATE: I've found a writer.  Thanks to everyone that express interest]

Using Eclipse for Simulations and Eclipse Day Wrap-up

Last week we held Eclipse Day events in New York, Austin and two in Toronto.  Unlike some previous Eclipse Days that were focused on a vertical, these events were focused on a technology, specifically Modeling and EclipseRT.

Most of the presentations have now been posted on the event web sites.  I enjoyed all the presentations but two I really enjoyed had a common theme:  Using Eclipse for Simulations. Ed MacKerrow from the Los Alamos Labs is doing some fascinating work on agent modeling of social sciences.  Things like modeling the opium trade in Afghanistan or orgizational behaviour of office politics.  Fascinating stuff and he is using Eclipse and in the future the Eclipse Agent Modeling Platform.

[Update: Miles Parker is the AMP project lead and has just posted some screencast about agent modeling.]

The second presentation was by Austin Riddle and Cole Markham from the Texas Center for Applied Technology.  These guys are using RAP, RCP, Equinox, GEF, ECF plus more to create training simulations for emergency response workers.   Very cool applications and a great use of EclipseRT technology.  Chris also wrote about their presentation.

I wonder if other people are doing simulations with Eclipse?  Please feel free to send me an e-mail or leave a comment.

Best part of my job and the Eclipse Days are meeting interesting people in the Eclipse community and seeing the awesome stuff they are doing with Eclipse.   Can’t wait to see what people will be showing at EclipseCon.

And the Winners Should Be?

Each year at EclipseCon we announce the winners of the Eclipse Community Awards.  The last 4 years we have recognized worthy individuals and products for their contribution to the Eclipse community.

This year I’d like to take a fresh look at the Eclipse awards and see if we can/should revamp the categories.   Are there other categories we should introduce to acknowledge participation in the community?

As a reminder the individual categories from last year were:

• Top Ambassador
• Top Committer
• Top Contributor
• Top Newcomer Evangelist

And the product/technology categories were:

• Best Developer Tool (Commercial and Open Source)
• Best RCP Application (Commercial and Open Source)
• Best Equinox Based Application (Commercial and Open Source)

Some ideas for new categories:

• Most open Eclipse project  – we would need to come up with a scoring metric
• Most popular Eclipse project  – select this based on voting
• Most popular commercial product – select based on voting  (the existing awards are selected by a judging panel)
• Most prolific blogger  – measured by posting on PlanetEclipse
• Most active committer/contributor – select based on number of bugzillas open/closed?

If we introduce new categories we might drop some of the existing ones, for instance Top Ambassador.

I am looking for ideas and feedback.   We can just go with what we did in the past but I think it is important to keep things fresh.