After hosting a lively DemoCamp in Toronto this past Wednesday, it’s time to prepare for the hometown event in Ottawa.  For those that have not signed up yet, we’re meeting Tuesday, November 24 at 7:00 pm.  Join fellow Eclipsers at Pub 101, 101 York St. (York & Dalhousie) for a steady stream of beverages, compliments of the Eclipse Foundation.  To register, just add your name to the DemoCamp wiki or send me a message.

There will be a demo on EclipseRT by Jeff McAffer and one on OpenSocial Gadgets in Eclipse by Boris Bokoski.  Also, we can still add 2 to 3 more demos if you have something cool to present.

If any added incentive is needed, at least 3 participants from the Eclipse Mommitters team - Kevin Barnes, Kenn Hussey and Jeff McAffer - will be in attendance and you can check out the spectacular progress of their moustache-growing for charity.  Spoiler alert: By some weird synergy, they all seem to have selected “trucker” style.  Photo ops are sure to abound.

The Eclipse Foundation along with several member companies are offering a new training series this fall. Based on feedback received from the community, the 4 courses being taught are Developing with Rich Client Platform (RCP), Advanced RCP, Equinox & OSGi and Modeling. We also received several requests for online classes, so for this series there are 8 virtual sessions in addition to 31 in-person classes. Classes take place October 19 to December 4, 2009. If you register at least 3 weeks in advance, you’ll get a 10% early bird discount. Past attendees have given the classes great reviews so I recommend signing up if you’re in the market for some training. You can check out the schedule, course outlines and registration info at http://www.eclipse.org/community/training/classes.php. Please, no spitballs in class. Breaking out spontaneously in High School Musical-esque dance numbers however, will be encouraged.

Thanks very much to our trainers AvantSoft (Eclipse University), EclipseSource, Gerhardt Informatics, Industrial TSI, itemis, Obeo, The RCP Company, Soyatec and Weigle Wilczek for organizing classes and for offering special discounted pricing for this Eclipse series!

Eclipse held an e4 Feedback Contest for several weeks in August, asking the community to write reviews of the early alpha release of e4. You can see the submissions on the reviews page. We didn’t get many entries in the contest, but on the up side, this means we could give everyone who participated an Eclipse shirt! Congratulations to: Kaniska Mandal Jin Mingjian Aurelien Pupier Axel Rauschmayer Rencana Tarigan Oleg Tikhonov Lars Vogel

Even though the contest is closed, it’s not too late to let the e4 team know what you think of the 0.9 release. Keep those blog reviews coming!

After much deliberation, the winners of the Galileo Blogathon have been chosen. We received a whopping 116 entries in 11 different languages, so picking the finalists was a tough job.

Our supreme winner, writer of the best review, is Ian Bull! Ian did a series of blog posts listing his picks for the top ten Galileo features. Congratulations Ian - you win a conference pass to your choice of Eclipse Summit Europe 2009 or EclipseCon 2010! Kudos also to our 3 top review winners: Zviki Cohen Ekke Gentz Mateusz Miracki Eclipse jackets will be on their way to you!

Thanks to everybody that entered the blogathon! Don’t forget that it’s not too late to earn your own Eclipse swag. we’re currently holding an e4 Feedback Contest. Write a review of the recent e4 0.9 release and you will be entered to win an Eclipse shirt. Reviews must be received to e4-reviews@eclipse.org by August 31, 2009.

The e4 team is coming together to present 2 webinars on August 18 and August 26.  Version 0.9 was just released at the end of July so what better way to show off the committers’ hard work?  We want to get your feedback on e4, so the webinars are a quick and easy place for you to get an overview of the release and then tell us what you think live, by chat.

Back by popular demand (and by “back”, I actually mean “despite a lack of”), Wayne and I (also known as Lil Wayner and Bunny G) have created a new video to promote the e4 webinars.  Does it have homemade costumes and props, you ask?  Yes, it does!  Have you taken any acting lessons since the last video?  No, we haven’t!  Did Lynn have to teach Wayne how to properly pronounce “holla”? Yes, she did!  Intrigued?

E4 Part I - August 18, 2009
11:00 am EDT - 12:30 pm EDT
Topics: Introduction to e4, Application Services, Modeled User Interface (UI), CSS, XML Windowing Toolkit (XML)

E4 Part II - August 26, 2009
11:00 am EDT - 12:30 pm EDT
Topics: Introduction, Flexible Resources, Compatibility Layer, Rich AJAX Platform (RAP), Toolkit Model

To attend, send an email to webinar-e4@eclipse.org and you’ll be registered for both sessions.  Abstracts and more information on the webinars are available from eclipse.org.

While you’re thinking about e4, it might be a good time to join the e4 feedback contest!

Eclipse is hosting a virtual conference on June 26 called Galileo In Action.  Basically, 5 hours of webinar goodness.  You only have to register once for all the sessions and you can check in throughout the day for the demos you’re interested in.

We have a nifty web page with all the details on sessions and registering at http://www.eclipse.org/galileo/galileoinaction.php.  Wayne and I have also produced a video, aptly titled Galileo In Action!, which gives an entertaining description of what the virtual conference is all about.  And when I say entertaining, I mean it made our moms laugh.  Produced by Wayne, directed by Wayne, edited by Wayne and starring Wayne as your favourite superhero, Galileo.

Galileo In Action Schedule:

• 10:00 am EST - What is Galileo and Why do I Love it?
  Presented by Doug Schaefer (C/C++ Development Tooling) and Brian Fitzpatrick (Data Tools Platform)
• 11:00 am EST - Frameworks Showcase
  Presented by Scott Lewis (Eclipse Communication Framework) and Pascal Rapicault (p2)
• 12:00 pm EST - Runtime Showcase
  Presented by Tom Watson (Equinox) and Doug Clarke (EclipseLink)
• 01:00 pm EST - Tools Showcase
  Presented by Andreas Buchen (SAP) and Roy Ganor & Michael Spector (PHP Development Tools)
• 02:00 pm EST - Galileo In Action
  Presented by Jason Weathersby (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) and Mik Kersten (Mylyn)

To attend, register through GoToMeeting.

The Eclipse DemoCamp in Ottawa is booked for Thursday, June 18 at the Heart & Crown Preston Street. I predict that this DemoCamp will be even better than our previous ones because:

1. Jeff McAffer from EclipseSource is co-organizing with me so now we’ve got beauty and brains at work to come up with some fresh ideas for the event. (Jeff, I’m just kidding of course. You bring more to the table than just your beauty.)
2. The Heart & Crown has reserved the “Snug Pub” room for us, which has its own private bar. Expressed as an equation: dedicated bar service = steady supply of beers = successful DemoCamp.

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Expressed graphically:

I invite everybody to come out and join us to network, celebrate the Galileo release and see some cool Eclipse technology. Please add your name to the DemoCamp wiki if you’d like to present a demo or if you just want to join the party.

Another event that will be of interest to Ottawans is the 1st Annual Spring Ottawa Geek BBQ hosted by Idealien Studios & Startup Ottawa on Sunday, May 17. The goal of the event is to bring together geeks from all walks of life including freelancers, twitterers, social mediaists and entrepreneurs, and expose them to the spring sunshine for some social interaction. Be there and be square!

With EclipseCon coming up next week, Denis, Nathan and I thought it would be the perfect time to do some in-person testing of the Eclipse website. We’re looking for Eclipse newbies or people that don’t use eclipse.org very often to sit with us for 15 minutes and answer some questions.

Sounds easy?  It gets better.  Not only can you serve the entire Eclipse community by helping us improve our site, but we’ll also enter you in a draw for Eclipse swag.  Although rumoured to be merely mythical at software conferences, shirts in women’s sizes will be available.

We’ll be hanging out in the registration area of EclipseCon Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon.  If you’re a keener, you can pre-register for a 15-minute slot by emailing user.testing@eclipse.org with your name and preferred time between 1:30 pm and 4:45 pm. I will also be recruiting people in the halls, so feel free to find me when you have some spare time.

Denis notes that pre-registration is strongly advised based on recruiting techniques I used at last year’s EclipseCon.  (David made a full recovery.)

David Williams receives gentle encouragement from Lynn at EclipseCon 2008