[news.eclipse.eclipsecon] Re: talks based on commercial products

[Lee Anne <nospam_kowalskilee@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rafael,

I had been hoping that someone from the conference Program Committee 
would respond to you on this topic.

I would not conclude that talks involving commercial products are likely 
to have a "slim to none chance", simply because the product is a 
commercial one. Based on my own anecdotal experience from submitting 
talk proposals in the past--some of which had been turned down and 
others accepted--it helps if you can describe in the synopsis how your 
topic relates to something applicable to open source Eclipse users, even 
if they aren't using your product or involved in your product. For 
example, what would the "take away" be for those folks who attend your talk?

For example, at EclipseCon 2006, I did a joint talk with some people 
from Sybase and our long talk was "Lessons from the trenches" in using 
the Eclipse user assistance features. While the examples for the talk 
were taken from our experiences in our commerical products built on 
Eclipse, we strove to provide insights and solutions that the audience 
members could take and use in their own projects. That was the "take 
away" that we offered: when you encounter these situations in working 
with the Eclipse user assistance features, here are some methods that 
worked for us.

I do predict that if the topic is tightly focused on what the commercial 
product *is*, and the "take away" is "You'll hear about this great 
commercial product and the benefits it can bring you", then it has more 
chance to be accepted as a Short Talk. This is also based on my 
anecdotal experience and looking at the past EclipseCon web sites and 
the titles of the short talks. As well as the fact that there are 
usually many more slots for short talks than there are for long talks 
and tutorials--it's simply more competitive to get a tutorials or long 
talk slot.

Hope this helps,
Lee Anne



Rafael Chaves wrote:
> According to the selection guidelines for the EclipseCon 2008, even 
> though they are acceptable, talks around commercial Eclipse-based 
> products are in disadvantage:
>
> http://wiki.eclipse.org/EclipseCon_Selection_Guidelines
>
> I checked last year's conference web site, and could not find a single 
> tutorial or long talk that was not about an open-source project 
> (excluding sponsored talks). Should one take that for a proposed talk 
> that does not focus on an open-source project, the chances of being 
> accepted are slim to none?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rafael