EclipseCon: Tuesday

The morning started a little late, having forgotten to actually turn on my alarm clock after carefully setting the wakeup time. Who would have thought I could shower, shave, and dress in just 10 minutes! In hindsight, it worked out okay to have gotten an extra hour of sleep; all these blogs take a long time to finish before bed. After sprinting down to the conference hall, I made it in time to Dan Lyon's Fake Steve Jobs talk.

He explained why he decided to do this blog. Reason one was boredom. He was tired of writing about IBM and EMC. Boring, he exclaimed! The second and most important reason was fear. The print media business is being disrupted by the internet. So what to do about it? He wrote his "Attack of the Blogs" article as part of his denial process. Finally he gave in and looked into getting involved in the internet half of his company. Rejection for being "boring and dumb" prompted him to try his hat a blogging. He was interested in Jonathan Swartz' blog and figured, hey, what if I pretended to be an important company executive on a blogging binge?

Why Steve Jobs though? Primarily because he was struck by the strangeness of Apple's culture, or rather the Cult of Apple. Their main religious gathering being Macworld was where his parodies started. He actually admires Steve as a fascinating personality with depth. The fact that Steve's also a weird, uptight narcissist makes for excellent parody fodder. After writing for a couple of weeks, he was shocked to find how much interest there was in his blog. Word of mouth on the internet spreads very quickly. Of course he was still anonymous at this point. Now how to make money from it?

The mystery of who he was helped generate interest. As a result, he was finally offered a column to write for Forbes.com. How ironic is that, given he was working for Forbes? There's a lesson here for big corporations around the world: remember to check under you nose. Finally he was outed, which cut back some of his audience, but also grew a new one.

So the question remains: Why does it work? Part of the reason is audience participation. Anyone can easily and quickly comment on the content to provide feedback in real time. The ideas someone suggests can easily affect the blog content for the next day. Anyone can even have a dialog via the blog c0mments. It let him combine his technology reporting skills with the ability to comment quickly, in a humorous way without the usual delays. He characterized his blogs as gross, silly, with occasional eruptions of seriousness. He can twist the story and get a message across in a way he can't via a serious story. I.e., he can tell the truths he can never tell otherwise. His various image-based parodies were just hilarious.

After that I attended the Artem's "GMF: Exemplary MDA" talk. The sound technicians showed up late to turn on the microphone so that was frustrating for poor Artem. He described the techniques used by GMF to build their generation frameworks. He pointed out that EMF's JET templates have grown quite complex which makes them difficult to read. They're also quite difficult to extend, unlike XPand which has more flexibility via its aspect oriented support. Support for merging generated code with an existing target is important for producing a flexible architecture that allow models to be changed and regenerated.


After that I had a chat with Yves of Soyatec about his technology for mapping Ecore models onto a forms-based UI model. It's cool and he'll likely write an EMFT project proposal for it soon. Then I had lunch at the Modeling table with a very friendly crowd. And after lunch I went to Kenn's talk Open Source Meets Open Specifications: Eclipse and the OMG.


I was overhead explaining that no, OMG doesn't stand for Oh My God that's complicated, and then my words were taken out of context and thrown back at me. Kenn outlined the kind of modeling technology available at Eclipse and related them to specifications from the OMG. Kenn's a good speaker. Here he is with Xavier and Yves of Soyatec.


After that I went to Eike Stepper's talk Connected Data Objects - The EMF Model Repository. He explained some of the basic aspects of EMF's resource framework, the underlying mechanism that CDO extends, and talked about some of the limitations of XML, e.g., most implementations will load the entire XML tree in its entirety and then keep in all in memory. There's also no direct transactional support nor fine grained locking. In contrast, a database as a backing store has interesting advantages. CDO provides a distributed shared model where the server logically maintains a huge object graph and each client can work with a direct view of a subset of that model. Then he showed in a demo how to tailor a generator model to generate CDO compatible implementation classes and how to configure the server communication and repository. His demo went on to show the technology in action. There were lots of questions which I think reflected a great deal of interest. Over all, it's very cool and he's a great speaker.


After that I had a nice chat with Sven and Wolfgang about oAW and about what Itemis is up to.


Time flies when you're having fun. Soon it was time for Chris and I to do our unrehearsed talk. It was a small audience, but I'm told it went well. Even Eugene and Wassim seemed to enjoy it, and they're tough customers to please! Eugene didn't even complain about all the colorful pictures in the slides. There were lots of questions from the audience and some good two way discussions.

What I thought was incredibly nice was that after the talk, Bruce from LeapFrog and Tamar from Cisco but formerly from LeapFrog came up and gave me a gift of chocolate along with a card to express their gratitude for all the help I provided them on the EMF newsgroup.


Of course the gift was very cool, but as I reread the comments in the card now, I'm so gratified to know that timely help does indeed have such a positive impact on EMF's users.

After that it was time for the reception. Free food and drinks! Donald was shocked to get an invite to a NetBeans party.


I kid you not. There were apparently some NetBeans fans with sad empty little lives who needed to live vicariously off the Eclipse crowd.

Not many people came to the "meet the board members" table, i.e., no one came, but it was a good place to hang out. There was a little PDE mini gathering of Brian and Chris.


It was also a staging area for modeling people anticipating the Mega Modeling Mania BoF. Here are Jean, Paul, Pierre, Bernd, and Ed (who if you look closely is where a no whining ribbon).


I had a little chat with Nicolaus who had attended Chris and my diversity talk. He's hoping to get involved in contributing code by helping provide patches to fix bugs and wanted some advice.


The Eclipse community has so many incredibly nice people. It's not only kind of heartwarming but also highly motivating for me to keep doing more of the same. I like playing the role of ambassador; though I'm not always so politically correct, as soon became apparent at the Mega Modeling Mania BoF. There were more than sixty people, so it took three photos to capture them all.




We had a lively discussion as I managed to stir simple differences of opinion into open hostility. Just kidding! It was indeed a lively discussion though. Such a diverse group. Some folks are definitely focused on the most abstract concepts that underly modeling while others care most about something that's grounded firmly in a pragmatic Java-based implementation. And even that characterization stirred up discussion about dynamic EMF models not really being Java-based because they aren't generated in Java; I tired to explain that of course it's still Java-based, using things like Java strings, integers, and so on, but sometimes it's best to leave well enough alone.

The issue of associations reared its head, a precursor of Thursday's OMG discussions I'm sure. I tried to express my perspective that typically associations are just pointers in an object oriented language and that if they are more than this, they becomes objects in their own right, with pointers to the objects being associated. But again, I find not everyone likes to think in the same concrete terms as I do. Oh well, I swore I wouldn't leave the room with any work items like yesterday's BoF and was successful in that. On the way to the next BoF, I got the person who was asking me to add new things to talk to the person asking me to remove existing things hoping they would cancel each other out...

The UML Tools BoF had quite nice turnout as well.


The folks form Anyware want to get involved to contribute some of the cool stuff from Topcased and Papyrus.


We need to talk some more tomorrow about how best to enable this new group of commiters without impacting the UML Tools project's release schedule.

I was pretty tired after this, but decided to head down to the bar with a few remaining modelers. When I got there, I spotted Andy and Nicolaus in the bar and Andy gave me a quick Glimmer demo. It's cool!


Mariot and Jonathan were nice enough to buy a round of drinks for a bunch of us.


We were all pretty tired, so soon we were off to bed, or in my case to write the second half of this very long blog. I sure hope someone is reading it! It's a lot of work but I'm sure will help me preserve my fond memories of the week's events.

EclipseCon: Monday Afternoon

After the board meeting was done, I spent time chatting with a few people, which of course is one of the great things about Eclipse. I also discovered that there are actually two Lynns! Sure she's a spiffy dresser (nice jacket Lynn!) and she seems all sweet and innocent, but she wears a green "trouble maker" ribbon for a reason:


She starts out all nice as she is here with Kevin McGuire.


But one wrong word from Kevin and it's Lynn's evil twin:


After that, no man is safe, not even poor Eike Stepper, who maneuvered quickly to protect himself from the uncalled-for assault.


Event poor Anthony Hunter wasn't safe.


She calmed down a bit and lulled David Williams into a false sense of security.


But then she let him have it too!


Then it was time for the Eclipse Jeopardy and the Community Awards. I sucked at Jeopardy and I think Bjorn unfairly favored Jeff to win. He said cheating was okay, but I didn't think that meant Bjorn was allowed to cheat.

I felt honored to win the Top Ambassador award! Chris was Top Committer. Remy Suen was the Top Contributor. And Eric Rizzo was the Most Prolific Newcomer Evangelist. I'll have to work on my diplomacy skills now!

I spotted James and Christian at the reception.


I didn't know Ralph and Pat were good friends!


I practiced by diplomatic skills on Markus, Rich, Achim and Bernd with great results:


I felt bad I missed the Modeling in the Enterprise BoF. Time flies when you have free foot and drinks. Quite a few people turned out for the Where are my Models BoF.


It took two pictures to capture them all.


Ed Willink and Rich described some of their current implementation details and we discussed general requirements. I'll need to go off and investigate a prototype implementation for something we can all share.

Tomorrow should be another exciting day. I look forward to it. Stay tuned.

EclipseCon: The Board Meeting

Breakfast for the board meeting started at 7:30, so no sleeping in today. I'm honored to have been reelected and I'll work hard to live up to expectations. Voter turn out for the election was still shockingly low so we have a long way to go to improve this situation...

The meeting started with Bjorn presenting some of the conference finance and attendee statistics. EclipseCon 2008 is definitely doing well.


There are so many board members, it's hard to fit them all around the table, which also makes taking their picture more difficult. But then, committers always love a challenge!


Note the sash I'm wearing? As part of enhancing board member visibility Bjorn has come up with this very visible sash that we can wear at the reception tomorrow. He asked me to come up and model it. I felt just like Miss America. I was so moved, I nearly started babbling; I felt the need to say "such as" repeatedly. Maybe it's something in the water...

Of course my sash modeling went over quite well. Whom better to model something, after all?


See Darin in the background, taking a picture of me taking a picture? I feel sad he wasn't reelected.


You can see others fawning over their new satiny new sash!


I'm also sad that add-in provider representative Howard Lewis will not longer be on the board. As Jeff said, we will miss his experience and his sage advice.

It's too bad there are board confidentiality rules to hold me back. Otherwise, I could blog about all the discussions in detail. Oh well, the published abridged minutes will have to suffice.

EclipseCon: The Day Before

I had to get up early to fly to San Francisco today. The girls needed a goodbye hug before I left.


Unlike Kenn's flight, our flight left on time and actually arrived early. There were many familiar faces on our flight, including Chris Recoskie Mike, Kimberley, Wassim, and of course Dave and Nick.

Wassim, Dave, Nick, and I went for a nice walk and had lunch at a Mexican restaurant.


After that I met with Francisco, Faisal, and Greg to discuss the kinds of things that make open source projects successful.


At the registration hall, Lynn twists arms and holds no punches in an effort to get Naci to commit to a webinar. Apparently she's got a list of people she's stalking, so I suggest if you spot her, you agree to whatever reasonable thing she requests before the scene turns ugly!


Lynn and I had a drink in the sunshine and then I went to my room to call home. Note that I could use the internet connection to phone for free, including a webcam feed. No need for expensive cell phones! I also answered a few newsgroups questions; those things never seem to take a day off!

Then it was off to Ian's blogger party, which just attracted more and more people until all the tables were used up. Free beer tends to do that!


As we headed up to Mike's board reception, I ran into Ed Willink whose picture is not yet on the modeling who's who page. As I threatened those who did not provide pictures: I will find you and photograph you!


Two steps further and there's Tatiana, Rich, and John!


The board reception was very sociable with yummy stacks and more free drinks. Here are Janet and Ralph.


A last check at the lobby bar turns up Dave Carlson and Kenn chatting.


It's been a long day!

Eclipse is Like Family

After all the dust settled from last week's touchy issues, and after reading David's blog, it struck me that Eclipse has gotten to be just like family to me. Family are the people who mean the most to me and as such are also the people who are most easily able to get under my skin. Have you ever noticed that your family often behaves as if they have a divine right to criticize anything and everything? Of course they do. They know what's best for you and often know you better than you know yourself.


Most telling of all is that while it's fine for me to criticize my family, it's not so fine for anyone else to criticize my family. When others do criticize, suddenly I get this feeling of hey, sure I might have been criticizing too, but this has gone too far. How dare you be so critical of these people who are so dear to me? What makes you think you're so perfect anyway? Have you ever heard of the principle "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"? I suggest you become perfect before you criticize anyone in my family!


I think Eclipse has gotten to be like family for many of us. I can't wait for next week's family reunion. Though I sure hope crazy Uncle Ingrate doesn't show his ugly face. It's going to be "Eclipse Awesomeness Week" since we're clearly far too awesome for a celebration of our collective awesomeness to be contained in just one day!

Perception is Reality

Yesterday made me sad for a number of different reasons, all of them are related to a common underlying theme that Bjorn called out just the other day in his interesting blog about Perception verses Reality. The underlying issue is that our perceptions of the world is what drives our mental model of reality. It's all fine that someone might point out to us that our perceptions are deceiving us and that reality doesn't actually conform to the mental model we've constructed, but it's very hard to change the way perceptions give rise to our mental model.

The first sad thing for me was to lose my patience and my temper. Many people note that I tend to be quite soft spoken---goodness knows I often need to repeat myself to be heard---so when I raise my voice in frustration, it's easily noticed. To protect the innocent, I'll leave out the names and the details. Suffice to say, I was on yet another mission to do good and to be helpful so I had a very hard time trying to cope with the fact that my attempt to arrive at a long term solution for a long standing problem was not perceived in a way that matched the intent. It wasn't even the case that the results of my actions didn't yield the solution I had intended. In fact, I believe the problem was solved in the best of all possible ways. So the fact that this optimal outcome did not result a positive reaction from the folks who have been coping with the problem for years just threw me for a loop. The feeling of "no good deed goes unpunished" overwhelmed me, and being human and all, I didn't react as well as I might have. After calming down, I realized that the perception was that the optimal solution might take a bit longer than a suboptimal one. I still could have cried.


The e4 debacle from yesterday deeply saddened me even more. Of course, like Mike, I think controversy can be both interesting and healthy, but my sense is that the e4 discussions really need a boost to get past the divisiveness of hurt feelings and the misunderstandings. I like to see our community thrive and I think the way e4 was handled was unfortunate and leaves behind a taint that needs to be healed. This was particularly upsetting to me for a number of reason, so let me elaborate on some of them.

I think it's important to point out that the Eclipse 4.0 plans were presented to the board at our face-to-face meeting in December. So all the board members were informed and there was a call to action. During that meeting, it became clear that previous efforts to recruit strategic developers committers for the platform had largely failed; that effort was initiated before I was on the board. It was interesting to realize that one reason for the failure was characterized as IBM showing up asking for people to work for them for free. My own efforts to recruit modelers seems to have been more successful and in light of the criticisms, it struck me that perhaps my efforts have been more successful because I've always focused directly on the grass roots, i.e., on interested people who have something specific they'd like to work on related to modeling. In other words, to put it very bluntly, I didn't show up at a board meeting with my beggar's hat out. Of course that's a gross mischaracterization for an organization like IBM which commits vast resources towards Eclipse, but, perception is reality and perception is a great filter.

Being the blunt outspoken type, during that meeting I pointed out that we needed to be very careful about perceptions with regard to Eclipse 4.0. Coming to the board with the premise "Here's a plan we think is a good one and we'd like you to step forward and help us" is not the same as coming to the board with the premise "Here are some cool things we think are important for the future of Eclipse and we'd like to work with you folks to gather additional ideas and then work as a group toward a common goal." See the subtle but fundamentally important difference that lies at the root of the problem?


My reasons for pointing all this background out are twofold. One is that the strategic developers were informed. And two, that folks were forewarned that managing the perceptions of how we work with the community on promoting this exciting new initiative is of fundamental import. I'm not sure the extent to which board members went back to discuss the Eclipse 4.0 proposals at their respective organizations but even if no communication took place, I think the way this proceeded from there represents yet another lapse. Sure Mike ought to have published the board meeting minutes by now---especially given the copious staffing at the EMO (just a little joke Mike)---but do we really expect the community at large to learn about this by avidly following the published board meeting minutes? No! Of course not. The developer community is entitled to expect that they will be approached directly.

Naturally the idea was that this would be presented to the community at EclipseCon where there's be ample opportunity to explain the big picture, everyone interested can attend, and spontaneous questions can be answered. Mcq dislikes travel with a passion so it is a really big deal for him personally that he is traveling for EclipseCon to present the e4 strawman proposal. In the interest of concreteness, he wanted to actually demonstrate something substantial by making available some real code rather than just spouting hot air about hypothetical vaporware. An incubator was needed to host that code and folks commiting to it needed commit rights. As a result, a very unfortunate announcement was posted to the community and hackles were raised. Many notes were posted and a number of blogs were written (one of which even disappeared in a blaze of Sith Lord sparks).

Again, to be really blunt, my reaction was to post some internal notes immediately. They were of the nature "What were you thinking when you wrote this?" The outcome was not only predictable but actually literally predicted. As Bjorn pointed out, it wasn't a case of people misreading the message, it was a case of miswriting the message. Well, it's too late. The damage is done and now it needs to be undone. Let's start by forgiving people their lack of attention to subtle but important details.


As part of repairing the damage, let me be 100% clear that the message was indeed miswritten and that people's negative reactions are largely justified. You might be surprised to know that I was personally upset to not be included in the long list of names. I believe modeling as the basis for data integration is fundamentally important to the evolution and success of Eclipse so I don't want it to be left out. Of course one more IBMer on the list of committers would only make the problem worse, but quite frankly that kind of makes me mad. I don't think it's right that we all be painted blue and then dismissed as if we as individuals don't represent diversity. It's just plain wrong and I won't put up with it. As an individual representing the modeling community I would indeed bring diversity to the picture. We need to get over this issue of coloring people. Sorry for ranting, but if you look closely, you'll see that even the blue coral has more than one color blue.


Well, I had a little chat with Boris later in the day, and he showed me the cool stuff they're doing with modeling in e4, so I was quickly placated. I expect to get involved for sure. I think I've developed a pathological attachment to all things Eclipse. But enough about me; back to the community. Actually, one more thing for the conspiricists who believe the world is controlled by an elite group that pulls all the strings behind the scenes; they might make devious suggestions that "d" is the 4th letter of the alphabet and that e4 is secret code for ed. Don't pay them any heed!

For those out in the community who, like me, feel disappointed that they've been left out. Worry not! The e4 project will not be a success without involvement from the community. Nice platitudes you might say? Let me put it a little differently then. The e4 project will be scrapped if there is insufficient participation from the community to staff the effort. And note that I didn't just say it will be scrapped if there is insufficient interest. I literally mean it will be scrapped if the community does not step forward as participants to carry a very significant fraction of the burden. Consider it a bright promise or an ugly threat as you see fit. Personally I see this as the best way to turn a new leaf at Eclipse. Let's get all get involved and let's focus on technical visions of utopia...