See you all at EclipseCon 2011

Just a short one to all my Eclipse compatriots out there. It looks like EclipseCon is a no go for me this year. Boo hoo. :( So for any beers I promised to buy (I especially feel indebted to the Dash build team) I'll have to give you a rain-check. And for those who offered, don't worry, I'll take you up on it next year. Apologies are also due to the event staff for my having to pull a planned talk, but I hope that gives someone else an opportunity to show something cool. I've never been to an Eclipse Con, and am not a huge convention gower in general, but this one looks to have a lot of really interesting new technology (not to mention politics!)

I'm really happy that so much effort is put into making materials available online for those of us who will be following things virtually. Speaking of, as we all look for ways to reduce our carbon output, and there are many people who find it too expensive or too far to travel, it would be great to begin thinking about supporting distance interaction with sessions. It could add a lot to the proceedings, though of course the organizers would have to think about how to do that without having a negative impact on overall revenue. For one thing, fees from any new virtual attendees would have to balance out any cannibalization of live attendees. Hmm, that didn't come out right somehow... "Brains..they eat brains.." Anyway, I think you know what I mean so hopefully this post won't be worrying to anyone planning on attending.

OK, that was a weird segue. So anyway... I'll be looking forward to viewing the online presentations for B3 and E4, two technologies that will play a critical role in the future of Eclipse. And I recommend to everyone to take a close look at two of my favorites, GEF3D and EEF. Finally, if you haven't been exposed to XPand, XText and the rest of the Modeling TMF and M2T technologies, don't miss those presentations. We don't all fully appreciate it yet, but code generation and other model-driven approaches are going to be important -- I think core -- technologies in the future. If you've used them, you'll know what I mean, but if you haven't I think you'll be really impressed by the amount of thoughtfulness and creativity that has gone into them and excited by the possibilities they offer. For all things AMP related, I'll just have to make some more screencasts.

-Miles