Tonight I was asked what, for me, was the highlight of EclipseCon 2008.
The keynotes were good… great even. Finally meeting Eric Rizzo, one of the most prolific contributors on eclipse.newcomer, face-to-face was great. I attended many sessions and enjoyed them all (though I have to admit a certain amount of guilt for “live-blogging” during the sessions; i.e. typing when I should have been listening). I learned a lot. Stalking Frank Gerhardt was fun.
I enjoyed meeting all the people in the Eclipse community and learning about their experience with Eclipse. I managed to get a few people interested in collaborating on some articles for Eclipse Corner, and found that vastly more than a few people are interested in helping out with the Eclipse Examples project. I even managed to squeeze in lunch with on old friend, Peter, with whom I played Rugby in high school.
If I had to pick one thing that was the highlight of the show, it’d be watching Pascal Rapicault talk about p2. p2 is an interesting topic and I learned a lot. Pascal is obviously passionate about the work that’s been done and the care that the p2 developers are taking to make sure that the introduction of p2 with Ganymede is as smooth as possible for all involved. However, what I learned pales in comparison to the sheer enjoyment of watching Pascal present. I mean this in a purely complimentary way: he’s a compelling and charismatic speaker. Don’t worry Pascal, it’s not a man-crush or anything…
