Eclipse Forum India - First Impressions ...

Finally EFI is here. Here are some of my random thoughts:

• Totally around 200 people were present for the power workshops today. Around 700 expected for main conference
  
• I attended the one by Chris and Wassim (Eclipse Plugin Development). Total strength for this was little less than 100
• Chris had a excited + curious million $ expression when he was asked to light the lamp. I wish I had a camera to capture that Kodak moment :-)
• The people who attended were from various backgrounds. Only few haven't created a plugin before
• The session was just started and the slides were explaining what an extension point is, and there were questions about ant based build, buddy class loading, osgi services, etc...
• There were exceptions as well:
  
  Attendee: Does Eclipse use JFace?
  Chris : Yes.
  Attendee: Great!
  
  
• In India, only 19.26% people bring laptops to the conferences. Source: my survey ;-) But this time it was little different. Almost 50% people in the hall had brought their laptops. The workshop had some exercises and those who didn't have laptops, were simply reading the pamphlets for the 253rd time.
• During coffee breaks, there was a huge crowd around Chris and Wassim. I think the only way to move the crowd out of them was to bring Shilpa Shetty to the stage
  
• I didn't attend the other sessions. Few guys were shuffling between all the sessions. They said the other sessions were equally good.

Notes to the organizers:

• The session started late by 30 mins. Please try to stick to the time
• If the attendees need to bring laptops, please inform it earlier
• Please arrange some sort of network or pre-distribute the necessary artifacts. We had to pass on a USB thumb drive for this
• Whoever decided that the "bag" was a good one, please, please change your mind !!!