Eclipse Forum India 2008

This year's Eclipse Forum India is happening in Bangalore on 8-11 April. Its now open for registrations. There is a "very early bird" price, which closes Feb 15th (Yes, its tomorrow) In case you miss it, the "normal" early bird prices are open till March 14th.

I had mixed experience after attending last year's EFI. The workshop was definitely nice and few other sessions as well. But the rest of the sessions were simply not that great and not useful. I decided not to attend this year (Esp, I with just 3 sessions on Eclipse). May be I'll wait for the feedback of this year and decide for EFI 2009 :-)

Related:
Eclipse Forum India 2007 - First Impressions ...
Eclipse Forum India - Day 2
Eclipse Forum India - Day 3

Eclipse Demo Camp, Bangalore

Eclipse Demo Camp is coming to Bangalore on 10th Dec. Looking at other Demo Camps, Bangalore might be the one with highest number of registration (around 50) - and its still growing. In case you wish to attend, do register here.

Yup, I'm working on a presentation on GEF. Meet you all there.

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 !!!