What’s New and What’s Returning at This Year’s EclipseCon

Last year’s EclipseCon was a welcome return to form, being the first event to happen in-person after the pandemic. After two years of digital events, that was most welcome. On the other hand, there were plenty of new things happening and shakeups to the routine. 

This year, we can again look forward to some new additions as well as some returning favorites. Here’s a brief rundown of what’s back, what’s new, and what’s new again. 

What’s New: New Focus, New Topics, New Ideas

This year, the topic lineup has been pruned to focus on our core areas: 

• Automotive and mobility
• Open source best practices
• Programming languages and runtimes
• IoT and Edge
• Tools and IDEs
• Other cool stuff

We’re really putting a strong emphasis on the best practices track this year – it’s one area we think we can really stand out as an organization. 

To give the community as a whole a better idea of what’s going on at the Foundation, there will be a presentation from the Eclipse Foundation staff explaining some of the initiatives underway and how the open source landscape will evolve in the coming years. 

We’ll also have office hours with representatives from various Eclipse Foundation teams. They’ll be there to answer your questions, whether that’s about initiatives at the Foundation or about your particular project. For example, we’ll have our marketing team there if you’re looking for advice on how to promote your project more effectively. 

And as a little teaser, we’ll have something exciting coming up for committers. If you look at the program schedule on Wednesday, you’ll see the Committer Recognition Reception. Stay tuned for more details about that!

Community Day, Closing Session, Tutorials, and Kahoot Are Back

Of course, it wouldn’t be EclipseCon without Community Day. And honestly, in terms of getting the most bang for your buck, this is one of the best events you can attend. From my perspective, this is one of the most important parts of the convention. It’s where the community meets, where longtime attendees can touch base and discuss projects and goals, and where newcomers can dip their toes into the broader community and make crucial connections. 

The community day gives lots of place to our working group communities, and more specifically, our Eclipse SDV community will be there, and our Jakarta and Adoptium Working Groups are partnering with iJug to have a full day with two parallel tracks of talks featuring community members. 

We also received a lot of feedback last year about the closing session. Specifically, about the absence of it. So, no worries, we heard you loud and clear: it’s coming back this year. 

Kahoot is also coming back on Wednesday evening. For the uninitiated, it’s online trivia with drinks available, which is always fun. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that tutorials are back. These will be three-hour sessions on Tuesday morning covering a variety of topics, from supply chain security best practices to building your own vehicle application, to name a few. The tutorials will feature experts from relevant projects and working groups walking you through the steps of how to tackle a particular development challenge. Spaces are limited, however, so I’d encourage you to have a look at the schedule and sign up for a slot if you haven’t yet. 

Get in on the Cutting Edge of Open Source

Since its inception, the three themes of EclipseCon have been code, community, and collaboration. That’s really what drives the value of attending, whether you’re a longtime member of the community and regular attendee or new to both. One of the most common comments we get from developers is that they come back from EclipseCon full of energy and ideas for the year. 

It really is an opportunity to access the cutting edge of open source. If you attend an internal company training, you’ll learn about one topic and talk to a few experts. At EclipseCon, you’ll get ideas from and contact with dozens of topics and experts over the course of the week. That’s likely the best investment you can make in learning new technologies in that amount of time. 

Oh, and I should also mention that we’re back in Ludwigsburg, Germany, this year. So, if you want to attend the annual Pumpkin Festival in the city, don’t worry, you can go to both. 

See you there!