• Share this article:

Farewell and thanks

Thursday, August 26, 2021 - 10:39 by Thabang Mashologu

This Friday I will be leaving my role as VP, Marketing and Corporate Development at the Eclipse Foundation. The Eclipse Foundation is one of the best organizations and communities I have ever encountered and I am so grateful to have been here for the past three and a half years. I am proud of everything we have accomplished as a team and in collaboration with our community.

Among the highlights of the past few years, we rebranded the Eclipse Foundation, relaunched as a European-based international organization, launched twelve working groups (with more exciting announcements in the pipeline), and helped grow membership by 25%. We also shared the successes and stories of our community members and increased the visibility of over 400 Eclipse Foundation projects in domains as varied as developer tools, enterprise Java, cloud, edge, IoT, automotive, open hardware, and more. I leave confident that the best is truly yet to come for the Eclipse Foundation and our stakeholders.

Thank you to everyone who helped me learn and grow at the Eclipse Foundation. Eclipse project committers and contributors are dedicated, focused, and pragmatic. They are also some of the brightest and kindest people in the software industry. These are good people who are committed to advancing strategic open source with a real-world impact and giving back so everyone can benefit. 

There’s no way I can thank everyone who has contributed to the success of the marketing team, but here are some of the folks that stand out: 

  • Mike Milinkovich and the entire executive team for your outstanding leadership, mentorship, and support.
  • All of the staff of the Eclipse Foundation for your professionalism, collegiality, and commitment to excellence in fulfilling our mission.
  • The best marketing and growth team in the open source industry. Thank you Clark Roundy, Hailley Seed, Hassan Jaber, Jacob Harris, Karen McNaughton, Mehrnaz Kokabi, Perri Lavergne, Shabnam Mayel, and Shanda Giacomoni. We’ve come so far together and I know you’ll continue to do amazing work.
  • The dedicated Eclipse project leads, committers, contributors, and member organizations in our global community. 
  • The board of directors for your valued oversight of our strategic direction.
  • Our agencies and creatives that helped realize our marketing vision and strategy: Jay Nichols, Schwartz PR, Aragona Agency, Excentric Agency, Titan Creative, ClearPath Strategies, and Redfish Graphics.

Thank you for making the Eclipse Foundation one of the world’s leading open source organizations. I am so excited about what the future holds for the foundation. I will be sharing an update on my next move in the coming days.