1. Overall. How would you rate your experience of attending EclipseCon 2006?

Excellent	Very Satisfied	Satisfied	Disappointed	Very disappointed
Did not attend

Satisfaction

104,"1"
170,"2"
53,"3"
5,"4"
6,"DID_NOT_ATTEND"

2. The Best. What did you like best about EclipseCon 2006?

EclipseCon 2007

Liked_Best

27,""
1,"* Joel's key note \"software in person\"
* WLan everywhere"
1,"* Poster presentations - diagrams helped get across complex info/detail
* Demos"
1,"* The hands-on tutorials where working code was used.
* The many Birds of a Feather gatherings."
1,"- Greg Stein's keynote was the highlight of the conference for me.
- The hotel was outstanding."
1,"- Nearby (Santa Clara)
- Jazz Demo"
1,"1. Plenty of excellent food!
2. Very helpful stuff."
1,"1. Seeing everyone, talking to everyone.
2. Flawless wireless everywhere."
1,"A great focal point of the community. Gathers many interesting people."
1,"All of Eclipse in one place. I could get a sense of a project from a session without reading and tracking it on the web which would have been otherwise very time consuming. "
1,"All presos on jump drive.
Connectivity. "
1,"Almost everything!... diversity of sessions, wireless access, food!, online availability of presentations, conference bags - EclipseCon'06 was one of the best conferences I have been to."
1,"As an exhibitor, I have to answer that the best
thing was being able to talk to interested people"
1,"Availability of WLAN access"
1,"BIRT Tutorial"
1,"BIRT sessions"
1,"Being able to network with people who know what is going on. This is especially important for me as we are on the bleeding edge of RCP applications with touch screen form factors and thin radio network connections."
1,"Being exposed to what people are working on. The BoF talks. The technology pavilion. "
1,"Bofs"
1,"Booths & Food"
1,"Broad focus on a lot of things.
The developer/\"nerd\" focus - very glad that companies did not get into marketing their "
1,"Chance to meet and work in person with people that I normally have to work with over email."
1,"Chat with Ward Cunningham at the hotel bar ..."
1,"Community and Collaboration of so many developers"
1,"Compressed and filtered inforamtion about new developments in Eclipse. "
1,"Content!
Advanced EMF"
1,"Demos and the 45 min presentations"
1,"Diverse set of attendees and broad range of tutorials. Still reasonably small size of conference made it possible to meet and hold in-depth conversations with other attendees. Lunch provided was a big convenience!"
1,"Diversity and variety of sessions. The Hyatt was nice, as well."
1,"EMF Tutorials
Breadth of coverage of all things Eclipse"
1,"Eclipse Community Project Spot Light (PLENARY)"
1,"Eclipse PHP IDE session"
1,"Eclipse Text Editor Tutorial"
1,"Eclipse board delivering presentations. Oportunity for networking."
1,"Eclipse positioning and marketing talks. Receptions were good for networking."
1,"Excellent wireless support, great tutorials on RCP."
1,"Food
Wireless Access"
1,"From a logistics perspective the wireless was superb and the provision of some power supplies a useful surprise. I enjoyed the diversity of topics from deep technical to business. "
1,"GEF presentation"
1,"GMF presentation"
1,"Generally, getting exposure to a wide range of things about eclipse development/ open source / software development.
Specifically, I really enjoyed the panel discussion about companies starting to use eclipse for RPC development, and hearing what they were going through. It would have been nice if it was longer, maybe a BOF?"
1,"Getting to meet other developers and members of the community face to face."
1,"Giving my panel on RCP development in the Enterprise"
1,"Good keynotes. Great BOF time."
1,"Good overview of many topics"
1,"Great community, a chance to see what all people are doing."
1,"Great to meet up with people."
1,"Great tutorials"
1,"Had a good combination of entry level topics, as well as panels to handle advanced topics."
1,"Hands-on tutorials and book shop with great specials"
1,"Hard to pick...I like the tutorials best as they help me out a lot in getting started in implementing my own solution using Eclipse. The demo sessions were also good."
1,"Hard to point out anything in particular, but the Jazz BOF was excellent, Asterix session as well, a good mix of deep technical and overview sessions, good BOFs in general. Keynotes where interesting and good exhibition."
1,"Hearing about the cool things happening around the Eclipse foundation"
1,"I appreciated the solid technical content from top-notch presenters."
1,"I can have a chance to talk to different people around the world using Eclipse for developement and share our experience.
Food is great too!!!"
1,"I did like the 45 minutes session."
1,"I don't mean to be biased here, but I thought the BEA Tutorial was the best thing I attended. That, and the \"10 Things I Hate About Eclipse\". "
1,"I enjoyed attending the various BoFs."
1,"I enjoyed meeting the GMF, EMF and Platform/UI teams. The lunches were very decent, much better than SD/West. The BOF sessions at night were also good. I'm a night person, so the 9:30 to 11:00 was a nice thing to keep occupied at night.
As a note to the last question: I believe Santa Clara is a great location, though I would consider attending somewhere else."
1,"I enjoyed the long talks, and I especially enjoyed the *technical* panel discussions. I've attended panel discussions at EclipseCons past, but they were very non-techincal in nature (how to make money with open source, etc.) Getting the chance to shout out questions and participate in a discussion with a panel full of technical experts was fun and interesting."
1,"I enjoyed visiting with the width and breadth of the Eclipse community and learning how other companies and individuals were using Eclipse in creative and unexpected ways. "
1,"I especially enjoyed the hands-on tutorials. It was useful to be able to work through what I was looking at, rather than just trying to absorb an abstract talk."
1,"I got to see a lot of inspiring presentation of what other people and companies are doing, giving me some great idea for what to do with our environment. It was also a boost to see what Eclipse can do and what it can be."
1,"I like best that EclipseCon is a developer centric conference with many possibilities to talk to core developers of many eclipse projects.
The location was great and so was the catering."
1,"I like everything except the catering. However, it was better EclipseCon 2005."
1,"I like the overviews of the new technologies in eclipse. For example, the presentation that showed off the new controls and ways to use them in the swt ui."
1,"I liked the convenient wireless and all keynote speakers. "
1,"I liked the key note by Joel Spolsky, the wireless internet connection and the the topic based tables at lunch."
1,"I liked the overall organization of the daily events. It was very easy to schedule my time to go to each long discussion and short talk."
1,"I liked the seminars."
1,"I liked the short talks, posters and poster talks. In other words, lots of content so you could pick and choose the things you were interested in."
1,"I only attended keynotes. But I can say that everything was VERY well organized and thought out."
1,"I only went to the monday tutorials. The tutorial on TPTP Profiling (monday morning) was really good."
1,"I really enjoyed the NASA class, and the pannels. The pannel discussions really highlighted what's going on in \"the community\" at large.
GREAT JOB GUYS! It felt as smooth as a conference sponsored by a \"company\" yet Eclipse is anything but a company."
1,"I think tutorials were pretty good as well as long talks. Arrangement on a whole were pretty good"
1,"I thought the subject on the tables at lunch was very good. It was an easy way to get together with other persons with interests in a particular subject. Maybe something similar over drinks at the end of the day would be good too.
The other thing was the tutorials. I went to 2 of them, EMF & BIRT. In both cases the presenters did a great job in covering the subject."
1,"I was able to ask questions of the CDT contributors and dash right back to work to try out their suggestions."
1,"I've seen GMF community )))"
1,"Informative presentations and dicussions + a nice and healthy enviornment."
1,"Insight presentations focussing on technical details rather than sales presentations."
1,"Interacting with peers and attending tech talks (and giving them :-)) The \"short\" tech talks were a *great* way for me to grab a quick \"focused\" no-fluff-all-stuff overview of many topics."
1,"Interacting with the Eclipse users and committers in adhoc settings and in response to tutorials, talks and keynotes."
1,"Interaction with the other people. Keynote speakers"
1,"It is hard to pick a \"the best\". The overall experience was extremely satisfying. High thumbs up for the format, food and informal atmosphere."
1,"It was an opportunity to focus on big ideas instead of the daily get-it-done-now stuff."
1,"It was very well organized"
1,"It was well organized, and there were clear directions to each session. The choice of speakers was great (in all formats - keynote, long, short, tutorials, ...), and the audio was set to perfect levels.
I loved the wireless network access, and the fact that it didn't fail at all."
1,"It's a smallish, collegial conference of peers -- while offering talks by real tech gurus"
1,"Jazz BOF"
1,"Joel Spoelsky's Keynote"
1,"Joel Spolsky!"
1,"Joel Spolsky's keynote -- hilarious"
1,"Joel Spolsky's keynote
Wireless access"
1,"Joel Spolsky's talk"
1,"Joel on Software"
1,"Joel on Software in Person"
1,"Joel's keynote. ;)
Actually, everything was very well organized and made the conference very professional. I never attended a conference like this before."
1,"Joel's talk."
1,"Joels Keynote :-)"
1,"Joels keynote was great.
The closing session in the theater was interesting as well, especially the stats Mike provided."
1,"Keynote speakers"
1,"Keynotes"
1,"Keynotes by Joel"
1,"Keynotes by Spolsky, Stein, Cunningham, Nielsen"
1,"Learned more than I expected to, especially in biz track talks."
1,"Location."
2,"Long talks and keynotes"
1,"Long talks, Joel's keynote, the Santa Clara convention center, and the wireless access."
1,"Lots of great topics, Eclipse-specific, techie."
1,"Lots of possibilities to get in touch with people, and the very well-designed, dynamic, informational website."
1,"Lots of press coverage."
1,"Lots of technical information was available and a wide range of subjects were covered. "
1,"Lunch and dinner...Joking.
Keynotes were the best, because I was not so core developer, so keynotes were so interesting for me."
1,"Making contacts with Eclipse developers & users. Some very good \"in the trenches, this is how you do it\" talks."
1,"Many technical talks were excelent. "
1,"Meet people"
1,"Meeting all the other eclipse developers."
1,"Meeting committers, users, people."
1,"Meeting in-person with so many. Oh, and the fact that the wireless connection worked!"
1,"Meeting members of of the community.
Technical talks and short talks."
1,"Meeting other committers."
1,"Meeting other eclipse developers and getting many questions answered. It was also very useful to see the direction eclipse is heading towards."
1,"Meeting people and talking to them one-on-one"
1,"Meeting people and talking with them, learning and sharing experiences. I think this year's talks were not as good as the other two years."
1,"Meeting people from all of the Eclipse community."
1,"Meeting people that were interested in what I am doing,"
1,"Meeting people with real expertise."
1,"Meeting some of the other committers face-to-face."
1,"Meeting the people working on the projects, attending the BOF sessions. Some of the technical sessions."
1,"Meeting with the JDT Team"
1,"Monday courses were excellent. Short talks and keynote speakers were also very good."
1,"N/A"
1,"Navigator"
1,"Networking with other Eclipse enthusiasts. I also liked hearing the stories from the platform team."
1,"Networking with others in the community. The BoFs are always great for learning more about new technologies or finding new applications for old. It's a great way to get excited about the platform again every year."
1,"Opportunity for discussions"
1,"Opportunity to interact with others. "
1,"Overall a well-managed show. Good balanced format and variety. Short talk idea is real good. I also liked the BOF categories during Lunch."
1,"Overall atmosphere. High energy and a lot of excitement. "
1,"Overviews of technological directions the community is taking in evolving the platform."
1,"Panel discussions, all keynotes"
1,"Presentations"
1,"Presenters seemed to know their subject matter."
1,"Quality content; access to speakers;overall was well organized;"
1,"RCP tutorial "
2,"Relaxed atmosphere, independent, lots of smart people!"
1,"See the people ya work with all year round on the phone!"
1,"Seeing so many people interested in eclipse :)
Selected topics covered both, junior and intermediate users."
1,"Seeing some Eclipse community friends. I also learned more about the TPTP and BIRT that I did not know."
1,"Sessions"
1,"Short Talks"
1,"Short talks - a lot of exciting topics that won't get full session due to immaturity/scope/lack of time/whatever."
1,"Short talks where well done, however, I believe tracks should have been a larger consideration in scheduling."
2,"Short talks."
1,"Short/long talks."
1,"Social aspects -- The foundation folks were very friendly and inviting"
1,"Some of the long talks."
1,"Some of the session enlighten me about other aspects of eclipse that I was not aware of. I was able to ask very detailed questions to some of the presentors and get either an answer or be pointed to someone that knew."
1,"Some of the talks were very interesting and relevant to the projects I'm involved in."
1,"Some session and couple of key-note speakers talk."
1,"Summaries of most recent eclipse developments and how people are using them."
1,"Talks in lots of different areas that our company may use--RCP vs IDE deployment, graphics development with SWT/JFace, plugin development and deployment, BIRT, and tutorials."
1,"Talks regarding Eclipse directions, strategies, best practices, philosophies, new management initiatives, statistical reviews. These are often hard to understand from the written documentation."
1,"Talks stayed technical/relevant. Joel's keynote."
1,"Technical Sessions, Food and Drink Coupons!"
1,"Technical quality of the sessions -- not marketing hype."
1,"Technical sessions and the Chocolate fountain :-)"
1,"The 45 minute presentations were great. I loved getting a high level overview of all of the technoligies and then having the opportunity to delve deeper with speakers offline."
1,"The BIRT presentation"
1,"The BOF sessions were a good place to meet people."
1,"The CDT Extension Tutorial was excellent."
1,"The Community interaction"
1,"The Keynotes"
1,"The Long talks and meeting/talking with other contributors and committers."
1,"The RCP Tutorial."
1,"The ability to collaborate with colleagues."
1,"The ability to get a broad spectrum of Eclipse technology."
1,"The ability to learn from and network with other who have implemented the projects similar to those we are working on."
1,"The ability to network and talk with other eclipse developers."
1,"The approachable community."
1,"The best of all is Eclipse itself:) and it is great to have many of the contributors and committers around. All of the talks and tutorials are very useful and educative. All people are very kind and foods are great:) "
1,"The birds of a feather sessions, the lunch discussions, and Joel's keynote."
1,"The breadth of material being presented. It was good to see how much work was being done on sub-projects, etc..."
1,"The broad range of topics available (and the cushy Theatre seating)."
1,"The chance to meet a lot of the people working on Eclipse and working with Eclipse every day. There were also some very interesting sessions. The most interesting weren't always the ones I would have guesssed ahead of time."
1,"The chance to see/hear about new ideas, new developements. The chance to meet and exchange with other developers."
1,"The chocolate fountains ;-)"
1,"The choice - as there was so much going on I could choose something that interested me from most sessions."
1,"The community spirit of the event. The contents were also of very high quality."
1,"The content was very good. Lots of good talks."
1,"The diversity"
1,"The diversity and distribution of talks was very good. At any given time there was something of interest to me being discussed, without a great deal of overlap so I rarely missed one talk I wanted to see while attending another."
1,"The diversity of the ecosystem that was represented at the conference."
1,"The enthusiasm of the plug-in architecture and demonstration of its viability. The sense of community as a very concerned group (note I went to PyCon last year, same week, in DC and that was a very excited, caring community too but was not as coherent with its focus)."
1,"The fact that it's really a community driven event. Not dominated by a single company (i.e. mine)."
1,"The food was great. I liked all the keynote speakers as well. "
1,"The format of the short talks, got a lot out in about 9 mins."
1,"The hands-on sessions"
1,"The hands-on tutorials went very well"
1,"The hype and the confidence it gave me that Eclipse is just great and will continue to be great.
The topic signs on the lunch tables were brilliant."
1,"The informal discussions with committers were very, very valuable."
1,"The key-notes sessions and the overall organization."
1,"The keynote speakers."
1,"The keynote speeches and the tutorials."
1,"The keynote speeches every morning and afternoon."
1,"The keynote talks were good - better than the long talks (except that incredible talk on Contributing to Eclipse Thursday at 2:15!) Nice to have all the slides on the flash drive."
1,"The keynotes (except the Apache guy). The exhibits were also great...and I liked the technical sessions I attended. It was a fine conference all around!"
1,"The keynotes were fantastic!"
1,"The keynotes were great"
1,"The keynotes were particularly useful, epsecially the comparison between Eclipse and Apache. However, the most useful part of the conference was talk on the annotation processing handling within Eclipse which was detailed and useful immediately."
1,"The location becuase its close to where I live."
1,"The long talk on ProbeKit was very impressive"
1,"The long talks - and meeting other people working with and on Eclipse."
1,"The long talks about RCP"
1,"The long talks to learn more about a specific topic."
1,"The members meeting afternoon"
1,"The monday tutorial about Plugins.
On also speechs about Ajax, Lazlo, Visual Studio vs Eclipse..."
1,"The opportunities for informal interaction with committers and contributors from the entire Eclipse universe at BOFs, receptions, lunches, and in the exhibit hall."
1,"The panel discussions were very informative and usually pretty lively/informative."
1,"The people ;-) Meeting the SWT/UI/JDT (you name it) teams was great..."
1,"The people, very interesting to get faces and \"real-life\" personalities to put to names that you only see in bugzilla and newsgroups."
1,"The people. Meeting and having conversations with people that defining, building and using Eclipse. Getting overview of all the various activities that are going on with Eclipse"
1,"The people. Presentations are an excuse to assemble people."
1,"The people. By far the best part of the conference was the many opportunities to meet interesting people in the Eclipse community."
1,"The presentations on performance and testing tools that I attended were extremely interesting and well done. I came away with a real drive to load them on and profile some of our existing applications and get our testers up to speed on some of the GUI recording and playback technology. The presenters were very thorough and made the material relevant and interesting."
1,"The presentations that were put online afterwards."
1,"The presentations were good."
1,"The presentations were very relevant to my situation and very educational."
1,"The presentations, food and BoF sessions which would extend the day for those of us who just cannot get enough..."
1,"The program was pretty diversified."
1,"The quality and variety of the content was excellent"
1,"The quality of all presenters and the organization of the whole event. It is allways nice to attend an event where all the basics are running smoothly."
1,"The quality of most presentions and the good organization."
1,"The relaxed atmosphere and the audience. Very OOPSLA like!"
1,"The save trees using the USB key :-)
But also the information provided during the long talks the speakers attitude open to collaboration"
1,"The scheduling of all the talks and the caliber of speakers."
1,"The seminar about bottum up marketing."
1,"The sense of community is what astounded me. I had a great time talking with several members of IBM, The Eclipse Foundation - even the gal from Microsoft."
1,"The sheer volume of information available. It was amazing!"
1,"The short talks were a great idea. It was a good way to get exposure to lots of projects that I would not have heard of otherwise."
1,"The short talks were very interesting!"
1,"The skill and level of thought of the presenters."
1,"The talks and tutorial about the TPTP project."
1,"The talks were well organized and covered a wide variety of topics."
1,"The talks, mostly the ones that had demonstrations (Mylar and TPTP talks were fantastic)"
1,"The talks. I found it every educational."
1,"The technical sessions, though some of the keynotes were very entertaining."
1,"The technical sessions."
1,"The technology previews provided by the various
projects. For example the Jazz demo got a lot"
1,"The topics variety and the way the conference was managed"
1,"The tutorial \"Advanced Text Recipes\" was great! Joel Spolsky's keynote was very entertaining (a highlight of the conference), though not all that informative. The \"topic tables\" at lunch worked very nicely. Generally a very good conference with a nice variety of presentations in both format and content."
1,"The tutorial day. An exceptional day."
1,"The tutorial entitled \"Developing Commerical Quality Plug-ins\" (44) was extremely informative and worthwhile."
1,"The tutorial on EMF on Monday the 20th March."
1,"The tutorials and the long talks were the best.
Distributing the presentations and tutorial materials on a USB drive was excellent."
2,"The tutorials."
1,"The various talks. Parking was easy to find."
1,"The way speakers and attendees could arrange BOF sessions on the fly."
1,"The wealth of information and topic covered"
1,"The wi-fi connectivity."
1,"The wide range of participants"
1,"The wifi was awesome. The venue was great, but how about east-coast next year. The program was nice and varied, and the length of the various talks was about right. I loved the USB keys for the presentations. The key was only half full, so maybe other stuff could be put on the keys next year too."
1,"The wireless connectivity everywhere."
1,"The wireless service was great. The space to meet with people was excellent and I really enjoyed the keynote sessions."
1,"There were actually quite a lot of interesting and useful sessions."
1,"To be honest - Joel's keynote was most memorable, but I found EMF tutorials to be interesting as well."
1,"To get to know the people behind Eclipse in person,
to exchange opinions and experiences,"
1,"To meet all the 'famous' eclipse developers and talk to them in personal"
1,"Tutorial on debugger architecture.
Keynote by Gamma and Wiegand."
10,"Tutorials"
1,"Tutorials on Monday. In my case the EMF track."
1,"Tutorials!"
1,"Uhm, hard to say! This conference (and last year's) were the best-run conferences I've ever been to (and I've attended tons)."
1,"Various long talks as well as the chance to chat with some many people from the Eclipse community."
1,"Vendor exhibits and keynotes (but not plenaries which I felt were a little undirected)"
1,"Very concentrated group focused on Eclipse."
1,"Very interesting keynots and plenary talks"
1,"Very well organized. Great access to information. Great planning. An open conference for open source people.
The speakers were great."
1,"Well organized conf., and high quality talks"
1,"Well organized event with lots of meaningful talks."
1,"What info there was on RCP. Availability of Eclipse people to talk to."
1,"Wireless"
1,"Wireless access was awesome! It really helped reinforce what I was learning during the sessions."
1,"Wireless and power access through the hall and rooms."
1,"Wireless that worked."
1,"Working directly with the SWT guys to fix a bug that was hurting us in mouse move events"
1,"good osgi tutorial."
1,"good wireless connections, good power access
(maybe that's relative to previous year :)
Roomy facilities, room to sit and talk with collegues, etc. "
1,"long talk and the various topics covered in the conference. I like the introduction of short talk this year. It's a good way to learn quick, or get start."
1,"one on one conversations in the hallways"
1,"presentations, speakers, tutorials"
1,"short talks about the same topics as longer talks the next day. really limits the potential for going to a talk that is not interesting."
1,"short talks, the numerous demos, the near perfect wireless setup"
1,"short talks.
demo session."
1,"some of the long talks"
1,"the great variety of subjects discuted and the organisations has been a greath success. No wireless problem at all!"
1,"the lectures "
1,"the long talks and the refreshing keynotes/plenaries especially the stories along the eclipse way"
1,"the mixture of developer tracks and business tracks"
1,"the tutorial sessions"
1,"the tutorials and exhibits."
1,"weather"

3. Short Talks. EclipseCon 2006 had nine minute short talks. Did you like the short talk format?

Yes

(Note that we received unanimous feedback that there was not enough time to move between the short talks, so we're not even asking that question here :-)

Short_Talk

82,"Did_Not_Like"
242,"Like"

Given that long talks are 45 minutes and that the goal of a short talk is to provide a brief introduction to a subject rather than provide deep details, how many minutes should the short talks be? 5, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15?

Short_Talk_Length

32,""
55,"10"
42,"12"
1,"12-15"
126,"15"
1,"15 + 5 for questions"
1,"15 maybe 20"
6,"20"
4,"30"
3,"5"
1,"5 to 10"
6,"7"
1,"7 or 9"
60,"9"
1,"9 9 9 "
1,"9, 10,12, or 15"

Additionally, the EclipseCon 2006 short talks were scheduled horizontally: short talks were held in all the session rooms at the same time and were not simultaneous with any other activities. The other option is to schedule them vertically: in a single room all day long and in parallel with long talks, panels, demos, etc.

I prefer horizontal

I prefer vertical

Short_Talk_Format

237,"Horizontal"
85,"Vertical"

4. Parallel Sessions. EclipseCon 2006 had, at times, seven parallel activities (five talks, two demos, and an exhibit hall). Given that the conference is of finite length, having more parallel activities allows a greater variety of topics. Conversely, so many parallel activities pretty much eliminates any chance of seeing more than a few topics. Including the exhibit hall, approximately how many parallel activities should we have at EclipseCon 2007?

Fewer

Seven was
just right

Parallel

74,"Fewer"
235,"Just_Right"
22,"More"

How many?

Number_Of_Parallel

267,""
6,"10"
1,"10 or 11"
3,"3"
12,"4"
1,"4-5"
34,"5"
1,"5-6"
1,"5/6"
6,"6"
2,"7"
4,"8"
1,"8-9"
1,"9"
1,"Vary according to number of top-level projects (perhaps #projects * 0.75?)"

5. Format. EclipseCon 2004, 2005, and 2006 had a 1+3 conference format: one day of tutorials and three days of technical talks. Other options include more days of tutorials or running the tutorials in parallel with the technical talks. Of course there are pros and cons to each of these formats. For example:

A tutorials-in-parallel format is less expensive to run than a separate-tutorial-day format because each time we change the rooms from tutorials to technical talks we have to pay the AV technicians and staff to setup and tear down. Setup and tear down are expensive ($$$) overtime because they are done overnight.
Having a single tutorial day allows you to take a maximum of two tutorials (morning and afternoon). Two tutorial days allows a maximum of four tutorials. Tutorials in parallel would allow you to take up to six or more tutorials, but at the expense of not seeing as many technical talks - you would have to trade off tutorials versus talks.

So, considering all that, what format would you like to see for EclipseCon 2007?

1+3 (one tutorial day followed by three days of technical talks)

2+3 (two tutorial days followed by three of talks)

3 (three days of technical talks with parallel tutorials)

4 (four days of technical talks with parallel tutorials)

1+3+1 (one tutorial day, three talk days, then a final second tutorial day)

Format

129,"1+3"
41,"1+3+"
66,"2+3"
26,"3"
69,"4"

6. Longer. EclipseCon 2006 had sessions from 8:30am to 5pm. Another way to have a greater number of sessions would be to extend the conference into the evening. Should we extend the technical sessions another hour (to 6pm) and thus push the receptions and BOFs into the late evening and night?
Yes No

Later_Sessions

220,"No"
114,"Yes"

7. Exhibit Hall. EclipseCon 2006 closed the exhibit hall during keynotes (on the theory that everyone would be at the keynote anyway), and for a while in the afternoon (on the theory that people would be at technical sessions).
What creative hours/days should the exhibit hall be open so that you can get a chance to see everything and yet not punish the exhibitors by requiring them to be at their booths 24x7?

Exhibit_Hall_Hours

118,""
1,"0900-1800"
1,"10 - 2, 5 - 6"
1,"10-12; 1-5"
1,"10-12amm, 2-3pm, 5-8pm..."
1,"10:00a - 12:00pm 3:00pm - 6:00pm"
1,"10am to 6pm every day."
1,"11-14, 17-20"
1,"11:00 am - 14:15 pm and 17:00-18:00"
1,"11am - 2pm and 5 to 7."
1,"12 PM - 8 PM Monday - Thursday"
1,"1PM - 8PM"
1,"2 days"
1,"2 hours in the morning, 2 hours in the pm, 1 hour in the eve"
1,"2006 format was fine."
1,"2006 was fine"
1,"3-4 hrs. a day. I agree that they should be closed for keynotes/technical sessions."
1,"3-7pm"
1,"4 to 6 PM"
1,"6pm-9pm, the last 2 days"
1,"8-11 and 4-6"
1,"8-20"
1,"8h30-17h30"
1,"9:00AM - 11:00 AM, 1:00PM - 6:00PM"
1,"9am-2pm"
1,"?"
1,"Actually, I was surprised that the exhibit hall closed during the technical sessions. I would prefer the exhibit hall to be open all the time except for the morning keynotes."
1,"Allow designated time for Exhiibit hall, possibly in day 4 with no session in the evenings."
1,"As I rarely saw the exhibition hall closed (I was at the sessions/keynotes, as expected), I think the current srtup is fine."
1,"As a solo exhibitor, I loved the breaks so I could attend the keynotes and technical sessions. Breaks were not scheduled for lunch on Wednesday though, so I had to leave the booth unmanned while I ate."
1,"Ask the exhibitor what they want."
1,"At least display a schedule of when the exhibit hall will be available."
1,"Before Keynote: 7:30 to 8:30am
After Tech Sessions: 5:00 to6:00pm
On last day of conf, instead of nothing on last day "
1,"Being an exhibitor at eclipsecon2006 we realised that there was hardly no time to actually leave the booth during the two days when the exhibit was open. Basically we are already at a 24x7 scenario. Better to keep this and to have the exhibit hall open as much as possible. If someone wants to skip a keynote there is always something else useful to do (meaning visit the exhibit hall)."
1,"Believe current setup was fine."
1,"Closed during keynotes is a good thing. "
1,"Closed in the morning - open into late evening"
1,"Current hours are OK."
1,"Current hours were fine."
1,"Current schedule was good."
1,"Don't know."
1,"Dunno"
1,"During lunchh and between end-of-day and BOF sessions"
1,"During the short talks."
1,"Early morning hours -- 8.00 to 9.00 and in the late evenings (5.00 PM to 7.00 PM)(though this might burden the exhibitors)"
1,"EclipseCon 2006 exhibit hall closings were ok, if even more closings are needed, I would consider opening the hall after lunch."
1,"Evening exhibit hall hours would be nice."
1,"Evenings only."
1,"Excellent! Wireless connectivity was wonderful."
1,"Exhibit ball is closed on the third day. I expect it is opened till the last day."
1,"Exhibit hall closed very early and it would be good it is was open in the afternoons"
1,"Exhibit hall hours were fine, although it seemed to have closed for good sooner than was necessary."
1,"Exhibit hours could be shorter because traffic was generally light during sessions. Perhaps some hours around lunch and early evening would be enough."
1,"Fine as is"
1,"First, balance the number of exhibit hours per day. The first day this year was too long. Overall the organizers did a good job of driving traffic into the exhibit hall...please keep doing it."
1,"For 1/2 a day after the conference."
1,"For me just having them 5 to 6 is enough."
1,"From noon to 7 pm"
1,"Have some breaks during the day to visit the exhibit hall."
1,"Have the exhibit hall open ony from noon to 6 each day."
1,"Have them open from lunchtime until 6pm. That way, they're there for the majority of the slack time period (especially if short talks are there, which some people may opt out of). Mornings will tend to be taken up with talks."
1,"Having the hall open during receptions is the best way to get people in there. If any sessions are ongoing people will want to attend them."
1,"I believe it should be open in the afternoon so we could go there if there are no technical sessions we are interested on."
1,"I didn't try to attend any talks, so can't answer
this with any information to back it up."
1,"I don't get much out of the exhibit hall, so I don't really have an opinion here."
1,"I don't spend much time in the exhibit hall anyways..."
1,"I don't think it's necessary to have the exhibit hall open during keynotes. It would be nice to have some amount of coverage of the exhibit hall in the afternoons as I like to head there when I need a break from the sessions."
1,"I failed to read the LARGE signs out the front telling me the exhibition opening times. I made the incorrect assumption that the hall would be open after the conference for at least 2 days.
I would recommend making the hall open at least 5pm-8pm. I liked the sponsored receptions in the hall as that was a good incentive to get fed and wander around."
1,"I feel the current schedule is quite OK"
1,"I felt like I was able to cover the Exibit Hall in the current format."
1,"I had no problem with the Exhibit Hall schedule at EclipseCon 2006."
1,"I had no trouble see what I wanted in the exhibit hall. Current hours were fine."
1,"I had plenty of time to visit the exhibits. However, as the number of exhibits grows, then more hours will probably be required."
1,"I like the way it was done."
1,"I liked the 2006 format."
1,"I liked the existing format. Generally I visited the exhibit hall after attending talks, later in
the afternoon. That worked well for me."
1,"I liked the way it was run this time."
1,"I liked this year's model (and was an exhibitor)"
1,"I liked your schedule, I visited the exhibitors once, then really didn't return except for sweets."
1,"I never noticed the closed times, so it seemed to work fine for me."
1,"I prefer the exhibits hall to be open. But, I also understand that People in the exhibition hall woul dlike to see the Key presentations. My suggestion is that Audio and video feeds of the keynote presentations be present in the Exhibit Hall. At key visible vantage points. Or, that individual booths be allowed to close during sessions they would like to attend.
It is noce to allow those who would like to remain in the Hall to do so... Just let people know that the Hall may be somewhat shut down during key meetings."
1,"I think fine, and may have missed it this year, but seems in the past there was an \"exhibit hall evening\" for one evening. "
1,"I think having them open except during keynotes was perfect."
1,"I think it is fine to keep the current timings. Not all people are interested in all sessions, and it should be possible to squeeze in some time to stop by the booths."
1,"I think it might be opened anytime and the pass just for exhibit hall should be available."
1,"I think the 2006 hours were OK."
1,"I think the current hours are ok, but there should be more room left to check out the exhibits, possibly with extending the lunch break on one or more days."
1,"I think the current setup works well..."
1,"I think the evening sessions with mixed food and exhibits was great. "
1,"I think the exhibit hall hours were fine this year."
1,"I think the format was fine."
1,"I think the style this year was fine."
1,"I think the time was just right with the number of exihibtors you had. If you add more exibitors then you should have it open a bit more."
1,"I think the way it was done this year worked fine."
1,"I think the way you did it was fine. Having been an exhibitor at other conferences, I can appreciate the ability to let exhibitors attend keyontes and some tech sessions. "
1,"I think the way you did this time is the best compromise."
1,"I thought having the exhibit hall open earlier in the week would allow you to pick out talks you might want to see better."
1,"I thought having the halls open in the evenings worked well."
1,"I thought hosting some of the food/dessert receptions were a nice idea that attracted people to the exhibit hall."
1,"I thought it was OK as it was."
1,"I thought it was about right"
1,"I thought it was fine as-is"
1,"I thought it was fine the way it was. I got to see every vendor and didn't have to skip any sessions to do it."
1,"I thought it was fine."
1,"I thought the schedule was fine as it was."
1,"I thought the schedule was good as it was."
1,"I thought the times this year were fine."
1,"I thought there was plenty of time to see the exhibits and ask questions."
1,"I was OK with the schedule as it was for 2006."
1,"I was able to see everything of interest in the Exhibit Hall. I was, however, surprised at the number of exhibits -- it seemed rather small."
1,"I was happy with how it was."
1,"I was happy with the hours as they were. It was a bit difficult to guess when it would be open, though."
1,"I was happy with this year's mix. Must give exhibitors a chance to see some of the talks."
1,"I we went to the 1+3+1 schedule for tutorials, then Monday afternoon and Friday morning would be good additions. Allows for last minute setup and Friday afternoon teardown while still offering more available time for those not trying to cram in every possible tutorial."
1,"I would close the exhibit hall during the keynotes. I would keep it open during the afternoons, although attendance would be slower."
1,"I would like to have had the exhibit hall open on that last day."
1,"I would open the exhibit hall on teh last day"
1,"I would prefer to have the exhibits open in the evening from 6-10pm for the 4 days of the conference."
1,"I would've like to have visited the exhibit hall in the evenings after the sessions were over and possibly even after dinner. Having the hall open (and even demos) from 7-10pm would have been ideal for me."
1,"I'd say that you got it right."
1,"I'll think about it and put comments in eclipsezilla as I think of ideas. Definately close during plenary/keynote. Shorter hours is recommended....the Eclipse crowd (technical folks, developers) really aren't huge \"exhbit hall\" people (vs other conferences), s I would recommend limiting hours"
1,"I'm at the booth for 2 days, and I think the exhibit time during the conference is long enough:) If possible, the day before the conference might be a choice for exhibit, since people will register in the afternoon."
1,"IMHO, I think closing the Exhibit Hall was fine, since the focus should be on the technical/interactive portions of the conference and not on the sales side."
1,"IMO, it was handled well the way it was during the show."
1,"If the exhibits are open during meals, breaks and two receptions, that's more than enough. This is not a large exhibit area (yet!)."
1,"In 2006, the exhibit hall was only open 2 of the 3 tech talk days. I wish it had been open on the last day of the conference as well. But then again, maybe our sales VP was happy that it was not :-)"
1,"In afternoon, till dining time"
1,"It seemed fine to me."
1,"It was brilliant serving dessert and coffee after lunch in the exhibit hall. It's more important that the exhibit hall be open during reception hours and after lunch than during the technical talks."
1,"It was fine the way it was."
1,"It was fine they way you did it."
1,"It was fine."
1,"It was fine. I didn't have any trouble getting to the exhibit hall. I liked the reception in the exhibit hall."
1,"It was just right"
1,"It was perfect how it was."
1,"It worked fine as was."
1,"It worked well this year."
1,"It would have been great if the exhibit hall would have been open on Monday and Thursday of the show. The amount of hours in total was acceptable, but only being open on Tues. and Wed. was limiting. Perhaps spread the hours out over the course of the four days."
1,"It's ok. open after the technical sessions and let it open late in the evening"
1,"Just keep the existing arrangement."
1,"Keep exhibition hall open during breaks (coffe, lunch, dinner, ..."
1,"Keep it open during the entire day - 9:00 until 9:00 or something of that nature - I realize this may be an inconvenience to some exhibitors, but they don't need to man a booth if they feel it is too much time."
1,"Keep it open into the afternoon. The exhibit hall is great for filling in a gap in the techinical sessions. At the same time few people will show up early to go to the exhibit hall instead of the keynote."
1,"Keep the exhibit hall open 1/2 day on the last day of the conference."
1,"Liked 2006 format."
1,"Lunch time/ evening till 7-8pm?"
1,"Lunch, Afternoons and evenings only"
1,"Lunch, breakfast."
1,"Lunchtime. Breaks. Receptions in the evening."
1,"Maybe if the exhibit hall was open for an hour after the technical talks finished it would be easier to get round and see everything."
1,"Maybe it would be better to have the exhibit hall open for the afternoon and the evening."
1,"More evening time so people don't have to choose between talks and the exhibit hall. The times when the it was open and thier were no talks (right after lunch), it was almost too crowded to be useful."
1,"No opinion. It worked well, for me."
1,"No preference, 2006 schedule was fine."
1,"Not sure"
1,"Not sure on this one how to handle it any better."
1,"Not sure. Personally I only visit the exhibit hall when there are no speaker sessions available."
1,"Nothing"
1,"OK as it was."
1,"Open during technical sessions (less crowding).
Evening exhibitor party in the hall."
1,"Open earlier if possible, it is usually nicer to go over the booths when less crowded (as for example, while everyone is attending the keynotes :-)"
1,"Open early (8am) before sessions start"
1,"Open in the evening one night was nice."
1,"Open it early in the morning before keynotes and serve continental breakfast inside."
1,"Personally I would like more the idea of having a single day exclusively for exhibitors. If you make people choose, they will get always the option of seeing talks than going to exhibitors."
1,"Providing fixed exihibition slots (2 hrs morning and evening) will make the life of exihibitors easy."
1,"REserve more specific time and event to push people to the exhibit hall."
1,"Same hours"
1,"Schedule needs no adjustment"
1,"Schedule worked as it was as to the length (approx 2 days) but hall should not be shut down due to overlap with technical talks. Shutting down for keynotes worked well."
1,"Screw the exhibitors! 24/7! Even though the conference is only 4 days long, make'em stay for seven! ;)
Really, I was fine with the hours they had. "
1,"Second half of the day is good; it's better to concentrate on sessions in the morning."
1,"Seemed right this year"
1,"Start at lunch, end late. This means that the likely to be popular sessions can be put in the morning so both the exhibitors and norms can see them. This would also allow those attending sessions all day to view the exhibits after all the sessions had finished."
1,"The 2006 scheduling system worked well for me. If there were a way to put them in a more centralized location, so people walked through the booths on their way somewhere else (checkin or the bookstore for example), that might increase their exposure."
1,"The Exhibit Hall should be open less, making it something that delegates plan to visit, rather than something they do when there is nothing else that interests them.
The exhibit hall had room for more podiums, so perhaps it would be a good idea to allow regular delegates to sign-up (for free) to present their own demos. The demos that were set up this year were not in the program brochure and were tucked away in rooms that had no foot-traffic. Next year set up the demos in either the Exhibit Hall, or in a public place where there is foot-traffic and food/beverages."
1,"The Exhibit hours were wonderful. The reception within the exhibit hall was a fabulous way to do it. Perhaps hold two evenings like that even (could have done the Monday evening, for example)"
1,"The arrangement in EclipseCon 06 worked fine for me."
1,"The closure times were fine. Staying open later (into the evening) on the second exhibit day would be good.
For short sessions, it would be good if the times were synch'd across rooms, with a 2-3 minute gap in between - if you used the 200-series rooms in Santa Clara, it would be easier to move between rooms/sessions."
1,"The closure was fine. I was at the talks anyway, and the exhibitors should get some rest."
1,"The current format was fine"
1,"The current format was good, but not for good reasons. I'm an RCP guy and there were time slots that just didn't have anything very interesting to an RCP guy, which provided a natural time for me to visit the exhibit hall.
Next year, there should be explicit tracks, with an explicit time slot for each track to visit the exhibit hall. These time slots could be staggered so that the exhibit hall is never overwhelmed."
1,"The current hours were just fine."
1,"The current plan worked well."
1,"The exhibit hall hours at EclipseCon 2006 were just right."
1,"The format for 2006 seemed good."
1,"The hours worked for me. If you need more exhibit time, the exhibit hall could open during the afternoon technical sessions."
1,"The rationale for how this was done sounds fair. No further comments."
1,"The same as it was during this last CON."
1,"This year's arrangements worked well. I never found myself wanting to be in the exhibit hall when it was closed."
1,"Was allright as is."
1,"Was fine as it was scheduled"
1,"What you did was fine. There were plenty of \"holes\" and receptions in the schedule to visit the exhibit floor."
1,"Whatever time it is, you should have it as a designated time so that people all filter into the room. A lot of people probably didn't go just because there were other things going on."
1,"Yes. That would help."
1,"after the sessions close at 6pm"
1,"all day during the conference and we can drop in when we have time...."
1,"at least I visited the exhibit hall during lunch hours mostly, sometimes between sessions"
1,"before & during the keynote (I wasn't interested in all of them), lunch, and after 4:00"
1,"during session breaks and after lunch"
1,"earlier in the morning and after the talks end"
1,"evening 6pm-8pm, or on the tutorial days"
1,"exhibit halls should be open so when people have free time they can pop in. having arbitrary closed times is confusing. they just have to have a consistent start time and end time, and more people to take shifts (plus people more eager to share their exhibits)."
1,"fine as it was"
1,"fine the way it was. If anything exhibor hall could be limited to a day; it was pretty dead the second day."
1,"for a while after hours (keep closed during keynotes, open for a while after 5:30)"
1,"from 10-13 and from 15-18"
1,"have some time set aside just for visiting the exhibit hall. Maybe an extra hour after lunch just for the exhibit hall."
1,"it was good the way you did it"
1,"keep it running a little longer. I never went to it during sessions since I wanted to see sessions."
1,"keep same"
1,"late afternoon to about 8pm at night."
1,"lunch break, after the technical sessions (for this year this would have been: 11:00-14:00 and 17:00-20:00)"
1,"lunch time, exhibitinal dinner receptions are great."
1,"nc"
2,"no opinion"
1,"ok the way it was."
1,"open during lunch"
1,"opening it longer would be better for me. However if I was running a booth that would narrow down the time spent seeing other things."
1,"perhaps the breaks could be longer to allow us to do a break and go to the exhibit hall when exhibitors are present."
1,"the hours were good for me."
1,"this year's opening hours were ok"
1,"times were fine with me. "

8. OS Pavillion. For 2006, Business Objects sponsored ten open-source projects to attend and exhibit. Did you like having these projects in the exhibit hall?
Yes No I did not visit them in 2006

OS_Pavillion

8,"No"
118,"No_Visit"
204,"Yes"

9. Keynotes. EclipseCon 2006 had five keynotes and plenaries (Joel, John & Erich, Greg, Ward and Tod). Given that each keynote uses up five-to-seven technical session slots (depending on how many parallel sessions there are), how many keynotes should we aim to have in 2007? Three? Four? Five? Six?

Don't change anything. I'm happy with the number of format of the keynotes and plenaries

Keynotes

91,"Fewer"
1,"Joel's Keynote"
14,"More"
225,"No_change"

Reduce the number of keynotes and plenaries to

Reduced_Number_of_Keynotes

249,""
3,"0"
2,"1"
1,"1 per day"
1,"1/day"
5,"2"
50,"3"
1,"3 (1 per day)"
1,"3-4"
24,"4"
1,"Four"
1,"max. 3"
1,"one each day"
1,"three"

I want more keynotes and plenaries. (How many? )

Increased_Number_of_Keynotes

325,""
1,"1 per day"
1,"10"
2,"2"
1,"5"
4,"6"
1,"6+"
1,"6-7"
2,"7"
2,"8"
1,"Top 5 projects"

Are there any particular keynote speakers or keynote topics that you would really like to see at EclipseCon 2007?

Keynote_Speakers

222,""
1,"2006 was great, try to get SUN participate - challenging but worth the effort"
1,"A good consultant working with open source and commercial offerings ..."
1,"A repeast of what collaboration makes possible"
1,"Alan Kay"
1,"An overview of products developed with Eclipse, perhaps."
1,"Anything"
1,"Apache & Eclipse Status/Roadmap..."
1,"Apache Foundation Chairman again"
1,"Bill Gates"
1,"Bill Gates ;-)"
1,"Bill Gates or James Gosling"
1,"Bill Gates or Microsoft Perspective, more apache"
1,"Can you get Donald Norman?"
1,"Can't think of any in particular right now"
1,"Dave Thomas (Bedarra), Bruce Eckel (mindview), Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (Wirfs-Brock Assoc.)"
1,"Design Patterns in Eclipse by Erich"
1,"Eclipse development process overview/review"
1,"Eclipse for Embedded Systems; Scott Adams was at Embedded Systems last year (Joel was possibly funnier...)"
1,"Eclipse future : roadmap, project's stats, contributor, etc"
1,"Eclipse's Future, NetBeans and Eclipse."
1,"Elliotte Rusty Harold, Bill Venners, Bruce Eckel"
1,"Enterprise adoption of eclipse"
1,"Eric Raymond, Danny Hillis"
1,"Erich"
2,"Erich Gamma"
1,"Erich Gamma and the stats we interesting. Others: Scott Ambler, Rod Johnson, Kent Beck."
1,"Erik Sinc"
1,"Famous sportsperson or something on teamwork"
1,"From Eclipse committers and industry leaders"
1,"Future of Eclipse (short and long term)"
1,"GMF"
1,"Give me Steve Jobs and I will have your baby."
1,"Greg"
1,"How about Jonathan Schwarz from Sun?"
1,"How about a research/academic topic for some cool new Eclipse-based tool or product?"
1,"How the community can push Eclipse further into the Mainstream"
1,"How to make money on Eclipse"
1,"I find Paul Graham's essays interesting it might be interesting to have him as a keynote speaker"
1,"I really liked previous keynotes by Grady Booch and the AOP one from a previous EclipseCON. I found the Keynotes this year kind of dry. I think there should be more about what is new a cutting edge in the world of sofware development, as well as theoretical stuff of the future as well."
1,"I would enjoy seeing Joel again. Someone contriversial is always interesting"
1,"I'd like to see keynotes from the projects"
1,"Industry experience with Eclipse."
1,"James Gosling"
1,"Java1.6, 1.7, JDT/LDT, SVG/XForms in eclipse, Swing interop"
1,"Jean-Michel Lemieux, Douglas Pollock"
1,"Jeff McAffer and eclipse architects"
4,"Joel"
4,"Joel Spolsky"
1,"Joel Spolsky + business around "
1,"Joel Spolsky was great."
1,"Joel Spolsky? :D Seriously though - if there was someone from Sun/NetBeans side ... that would be interesting"
1,"Joel again would be interesting, and repeat John and Eric"
1,"Joel and the Apache Guy"
1,"Joel was a good warm up, but John and Eric's talk was too high on foil ware and Ward's likewise. Todd was fun to listen to. For 2007 invite Paul Graham for warm up, have one of the NASA guys give a keynote, and if you invited Borland tell them to drop the sales pitch"
1,"Joel was excellent"
1,"Joel's keynote"
1,"Joel, John & Erich"
1,"Joel, John &bErich"
1,"John & Eric"
1,"John & Erich, Joel"
1,"Just make sure they are entertaining and interesting"
1,"Kent Beck, Howard Lewis Ship"
1,"Keynote speaker from SUN"
1,"Larry Wall, Scott Adams, Eric Raymond, Paul Graham, not another Borland CEO"
1,"Lee Nackman"
1,"Less talks about the Eclipse community - more entertaining/thought provoking talks like the first one (Joel's). "
1,"Linus Torvalds, James Gosling (hahaha)"
1,"Linus Torvalds, Joel (again)"
1,"Linus Torvales"
1,"Martin Fowler"
1,"Mobility, Enterprise, Web/Ajax"
1,"More Joel!"
1,"More like this year. They were great."
1,"NA"
1,"No"
1,"None"
1,"None in particular"
1,"Not at the moment."
1,"Overview of changes in upcoming version of Eclipse"
1,"Per Kroll: Eclipse Process Framework"
1,"Ratio of \"Done for Love\" to \"Done for Money\""
1,"Richard Stallman"
1,"Robert Cringely"
1,"Scott Adams, Dean Kamen, someone who is anti-open source"
1,"Simon Birch again. Josh Bloch from Google. The Borland JBuilder guru (I cant recall his name off the top of my head) who went to MS - now that would be interesting!"
1,"Someone from Sun talking about Java & Eclipse"
1,"Someone from the games industry, since they seem to be using eclipse. Email me for some suggestions."
1,"State, Impact and future of RCP"
1,"Stories along the Eclipse Way"
1,"The best keynotes are usually by outsiders from completely unrelated domains that solve a problem analagous to one being faced by the Eclipse community (such as opennes, scalability, community building, etc) Insiders or executives from member companies just make it feel like an Eclipse love-in and don't provide much insight."
1,"The keynotes all carried their weight and should be invited back. Let's get Ray Ozzie and Bill Gates to give us their perspective."
1,"Tim O'Reilly"
1,"Tod Nielsen"
1,"Tod and Joel were great!"
1,"Tony Nadalin on Security and Eclipse"
1,"Topic: Starting an Open Source Community"
1,"University/Industry research projects based on Eclipse: e.g., Mylar"
1,"anyone except Richard Stallman :)"
1,"don't know"
1,"eclipse metrics"
1,"folks with a sense of humor in their presentations!"
1,"hmmm, this is an awfully small box for that big of a question :) "
1,"it would be interesting to hear Mark Wielaard (head of GNU Classpath)"
1,"joel was excellent"
1,"joel, greg"
1,"just one per day"
1,"mainstream businesses building their infrastructure or apps on eclipse"
1,"no"
1,"no specifics, good choices this year."
1,"none to be specific"
1,"not really"
1,"you did a good job this year..keep it up"

10. To Improve. What else should we do next year to improve your experience at EclipseCon 2007? (Be creative!)

EclipseCon in the future

Improve_Next_Year

97,""
1,"* Embedded track
* What's happening regionally around the world"
1,"* Wider range of talks (there were alot focused around visualisation this year)
* More getting to know the engineers sessions "
1,"*The tutorials I attended was not that good - no big diff compared to long talks.
*Some kind of roadmap discussion for the different projects "
1,"- Follow up with me. Send me an email a week before the conference, to remind me of the conference. It's just a nice thing, especially that I never got an email saying that I was registered, and was wondering if my badge was even ready for me (it was)
- I'm not 100% sure (forgive me if I'm wrong) but I think I saw the \"free RCP book\" sign when I registered, sometime in December. Only to find out that I was not getting the book because I was not on the first 200 people registering...doh"
1,"- I think the short talks should be scheduled to start at particular times so you can flip between rooms if desired.
- I think there should be more code camps."
1,"- If you only do one day of tutorials, don't hold them on the same day as the member meetings. I wanted to go to tutorials but could not because I was my company's rep in the member meetings.
- Consider offering two sessions of some classes, like tutorials, especially if you are going to run more than one day of tutorials."
1,"- Lounge Room for Attendees where they can meet and chat (open all day)
- Promote a real Eclipse Developer Contest 99 days before the show with a brief Winning Ceremony (with predefined categories)"
1,"- One keynote per day, always at the same time
- More information about regstration, opening hours, ... (we discovered by accident that it was possible to register on Sunday evening)"
1,"- The long talks are too long. Just get rid of the short talks and make *all* talks 20 minutes. More meat, less filler.
- Chocolate fountains in every hotel room."
1,"- keep up with including \"real world\" projects / experiences in the sessions."
1,"- more focus on server-side eclipse/osgi
- more focus on SOA"
1,"1) I'd like to see a \"welcome\" keynote.
2) I'd also really like a tutorial on \"the eclipse way\"."
1,"1. I was unable to attend tutorials because my company wouldn't cover the extra expense. Intermingling them would improve the odds.
2. Better coffee availability."
1,"1. Move deadline for presentation materials closer to the conference day (a month in advance seems quite uncomfortable. Provided they are not printed (which is good), week or two seems to be enough to write them to cd/flash.
2. Tutorials often (always?) need some pre-installed Eclipse with (a lot of) additional plug-ins - too huge to attach to eclipsezilla and error-prone to describe installation process. Errors with installs lead to lost time during tutorials. Would be really great if there's some means to avoid that (and to do it same way for all presenters) - i.e. server with \"just unzip me\" installs (either web or located at tutorial room), or hand-out CDs. "
1,"1. Nice to have repeats of few popular sessions (similar to JavaOne)
2. Nice to the lead committers on each of the (sub)projects during lunch time for the informal discussions"
1,"1. Strengthen the keynote messages to the audience, bearing in mind the nature/demographics of the audience.
2. Find a way to formally involve Sun, rather than the silliness that occured Monday. We all have enough to hope for and build for without streghtening agnst within the Java community. Other IDEs aren't the enemy, and certinaly don't damage Eclipse."
1,"
* Provide us with a list of all attendess"
1,"A social event. Most other conferences have an evening event, like a night at Great America (which was closed due to the season). I find those events a great opportunity to 'bond' with the people you meet at the conference."
1,"All day Demo's in parallel for all three days. Some with repeats. Duration about 30 minutes. But make sure these are Demo's and not too many slides"
1,"All day tutorials... ~6 hrs! 3.5 hrs is too short for hands on work + instruction/lecture.
Also, it would be nice if tutorials diverged from published tutorials. For example: I read the book and the tutorial was just a synopsis of the book - nothing new presented. This approach yields a boring and frankly useless tutorial for most."
1,"An online forum of a more extensive sort, where talks and seminars could be discussed, along with having the technical resources related to the talk easily available. For example, a session on, say, PTP could have a forum which links to all resources for download, including the speech notes, the tool itself etc, along woth a forum for asking questions that come up after the session and discussing with other atendees. This is largely for convenience, but also fosters community among those who find interest in the talk and it could be a way to grow the number of people involved in the project for the future."
1,"Another idea for short talks is to reduce the time to 3-5 minutes and have the presentations as an evening plenary. See SIGGRAPH web site for how this has been done successfully for the \"Web3D RoundUP\"."
1,"As for short talk, I think format is good though, an actual opportunity speakers to get feedback from their audience after the whole sort talk session is needed. For exmple, a table is ready for each speaker in reception.
And simultaneous interpreting or I gotta improve my English skill..."
1,"Avoid adhoc tutorials, this was probably the single most disappointing thing for me at EclipseCON this year. It was hard to keep up, and you don't leave the tutorial with anything tangible that you can reference later."
1,"BIrds of a feature needs improvement. It was too ad-hoc. Ideally, a company would sign up once at the start of the conference, and would be assigned a room and a time of their choosing."
1,"Be more careful in the selection process. Get rid of the short talks. They're not useful. Extend the demos to 45mins."
1,"Be more impressive about what is showed on tutorial.
It's very hard to make a choice and sometimes, description don't reflect what's on tutorial."
1,"Before scheduling the talks, it would be better if we estimate (approx. rating) the level each talk could create interest among the attendees based on the topic and the track it falls into. i.e. Figure out the hot topics and schedule them in vertical sesssion instead of parallel session. This will help attendees not to miss a second popular topic in the conference while attending the first hot topic incase if both were scheduled on the same parralel session. I could understand one topic might be intersting for one group but not for the other. But if we include this scheduling rule, atleast to an extent we can serve a majority of attendees with some good topics (probability is >0.5).
The other thing is there should be some way to provide all the updated presentations/tutorials/ s/w demo recorded video clips for all the sessions after the conference through download site unlike just providing materials for sessions with few missing and not updated before the conference. I appreciate your plan of providing them before conference. But at the same time, it would be great if you make sure that any updated and missing presentaions and especially recorded movie clips on demos are available for the attendees after the conference is completed. This will compensate the cons of parallel sessions to an extent."
1,"Besides my suggestion on exhibit hall hours, I have none."
1,"Better food and catering~!"
1,"Better lunch."
1,"Better preparations of tutorials (now they waste time)."
1,"Better quality technical sessions - quality in 2006 varied considerably. Some speakers were unprepared. More technical detail - look for actual code!"
1,"Better separation to business/marketing and technical talks.
Better demos."
1,"Better signage; conference-at-a-glance one-sheet handout."
1,"Bigger conference hall.
invite more exhibitors."
1,"Change all short talks to poster sessions.
Make posters available at all times (within reason)."
1,"Change hours to 9-6.
Keep the technical talks technical (no marketing crap)."
1,"Cheaper tutorials, more of them. "
1,"Conference Wiki for setting up and advertising BOF sessions and generally finding people with the same interests? Perhaps people were using an established newsgroup to do this? I'm very new to Eclipse. Also, was there really a jam session? If so, could we have advanced warning next time and a volunteer to lead a massed jazz improv session?"
1,"Continue to keep it developer and community focused (you are already doing a great job here). Business sponsors are important - allowing them space & time to market their brands in the exhibit hall (only) is great. How about a separate area for ad-hoc demos/soap-box talks/\"help ! how do I do this?\" kind of **informal** spots -- with white boards ? Kind of a birds-of-a-feather - but about \"anything\" eclipse-ian. Would allow folks to network well. The project-themed lunch table doesn't really work well."
1,"Create a directory of the partecipants. Given the WiFi connection, create a per-talk whiteboard for questions & suggestions.
Also, if you want, add an IM with rooms for increasing the networking capabilities."
1,"Designate a specific amount of time (10/15 minutes) for Q and A both for the talks and the keynote speakers at the end of the talks. You can often pick up some good information you wouldn�t other wise know of unless someone asked a question. There seemed to be very little to no time to ask questions at the end of a give talk unless you stayed after to ask questions. Add an alternative track with talks on subjects that are new and interesting, but not necessarily related to Eclipse (i.e. Open source projects, AOP, AJAX, and etc.) "
1,"Different system for organizing BoFs. Pre-allocated times are needed to help potential attendees decide that they can attend. Maybe figure out interest level during online registration process? Ideally, should offer alternate times -- 8pm and 9pm is pretty late. Could they be done during lunch?"
1,"Discover new countries: move EclipseCon to Canada, Mexico, or Europe."
1,"Don't allow a company to \"spontaneously schedule\" a sponsored reception / BOF / whatever. Companies that are planning those base the size / level of effort on what else is going on at the same time. Case in point, the \"IBM Jazz BOF\" this year. While it did not seem to affect attendance at our event (still packed), it had a very underhanded feel to it. In the future, please have cutoff dates and stick to them so that everyone can \"cooperate and compete\" under the same rules."
1,"Don't flog a single topic as much. RCP is interesting to a lot of people but there are plenty of other topics. Too many repititions of the same topic makes it seem like political pushing of the topic. Example is how JavaOne flogs NetBeans because Sun wants to promote it though hardly anyone else cares about it. You don't want to be like that, so keep talks about any one topic to some reasonable limit and allow more of a variety of topics to make it more interesting for different kinds of users."
1,"Each lunch table has a topic, I expect some people from Eclipse or IBM will be there to talk. It is great if the relevant sits on the table to discuss. On the other hand, I'd like to have a Q&A session so we can ask people my technical question. I have looked for Steve NorthOver to ask some SWT questions. I cannot find him until the last day in his last SWT session. I finally talk to some of his team members and understand more about my problems. But it is great if I can meet them earlier and ask them again another day."
1,"Eclipse is a tool, the better I am able to utilize Eclipse the more Eclipse is a tool. The better I am able to utilize Eclipse the more valuable it becomes. I think there should be more focus on using the platform. I hoped to return a more powerful user of Eclipse. That was not accomplished for me. The tutorials I attended on RCP did not teach me anymore then I had learned from the online tutorials. Although the presenters appeared very knowledgeable they had not tested their presentation on a mixed target group. I believe it would have been more effective to break the time allowed for the RCP tutorials into three segments with the preparation materials and instructions distributed weeks before so that it would give all ample time to make sure their computers functioned properly and that they where properly prepared. In my opinion these where not tutorials, they would be better described as active presentations. I was disappointed enough that I left th
e conference two days early believing that my time would be better spent elsewhere."
1,"EclipseCon was overwhelming. It seemed many talks were aimed at committers. For a beginner, I would have found an introductory track very valuable. Something where all of the projects could demonstrate their project, its application and a little bit about extending/contributing to it. Tutorials serve part of this need but with 1 tutorial day, one can only see 2 projects! It might be useful to have an all day tutorial which does the \"Gentle Introduction to the Eclipse Universe\". It would discuss each project and present its 1) use 2) architecture 3) how to extend/write plug-ins 4) future direction. This may also interest experienced Eclipser's who want to contribute to another project."
1,"Eclipsecon 2006 mainly contained topics on what is new. I liked that very much but I would also like to see some catch-up topics which cover some of the basics. "
1,"Entertainment
Pool tables"
1,"Explicit tracks.
There were too many time slots with nothing very interesting to an Eclipse RCP developer."
1,"Food was excellent. Venue was BORING, though the free parking a nice bonus."
1,"Food was sub-par. Too much effort on fancy foods instead of some good \"normal\" foods. Most people don't like salmon, but everyone likes a good hamburger. Finger foods should be normal things like chicken fingers instead of roasted muchrooms and such."
1,"From the developers:
- current state and -> future plans"
1,"Give more time to move in between short talks. Also, the panel sessions could use stronger moderation to keep the dialogues on-topic and relevant to all attendees."
1,"Group discounts"
1,"Have \"Ask the expert\" sessions on varios topics where people could ask questions and hopefully get answers. I think this would be a big hit as i felt much of the time the long sessions never really got to the meat of some of my ponderings. "
1,"Have a commitee review the presentations before the conference to try and ensure a higher level of quality. I found the quality of the talks varied - some of the presenters were difficult to understand (language + general public speaking skills), some presentations seemed to have been put together at the last minute.
I feel this is especially important for the tutorials. I attended them this year, and if there wasn't a \"quality guarentee\", I would NOT attend them in 2007. "
1,"Have a keynote that includes the latest milestone release features like Erich and John used to do. Less foilware please that anyone can download from the web if they feel so inclined and more seeing people do demos. Likewise for the long talks, I lost count of the number of talks I walked out of because they were all foilware. Eclipse is also growing a lot and seems to be a latter day sourceforge in terms of the number of projects, some of which are bound to flop. I felt this year each project did their election pitch in a room with foils saying how great they are and who is involvled with them, etc... At JavaOne by contrast they pretty much insist you have about 1/3 of your talk as demos at least, and have code snippts and high technical content on your slides. Do likewise for EclipseCon 2007 and enforce it on the speakers by vetting their content up front.
For the short talks as well try to organize them by some forumla other than random, so if someone wants to see all the RCP/GUI stuff they can stay in the same room and not play musical chairs running between rooms to catch each interesting talk."
1,"Have a tour day for those not frequent to the Silicon Valley (or wherever its held next year...)"
1,"Have all turorials and complete materials on USB drives. USB drives were a great idea! I don't particularly like Santa Clara. Moving location would be great. I would have prefered 4 short tutorials rather than 2 long tutorials. I just want a brief walkthrough on some topics with some materials I can try out on my own. If tutorial was bad or not what you thought you had to suffere through the whole thing and 1/2 day was wasted. Alos, when signing up for tutorials the abstract was too limited to tell what it really was. It wasn't until a few days before that you really found out what you signed up for."
1,"Have an OSGi subconference and track :-)"
1,"Have an \"ask a developer\" exhibit like the exhibit hall. Have booths for various topics where people could specific questions about things they need help with in their own projects."
1,"Have more on-site registration time (either allow day-before registration or start the first day a little later)"
1,"Have one area where coffee is served throughout the conference, not just at certain times. I was dying for a coffee several times on the Tuesday, but there was no coffee to be seen. This doesn't mean the other snack parts need to be there all the time; those were good for the breakfasts etc. but having somewhere (e.g. the registration hall) where there's always coffee available would have been a good thing.
Power supplies outside of theatres was sometimes problematic."
1,"Have the short talks organized by theme to reduce the number of times people had to run from one room to another."
1,"Having a particular timeslot for various project committers to be able to provide quick technical assistance, guidance and one on one conversations
with developers attempting to expand/use/understand project code and then putting those questions/answers live up to a wiki"
1,"Hold short talks in morning prior to long talks. This will give people a better idea of which long talks might be interesting for topics they are not yet familiar. Also, speakers should prepare better \"here is what I'm going to talk about\" introductions."
1,"Honestly, I would like to have more of a variety of technical sessions and tutorials spread throughout the conference. Though I enjoyed the conference (it was my first EclipseCon), I felt the technical side was a little light, though I understand the need to balance the technical with marketing and other Eclipse interests. That's a tricky balance, so I don't know how you would improve it. However, I did enjoy the conference very much and hope to attend next year!"
1,"How about a coding competition in the tutorial?"
1,"I am a programmer and would like to see more demos, but not at the expense of skipping technical sessions. I would really like to see more demos at evening, in parallell with BOFs"
1,"I attended one tutorial and 3 or 4 long talks where the presenters were not prepared. In the tutorial the presenters were so rushed that they skimmed over almost everything leaving me with little coherent information after 4 hours. In the sessions the presenters never introduced their topic, they just dove right in with technical details. If they had summarized what they were going to talk about, shown how it fit into the overall Eclipse architecture and given an example of why it was introduced as a project, the rest of the talk would have been much more interesting. As it was I didn't fully grasp what made the topic important or useful until the very end of the session. At that point my interest was piqued but the session was ending, which was very frustrating."
1,"I did follow the business track but I realised that the quality was poor on most of the sessions. Either stuff that was already well know or simply left the everything as open as when we arrived. The only one that I really fancied was the one with bottom up marketing. I would really like to know more and discuss more on business models and open source."
1,"I felt like I missed quite a bit of technical information on the first day. There were always several topics I wanted to see at the same time.
I would like to see the type of talks you had on Monday spread out more randomly during the conference."
1,"I had a number of detailed questions about Eclipse that I was hoping to get answered at EclipseCon. I could not find the \"right\" person who could answer them. It would be great if there were an \"Eclipse Experts\" booth. It would probably be pretty busy, but it might work."
1,"I like everything in general. The only thing I would change is that sometimes there were multiple technical talks I was interested in with other technical talks at the same time. Other times there were technical talks that I was not interested in all. My suggestion would be to have tracks like UI tracks where there would be at least one UI session at every time interval for a technical talk. I am not sure that this would solve my problem but would guide people in the topics they are most interested in."
1,"I liked the EclipseCon 2006. It was a great experience for me. Right now I can't suggest many improvements but I may write you again when I can think of some. For now I'd like to say that some improvement is required in selection of topics for parallel talks."
1,"I really liked the location this year - was the best of the 3 eclipsecon's I've attended.
- Parking was free ! (pet peeve of mine last year when I stayed at the hotel and attended a conference there, yet still had to pay $15.- a day for parking!)."
1,"I think running the short talks/demos in parallel with the tutorials would add more exposure for these items; maybe running them once on tutorial day, and once on the long talk days (if the presenters were willing)?
Also, recording the demos/short talks and posting those to the web for those that could not attend them; or broadcasting them while they were in session (slides and closed-caption text) in a web based format for people attending other long talks. Attendees would be able to get the highlights of the short talk/demo on their laptops while attending another long talk. Ideally, it would be the picture-in-picture equivalent of a technical presentation (\"presentation-in-presentation\"?). "
1,"I think some prior indication of the level of knowledge required to attend a presentation would be good. For example, I attended some talks on subjects I wanted an introduction to only to find the speaker went straight into the detail with little high level introduction. These talks ended up being a waste of time for me. I think if each presenter had to say what level of expertise is required of their audence it would make them think about, and maybe even alter, what they were intending to present."
1,"I think spreading the tutorials during the week will be beneficial. That's the key thing in my opinion."
1,"I think that using EclipseZilla to support community creation of the program was a good idea in general. But, it would probably help the overall feel of the conference to have the program committee propose several key themes or tracks that they want to focus on. This will allow more targeted content for key technologies and initiatives."
1,"I think the long sessions should be at least an hour. I think defined lab time where key committers can be available to help other contributors with questions they have on how to use or contribute would be great."
1,"I think there should be more parallel, specialized technical talks held in much smaller rooms. Speaking or listening in a cavernous space that seats 1000 or more doesn't encourage connection and interaction between speakers and audiences. It's too easy in a large, sparsely populated room for the audience to tune out and start web surfing on their laptops. Being in a small room that is nearly full (or even better, standing room only), builds a much greater sense of excitement and community. Rooms for technical track and short talks should be no larger than the theatre room used at EclipseCon 2006 for the final panel discussion."
1,"I think tracks for sessions are important (business track, rich client, java tools, etc.). More tracks. Try to make sure that sessions in a track don't conflict with each other. "
1,"I was incredably impressed with the conference. Wireless coverage was excelent... however a few more spaces where people can work or talk with laptops that are plugged in (when not in a session) would be really nice."
1,"I was just a few weeks new to eclipse development. I thought I knew what I wanted to go to for the tutorials, but found I would have been better suited to attend another. I found sometimes the same results on sessions during the week.
Might I suggest that you have more short talks at the start of the conference, having the presenters talk shortly about what will be covered in the longer talks and the tutorials. Then have more long talks in the middle that go into more detail about a subject. Then at the end have longer, more hands-on tutorials at the end. The longer talks in the middle cover topics more in depth, still cover the topic, and then refer to a tutorial for those who would like to try it out or go into more hands-on detail."
1,"I was very happy with the conference overall. I would like to have the opportunity to take more tutorials."
1,"I would allow two or three short talks in parallel during some of the breaks. Given a 1/2 hour break, if in 2 or 3 of the rooms I had 5 minutes to get to a short talk that particularly interested me, listen to it, and get to the presentation I want to hear, I could select the relatively few short talk