If you are going to AjaxWorld next week in NY and want to see something fresh, check this out. Colleagues of mine sure (from Nexaweb) but I am pretty jaded myself. Don't want to spoil their presentation, but should at least get you thinking about how modern applications should be constructed, deployed and managed. Dare I say a better way - particularly as browser and other Internet access technologies improve (as well they should!) and proliferate.

Monday 3:40-4:10 pm.

Main Takeways from Eclipse Con (Santa Clara, CA 3/4-8)

• Eclipse development is about we (us/community), not me or I. Developers need to be social. As someone who has reverbed between engineering and sales/marketing, sure. But for some it may be new. But I am also no longer a committer anywhere - so it is easy for me to say ;-)
• Less is more - particularly when it comes to preso's. As an example, James Governor's (from Redmonk) session was minimalistic - some slides had one word on them - but stayed with me.
  
• Got an updated perspective on Eclipse - kind of like a trade association with bits. Some pioneering still to do but I think they are on the right track. One big question I think is how far can an IDE-focused organization go? Developers want tooling but people/enterprises want OS's, platforms, applications, solutions.
  
• Spent time with some of the Apache Maven folks and an interesting company (Simula Labs) they are part of. They cracked open Apache XAP (which BTW had its first incubator release - o.3.0 - Applause!) and worked on a Maven build for it. I look forward to the results and insights (is Maven good for Javascript?).
• Eclipse and more generally Open Source business models need more attention. Probably shouldn't rival technical sessions in number, but more depth and analysis would be helpful.
  
• Look forward to followups at AjaxWorld and Open AjaxAlliance F2F in 2 weeks in NY. Ajax was BIG topic here - faster growing than Java - Eclipse-Ajax is even tracking with Visual Studio-Ajax, according to some job-based analysis provided by Don Smith of Eclipse. The game is changing....