On Cadences...

The Weekend to End Breast Cancer. It ain't just for ladies anymore (or at least is shouldn't be). I was one of a handful of men among over a thousand women that walked 60 kilometers this past weekend and raised over two million dollars for cancer research in the process. I was humbled by the many examples of courage and hope that I witnessed. There was a man who has done the walk 30 times and who, last year (or so I am told), wheeled his deceased wife's empty wheelchair for two days. There was a cancer survivor who pushed her walker faster than many of us could walk unaided. There were women in very late stages of pregnancy, one of whom was having contractions but refused to see her midwife to deliver her baby until she had finished walking for the day. There were several who carried empty walking shoes once worn by women whose journey has come prematurely to an end.

I want to thank the four women, one of them a cancer survivor, who were gracious enough to allow me to walk with them on the second day. One of the most powerful moments, for me, occurred less than five kilometers from the finish line when the route diverged from the sidewalk onto a path of crushed gravel. We had been walking nearly the whole day together, but only just then noticed that our cadences were perfectly in sync. It was a true testament to what shared vision is all about. Like all of the other participants, we were there for similar goals, but there's no doubt in my mind that what we were able to accomplish together was more than any of us could have done on our own. We were among the first forty or so to finish, and I'll not forget the feeling any time soon.

On the Verge...

Speaking of action (and the need for doing more walking and less talking), I now stand at the precipice before the Big Weekend. Thanks to all of the family, friends, and colleagues that have generously donated, I have qualified to participate in The Weekend to End Breast Cancer, which starts tomorrow. I've walked nearly 300 kilometers over the past ten weeks in preparation for this journey, and the weather forecast looks promising, so I'm looking forward to a great weekend. Of course, it's not too late to show your support, so if you want to make a last-minute donation, please see my personal page. For those that are interested, you can follow my updates over the next two days on Twitter. See you on the other side!

On the Letter W...

Today's entry is brought to you by the letter W. What is it with the letter W, anyway? Many of the major innovations in this information age of ours seem to begin with that letter. Windows, World Wide Web, Wiki, Wii, and now Wave. All I can say is wow.

I've been thinking a lot about innovation lately (on my walks), and after reading Doug's and Dave's blog entries I feel compelled to comment. I don't think the distinction between successful and unsuccessful innovations comes down to a question of propriety; indeed it seems inevitable that all software will be open source before too long. Instead, I think it's a matter of shared vision. There's a big difference between a diverse collection of participants with similar goals and a team of collaborators (whom need not work for the same employer) with a shared vision, especially if/when that vision is compelling enough to be contagious.

The team that originally brought us Eclipse had such a shared vision, and it seems that the team developing Wave does, too. Of course, it's harder to achieve mindshare across geographical, cultural, and organizational boundaries; interestingly, these are the very challenges that Wave appears to be taking a huge step toward helping us overcome. Yes, Ed, the time is nigh for taking action. Hang on, because it's going to be a heck of a ride!

On Bodies at REST...

Newton got beaned by the apple good. So goes the lyric from another song by the band that inspired the name of this blog. Of course, Newton was probably most famous for his laws of motion, including the principle that a body at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon an external force. This rang especially true for me when my mother was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. For some time I had been looking for the motivation to become more active (yoga once a week just wasn't cutting it). Rather than "resting on my laurels", I decided to do something positive about my mother's prognosis (and my sedentary lifestyle) and signed up to participate in the upcoming Weekend to End Breast Cancer in Ottawa. As a participant, I have to raise a minimum of $2000 and walk 60 km over the course of two days in June. I've been training for about seven weeks now, but could really use your help raising the funds (I'm just about half way there). For details, please see my personal page.

On the subject of REST (the acronym) I finally received the speaker feedback for the EMF tutorial Marcelo and I delivered at EclipseCon back in March. As Ed and Michael have been observing lately, EMF is a complex topic, and considering how much Marcelo and I tried to cover in such a short amount of time, I think we did OK. By contrast, REST is actually quite simple; at its core, it is a set of architectural principles for defining, addressing, and manipulating resources in distributed hypermedia systems. The e4 resources team had an interesting discussion about REST during our bi-weekly meeting a couple of weeks ago and Doug suggested I blog about it (hey, better late then never!).

So, what does it mean to make resources more RESTful in e4? The important thing (and biggest challenge, in my mind) will be to look beyond the basics of resources and well-defined operations for manipulating them (which we undoubtedly need), and focus more on the distributed and hypermedia aspects of RESTful applications. After all, this is what we mean when we say we want to "bring the Web to Eclipse", is it not? We really have to free ourselves from the "traditional" ways of doing things and embrace new (and, presumably, better) approaches - indeed, we have to innovate. Much of the work that I've seen in e4 so far has been about how we will continue to do many of the things we've always been doing in Eclipse, but on the new platform. For example, there has been some exploration as to how the Project Explorer might work in e4. Wait a minute! Why assume we even need a Project Explorer (or projects themselves, for that matter) in e4? The new generation of workers (and the Web itself) doesn't rely on structural browsing the way we "dinosaurs" have in the past. They search for things they need now and tag things they want to remember later. Rather than a Project Explorer, why not provide a UI that is optimized for exploring sets of related (hyperlinked) resources and for discovering relationships between them?

I see e4 as an opportunity for integrated tool environments (for modeling, development, you name it) to take a giant leap forward into the future (or is that the present?) in terms of consumability. We just need to find the means and the courage to help Eclipse overcome the gravity of its legacy and launch it into the cloud (and beyond). Yes, this IS the time for change, in so many ways. Eclipse will remain "at rest" unless acted upon by an external force... and that force is you!

On Elephant Shoes...

Do you remember playing that game when you were young? You'd mouth the words "elephant shoes" to someone and it would look like you were saying "I love you". It was great, because if the boy or girl objected, you could say "What? All I said was 'elephant shoes'!". Apparently, a movie has even been made about it...

A few weeks ago, at EclipseCon, the elephant in the room was that Ed wasn't there, and more specifically, the reason why. The absence of people like this (and others whose presence isn't as noticeable but whose contributions are just as important) is what I was referring to, in part, by "recent events" a couple of posts ago. Ultimately, a large part of what helps me keep my game face is the people - after all, its the contributions of good people that make or break a community of interest.

That was also a common refrain at Enterprise Data World last week - "it's not just about the data, it's about the people". We certainly saw evidence of that at our booth in the exhibit hall. They had a "bingo" game, for a chance to win a free book, with cards where you had to visit each vendor listed on the card and get them to cross of their square (each with a unique color). We were surprised by the number of attendees who asked us to cross off our competitors' squares because they didn't want to have to talk to them. We also saw a number of cards where one of our competitors had scratched our square out with a big "X". Ah well, it takes all kinds...

The ER/Studio community of interest held its annual special interest group (SIG) session last Wednesday, and it went really well. It used to be that a member of the user community had to organize a SIG as part of the official program, but apparently the rules must have changed because one of our competitors was allowed to organize a last-minute SIG themselves. Too bad they forgot to mention when it was...

We also held a cocktail party for about thirty of our closest friends (customers) last Wednesday evening, and it was a raving success. You really get a sense for how much your customers love your products when they're still hanging around long after the event is supposed to end (and the free beer is gone). One of the things we kept hearing was how much our customers appreciate how responsive we are to their needs... for the most part. Things got a little out of hand when some of our customers started placing bets on whether/when EA/Studio models would ever be supported by the ER/Studio Repository and Enterprise Portal. Patience, grasshoppers.

We wrapped up the week on Thursday afternoon by meeting with some members of our Product Advisory Council (PAC). We listened to their needs, presented our plans for this year and next, and gave them a sneak peak of what's in store for our September release of ER/Studio. We received a lot of really good feedback and, overall, folks were really pleased with our road map. All we have to do now is deliver on it!

On Participation...

I blogged some time ago about my belief that the OMG had to make some changes in order to remain relevant in today's industry. It seems that some of Bjorn's recent thoughts have led some people to express similar beliefs about Eclipse. I delivered a presentation at EclipseCon last year, comparing and contrasting various aspects of these two organizations; I'd like to take moment here to comment on their models of participation.

At Eclipse, participation in projects is open to individuals (as committer members) and, indeed, membership is not even required to participate as a contributor. Privileges (e.g. the ability to write to the source code repository and vote as part of the Eclipse Development Process) are associated with the individual rather than the organization - if an organization discontinues its membership or an employee leaves his/her member employer, the individual retains those privileges. This is good for the individual but not so good for the organization - as Jochen reminded participants of the Eclipse Open Source Executive Strategy Summit, the risks of losing knowledge, leadership, and write access to code when a participating employee (committer) leaves his/her employer should not be underestimated. 

At the OMG, on the other hand, participation in task forces, submission teams, and working groups is generally restricted to representatives of member organizations. Privileges (e.g. the ability to evaluate draft specifications and vote as part of the OMG Technology Adoption Process) are associated with the organization rather than the individual - if an organization discontinues its membership or an employee leaves his/her member employer, the individual loses those privileges. This is good for the organization but not so good for the individual - after all, it's the efforts of individuals that make open specifications a reality, and it seems unfortunate to exclude what could be valuable contributions from individuals just because they don't work for a member company.

I'm not sure whether one model is better than the other, but I'd like to think that maybe a different participation model might better serve the needs of both member organizations and individuals. Do you have any thoughts or suggestions?

On Your Game Face...

You might say what separates professionals from amateurs is their ability to maintain their game face, even in the face of adversity. Recent events have made it increasingly difficult for me to keep my game face on these days. How do you maintain your game face?

Speaking of games, this coming week is the "Super Bowl" for data modelers, the annual Enterprise Data World conference (formerly DAMA). In fact, as I write this, I'm sitting on the balcony of my hotel room, overlooking the marina at the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel and Marina. While my presentation is on Sunday evening, I'm very much looking forward to the chance to interact with many of our customers next week, especially at the ER/Studio SIG and Embarcadero Customer Cocktail Party on Wednesday, as well as the Embarcadero Product Advisory Council meeting on Thursday. If you're going to be at the conference, track me down! I'd love to hear your enterprise data stories, especially during these uncertain times.