On Leadership...

Among other things, last week's exchange on The Planet ought to be a reminder to all of us of how hard good leadership is to come by. I'm sure you've heard the term "thought leader", but it's always been a bit of an oxymoron to me. Ideas are cheap, and thinking can often get you into trouble (I should know, I've been there). Yes, actions do speak louder than words, so a more appropriate term for someone who displays true leadership, in my mind, would be "action leader" or, even better, "action hero". It's ironic that use of the latter isn't more prevalent in our industry. Forget being a rock star, I want to be an action hero.

When I think (danger, Will Robinson!) about it, it's the posts from people doing amazing things at Eclipse that tend to earn more of my respect. So, rather than accusing anyone of biting the hand that feeds or questioning whether others have poisoned the well, I'm looking to the action heros at Eclipse to continue doing such a stellar job of leading by example. Indeed, it is they, and others like them, who, if anyone, will keep our ecosystem from collapsing under the weight of our collective self-importance. In truth AND in deed.

On Momentum...

Despite rumors of a resistance movement (ha!), the momentum of modeling at Eclipse continues to build, as attested by last week's summit. By all accounts the various tutorials, presentations, and discussions about modeling were quite productive. I'll be blogging in more detail about the BoF and long talk that I helped deliver at ESE in the coming days, but before I do I wanted to bring your attention to two other upcoming events that may be of interest to modelers.

In just under two weeks, Eclipse will be hosting "Modeling Days" in New York and Toronto. The line-up of presenters is terrific, and in case you missed my presentation on Papyrus in Ludwigsburg, I'll be delivering (an updated version of) it at the Toronto Modeling Day on Wednesday, November 18. Registration is free, so there's no excuse for missing this opportunity to interact with thought leaders in the Eclipse Modeling community.

I alluded to the second event some time ago, but now it's official - another Eclipse/OMG Symposium is being held, this time at the OMG Technical Meeting in Minnesota, Minneapolis on June 23, 2010. The call for participation is already open, so it's not too early to consider submitting a proposal and making your contribution to the joint future of open source and open specifications.

On the Mo...

Having witnessed, first-hand, the transformative effect that hair (or absence thereof) can have on our personal lives, I've decided to grow some hair, this time for a cause. That's right, it's Movember and I've joined the Eclipse Mommitters in their effort to raise money to "help change the face of men's health". I'll be posting pictures of my progress over the next few weeks on my "Mo Space" (personal page). Check it out, consider making a donation to our team, and think about how you could do your part to help fight prostate cancer.

On Big "M" Modeling...

Speaking of Wayne, I, too, was recently interviewed by a German magazine, JAXenter. Following his example, I thought I'd post the English translation of the interview for the benefit of those (like me) that can't read German. It's a little dated (especially since our Helios plan is now in place and we've already started development), but hey, better late than never, right? ;)

Can you describe the Eclipse MDT Project in a few words?

The Model Development Tools (MDT) project focuses on big "M" modeling within the Eclipse Modeling project. Its purpose is to provide implementations of industry standard metamodels and exemplary tools for developing models based on those metamodels.

Can you give a typical use case for the project?

Developers use MDT as a framework for building professional-grade modeling tools based on industry standard languages such as Unified Modeling Language (UML), Object Constraint Language (OCL), and XML Schema Definition (XSD), among others. End users use MDT's exemplary tooling (currently provided by the UML2 Tools and Papyrus components) to develop models based on those languages.

What's new in the Galileo Version of MDT?

Four of the nine components in MDT released as part of Galileo. OCL 1.3 saw the addition of finer-grained control over debug tracing, support for big numbers, and an extensible type checking mechanism. UML2 3.0 subscribed to the EMF "ultra-slim diet", migrated to the latest released version of the UML specification (2.2), and made some extensibility enhancements in the area of profiles. UML2 Tools 0.9 includes enhanced support for working with profiles and stereotypes, vastly improved look and feel, provisional support for sequence and timing diagrams, and the ability to specify which elements are included (synchronized) when creating a class diagram. Finally, XSD 2.5 added support for using an ecore:nsURI attribute on a schema element to specify the namespace URI for a schema without a target namespace.

Where do you see the MDT Project in one year? How will the project evolve after Galileo?

We have yet to prepare our plans for the next major release of MDT (dubbed "Helios"), but I can give you an idea of what I'd like to see happen. First, I'd like to see revival of ODM (Ontology Definition Metamodel) support in MDT (in fact, we already have a proposal), especially given the resurgence of interest in RDF (Resource Definition Framework) in the industry of late (e.g. Linked Data). I also anticipate compliance with the latest releases of industry specifications, particularly BPMN, OCL, and XSD. Integration of EMF-based support for things like searching, comparing, and indexing of models in our end-user tooling should also be a priority. Finally, I hope to see some innovation in modeling tooling and techniques, including support for such things as facet-based metamodels, task-focused tools, and collaborative design.

On Auspicious Dates...

I was reminded recently, while volunteering as part of my son's Beaver colony, of the Scout Motto: "Be prepared". Of course, a good way to be prepared is to have a plan. Wayne has done a great job this year of reminding project leads, both on the mailing lists and on his blog, of their responsibility to get their project plans in place in time for yesterday's deadline. My only question is, if you plan to fail and you fail, have you failed or succeeded?

In any case, the MDT plan for the Helios coordinated release is now finally in place... more or less. Looking at the release schedule, I was amused by the significance of some of the milestone dates for "+3" projects (of which MDT is one). M3 is on Remembrance Day, M6 is on St. Patrick's Day, and M7 is on Cinco de Mayo. I'm not sure whether that's a good sign or a bad one, but either way, I'm looking forward to an exciting cycle of development at Eclipse!

On Going Forth to the Past...

And so it would seem that, while there are things, both personal and professional, that we must let go of in life, there are some we may choose not to. Open source is one such thing for me, and open specifications are another. To that end, I'm happy to say that I was recently appointed representative of the Eclipse Foundation at the Object Management Group. This means that, while I won't be resuming all of my former responsibilities at the OMG, I am once again able to actively participate in shaping the joint future of these two organizations.

I'm currently working on organizing a follow-up to the symposia that were held back in 2008 (I'll post more information on that as it becomes available). Of course, before hosting such an event, I want to ensure that steps have been taken to address at least some of the important issues that were identified at the first symposia. At this point, I think the intellectual property relationship between Eclipse projects and OMG specifications is more clear than it was before. To further preserve this lineage, Eclipse is participating in the OMG's IPR policy review process on an ongoing basis.

As for a better means of tracking issues at the OMG, work has begun to migrate the large database of OMG issues, along with their associated triage processes, to Bugzilla. With any luck, it should soon be possible to submit and track an issue against an OMG specification as a Bugzilla record and, ideally (longer term), be able to do so from within a tool that is based on that specification (e.g., by using Mylyn tasks with contexts based on models). If you're interested in seeing this happen, or perhaps even in helping bring it to fruition, I'd love to hear about it!

On Letting Go...

Woah, it's been quite a while since my last entry. While my new life as jetsam has taught me a whole new meaning to the expression "the truth will set you free", I've been focusing more on figuring out what to do with my freedom rather than dwelling on how I earned it. I've been exploring a number of alternatives over the past couple of months, some of which I'll be blogging about in the near future.

One thing I know I'll be doing for sure is continuing my commitment to open (but not free!) source and, of course, Eclipse. In that vein, I'm thrilled that my long talk proposal for Eclipse Summit Europe, entitled "Papyrus: Advent of an Open Source IME at Eclipse", which I co-submitted with Raphael Faudou, Patrick Tessier, and Cedric Dumoulin, has been accepted. I finally completed my registration this morning (after overcoming some browser obstacles) and am looking forward to being in Ludwigsburg again this October. I'm particularly stoked about who one of the keynote speakers is this year. I had the distinct privilege of spending time with Tony Bailetti this summer as part of the Lead to Win program (more on that later), so I know first-hand that we're in for a treat. This year's summit is shaping up to be a dandy; I hope to see you there!