I’m having a hard time getting into writing my paper for the upcoming Embedded Systems Conference. So I figured I’d spend some time writing here where I seem to never have writer’s block, at least once I find a topic to talk about and a second to do it.

But it’s a sign of the time of year. EclipseCon is just over two weeks away and then this year the Embedded Systems Conference and the Eclipse PluginFest for Mobile/Embedded are happening in the same week in April. Time to get prepared.

The PluginFest is a special event that we started last year. It was a pretty interesting time. Part of it was the thrill of spending some time in London, England (which I hear is nicer than London, Ontario, Canada but I’ve never been to the latter :). But I think it was mainly the chance to get together with Eclipse people again. We have a great community that have some really interesting and passionate individuals that make these events a must attend.

The PluginFest is a bit different than your average Eclipse event, in that you are encouraged to talk about your commercial product and work with other commercial vendors as we prove that the concept of plug-in truly does enable the interoperability between these products that we promise.

And a key component of the interoperability story is the Eclipse platform projects that everyone works to extend. These projects, which include the CDT and DSDP projects, become a bit of a focus as well. I talked to a number of people last year who had questions and ideas for me and the CDT. And I hear there’s a keen interested in having project members present again this year.

But that left me a little concerned. EclipseCon is actually a month earlier than the PluginFest this year. And in many ways EclipseCon is meant to be the venue for people working on projects to gather and discuss and ask. For some reason, though, we’ve always had trouble getting a strong program and attendance from the embedded community for EclipseCon.

It really shows that there is still a lot of work to be done to boost that community. Which is odd, since they are a community that I think desperately needs Eclipse technology to work for them. But then maybe that’s one reason why. It doesn’t necessarily work for them.