This is my first ESC (Embedded Systems Conference) since my days at ObjecTime, umpteen years ago and that was in Boston and was a smaller show. I just did a walk around to get myself oriented with the San Jose Convention Center and quickly went through the exhibit hall. It’s quite a site. This is really my first “ultra-hype” trade show and the booths here are amazing. Some are set up as theatres with lots of chairs, some have multi-storing temporary structures (you won’t catch me going up there!). It’s pretty cool and I can’t wait to see the action when it opens later today.

Now, I need to thank Ian Skerret for setting up the Eclipse booth and to those that helped set up meetings with members of the trade press. And no disrespect to the Eclipse Foundation, but the Eclipse booth is pretty tiny. We talked about this at EclipseCon in the Embedded panel and I again put forth the challenge…

Eclipse is an important force in the embedded industry. Unless my Google Alerts are making up stuff, more and more embedded vendors are taking advantage of the power and flexibility of Eclipse as the foundation of their tools offerings. But Eclipse is successful because of the vendors and developers that contribute to it. Eclipse had a huge marketing impact in the Enterprise market because of the huge vendors that promoted it.

We need to see the same thing in the embedded space. We need to take that ground swell in the grassroots and promote Eclipse as the phenomenon that it is. This will go a long way towards encouraging those that are using Eclipse to contribute back and help convince more vendors to join the community. Those of us who got in early, did so because we saw the vision of what Eclipse can do in the embedded space. It’s time to start shouting about it!