I can tell EclipseCon is getting close by the level of my panic. Five weeks to go. And it’s getting pretty tight.

I have a whole bunch of things I want to demo and hopefully get the community excited about. The Preview of the Arduino C++ IDE, a showcase for the new build and launch systems I’ve been working on, is nearing it’s end on the Mars stream and it’s time to get it working on Neon. I have a talk on that on the Tuesday entitled “Build Arduino Apps like a Pro”. It is a really cool application of all the great work we’ve done on the CDT over the years and I have some cool places I want to take it.

I also have a very ambitious talk on Thursday called simply “Eclipse, the IDE for IoT”. In that talk I will demo and describe all the Eclipse IDE plug-ins you can use to build an IoT system, from an Arduino to the cloud services that analyze the data coming from that Arduino, to the Web and Android clients you use to view the results of that analysis. This is what has always driven my work and passion for the Eclipse IDE. It’s a truly Integrated development environment with a capital ‘I’ that can do everything I need to build systems. And I’m proud to show that off to anyone who wants to see it.

Aside from my talks it’s going to be a very busy week. On Monday, we have the CDT Summit where anyone who has interest can join as we talk about CDT issues of the day and work on plans for the future. We’re such a diverse group and have built up a family of contributors, not only working on the CDT project itself, but on our siblings in Linux Tools and Parallel Tools and the occasion discussion about Target Management. I have a good start on my ideas for a new CDT build system that I’ll talk about and how it’s used for Qt, CMake and Arduino. And we have a Hackathon schedule Tuesday night where we should be able to get deep and dirty into the code.

For me, I have interest in the Internet of Things Summit on Tuesday and Wednesday. I work for an RTOS company so, of course, we have interest in IoT since our customers do. Actually we have customers who have done IoT for years and we now have a label for what they’ve been doing. But I’m interested to hear what kind of things people are building that fit the IoT label and what kind of open platforms they are using to build those things that are on the Internet. There’s been a lot of hype over IoT and we need to filter that and see what people are really doing with it.

Thursday is Eclipse Council day. I am a member of both the Architecture Council and the Planning Council. It’s a tricky job these councils are. You have a grand title, but you don’t really have much power over what projects do. We’re really here to help projects and much of the discussion we’ll have will be on how to help them better and to really help them make Eclipse better. Our reputation is based on the technology they produce and we really need to find ways to make sure the quality of that technology is world class.

But the highlight of every EclipseCon isn’t just the sessions and summits. It’s the people. It’s the chance to talk about things you care about with other people who also care about those things. It’s a chance to put faces on the the e-mail addresses you see on the mailing lists and bugzillas. It’s a chance to feel part of the bigger team that is the Eclipse community. We are a friendly bunch, often found at the bar in the evenings, well, OK, always found at the bar in the evenings. If you get a chance, please come down and please stop me or anyone else you know in the group and say Hi and join in and be a part of our great community.