Anyway, right in time I got a copy of a brand new book that I want to read. It’s perfect timing since we are planning to build a new distributed reporting platform designed on Server-Side Eclipse and a few other cool technologies. Did I mention that I’m delivering a two-part tutorial about developing Server-Side Eclipse based web applications together with Jochen? Well, now I did!

Emilia Wagenknecht
2008-01-11 10:13 UTC
51cm, 3300g

Although you never know what the future brings you I’m proud to say that this was the best release I participated in ever. It’s running great, absolutely healthy. Same is true for the release engineer Janett. I can’t express how much I love them both.

Picture below.

The event is celebrated only every 25 years. I had an awesome and unforgettable weekend. The attraction this time clearly were two living elephants.

Both elephants were brought to Niederroßla in a parade on Friday from the train station in Apolda. We (our fanfare group, yes I play fanfare, timbal and piano) were sitting on a truck (well an old wagon actually) in front of the elephants on Friday. Here is a picture taken with my mobile phone. The quality is poor. Sorry about that.

More pictures (and of much better quality ) are available here taken by a very active member of the Niederroßla community. They also show the big festival procession on Sunday where our fanfare group walked right in the front (see here, here and here).

Update: Thanks to Thomas Pake which sent me the following pictures of me.

Was it worth it? Absolutely! Today, I have much more liberties when developing software. Actually, I can base the new architecture of our next generation software platform on Eclipse technology and that’s so awesome.

In January, I also delivered my first talk at a public conference ever. This was quite an interesting experience. Although I like blogging about my work and my life I’m not a guy that usually acts in the public. I’m more one of those organizing behind the scenes.

In February, one of my patches was committed into the Eclipse CVS repository and a few days later I received a bunch of Eclipse Installed stickers from Wayne.

March was probably the month with the most fun. A new city, some new stuff and a lot of great days. In fact, I’ve met a lot people I knew from newsgroups, mailing lists, chats and other activities for the first time. It was really fantastic. I can’t wait for the next EclipseCon.

There was an interesting discussion in April and it’s great to see that the discussion is still ongoing in 2007. June was the time for the first simultaneous release of ten Eclipse projects ever and in July the Eclipse Ecosystem started exploring the space.

In July I also started exploring GWT (the Google Web Toolkit) and came across an Eclipse plug-in. I started extending it in August and it’s still a nice project I look at from time to time.

In October, I attended the Eclipse Summit Europe in Esslingen. I participated in the Server-Side Eclipse Symposium but I never thought that the topic would be so well attended. It looks like everybody in interested in adopting Eclipse technology on the server. Well, I’m doing it too four our software platform.

Oh and I don’t know how but in 2006 I managed to blog at least once every single month. Cool. I leave it up to you do decide if it’s of some use for you.

So what’s next in 2007? Mhm. I’m working on some great stuff in the area of autonomous and distributed computing based on Equinox and Eclipse ECF. Then there is also my project which I recently renamed to RWT – the Remote Widget Toolkit. It started as a Google Summer of Code project. The idea is to develop only with one single toolkit for RCP and Web clients.

All this together I tend to call Eclipse REP – the Rich Enterprise Platform. Eclipse Server-Side is just the technology. Eclipse REP is the framework on top of it. Curious? Post a comment here or send me a mail if you are interested in contributing or adopting. Some of the stuff is already on SourceForge but a lot is still prototyped in a few local workspaces.

I came accros a job posting that turned into a fantastic opportunity with a Canadian company. They also have a German subsidiary, which is only 20 minutes away from my home town. But I’ll start working in Toronto (which is really close to the Eclipse Foundation ) in March for a period of 6 months.

They want to enhance their product with rich client capabilities. Thus, one of my first tasks will be evaluating rich client technologies like AJAX, .NET Smart Client and Eclipse RCP in the context of their product. This will be really exciting.

Although my wife was not very excited about this she encouraged me making the final decision. Canada is a really interesting country. Although I have been told that I’ll miss most of the cold temperatures I can’t wait working there for a few months. I’ve heard a lot positive things from friends that already visited and also lived in Canada.

I just posted an entry in our wedding blog. It’s a call for voting for us.

The store were we bought our wedding outfit is having an election for its bridal couple of 2005. Of course, we are running in this election.

If you would like to cast your vote for us please go to this website (opens in a new window), enter your name, select “Paar 001” and submit (click on “Absenden”) the form. Thereafter, just drop us a note so that we know about your vote.

We appreciate every vote we receive. Thank you very much.

Janett and Gunnar

wagenknecht.org/hochzeit