I attended the Eclipse India summit organised by Saltmarch,The Eclipse India Summit happens to be  Asia’s 1st and Only Eclipse based 2 Day Conference.

Before digging into the session ,Let me give an small introduction about eclipse.

What is Eclipse ?

Eclipse is a Java IDE

Eclipse is an IDE Framework
Eclipse + JDT = Java IDE

• First class framework for Java

• Language aware editor

• Incremental build

• Integrated debugging

Eclipse + CDT = C/C++ IDE

• First class framework for C/C++

• Language aware editor

• Refactoring, search

Eclipse + PHP = PHP IDE
Eclipse + JDT + CDT + PHP = Java, C/C++, PHP IDE

Eclipse is a Tools Framework

Tools extend the Eclipse platform using plug-ins
Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT)
Eclipse Communications Framework (ECF)
Web Tools Project (WTP)
Eclipse Modelling Framework (EMF)
Graphical Editing Framework (GEF)
Test and Performance Tooling Project (TPTP

Eclipse is a Application Framework

Remove the IDE elements, Java language support, team development support, … and you’re left with a pretty comprehensive general application framework

• Support for multiple platforms Linux, Windows, Mac OSX, UNIX, embedded
• Rich widget set, graphics

• Native-OS integration (drag and drop, OLE/XPCOM integration)

• A platform for rich clients

Eclipse is all these things

A Java IDE
An IDE Framework
A Tools Framework
An Application Framework
An Open Source Enabler
A community
An eco-system
A foundation

Coming back to the event , Chancery Pavilion was the venue for the event  ,When i just entered the Venue

i was astonished to See Microsoft as one of the Platinum Sponsors the Event, the attendance for the event was around  400  ,such a large gathering of eclipse enthusiasts Wow.

Starting Note

Interoperability: Opening Up Opportunities in a World of Choice and a Time of Change By Ramkumar Kothandaraman

Ramkumar Kothandaraman works as Director for Microsoft Technology Center at Microsoft,Bangalore

He talked about the following things

• Microsoft Approach towards Interoperability

• PHP Support in windows

• PHP support in Cloud

• Eclipse tools for Silverlight

• JAVA API to support OpenXML

Microsoft Approach towards Interoperability

Explained Various aspects of interoperability

PHP Support in windows

Microsoft has integrated PHP in its Stack with IIS

• supports FAST CGI

• Caching[Feature of IIS server which was available ]

One Platform ,One Installer

visit microsoft.com/web to get the Web Plaform Installer

Web Platform Installer configures IIS , downloads PHP ,also choices of Drupal ,wordpress etc etc …

Eclipse Tools for Silverlight

You can hear the talk

There were three simultaneous tracks running at the same time,

I attended the Ilya Shinkarenko ’s Plugin development Tips and Tricks Workshop ,It was one of the good sessions

It talked about the service based approach , usage of plugin spy ,and decoupling of UI plugins,Data Binding and some patterns and it was accompanied with the code walk -throughs

You can download the code from Shinkareko’s website

http://shinkarenko.org/training/pm/workshop.shinkarenko.final.zip

Fixing JSE/JEE Performance Problems the Eclipse Way by Richard Davies

It was post lunch session , Rich Daves from Embarcader Systems

He was talking about a memory profiling tool called JOptimiser ,it Helps in identifying  memory  leakages ,and provides layer by layer memory footprints

Eclipse 3.5 PDE Target Platform Story by Ankur Sharma

Ankur Sharma is one of the commiters inn eclipse PDE and works in IBM ,Bangalore

He Says “Take benefit of Eclipse 3.5 and still develop for 3.4″

Eclipse Modeling Framework By Chethan Kumar,Annamalai

This was one of the most interactive session of the day one ,

They introduced modeling (EMF) , had a walk through of the code and explained the benefits and features it provides

I missed the early part but managed to get the last bits

They had planned to give as demo on teneo ,but it didnt happen as the run out of time

visit our flickr stream for some photos of the event

These are links of fellow bloggers who have blogged about eclipse india summit

http://eclipse-info.blogspot.com/

http://eclipseo.blogspot.com/2009/07/day-1-eclipse-india-summit-2009.html

http://tekunik.blogspot.com/2009/07/eclipse-india-summit-2009.html

Short Story: We use Collanos Workplace and Protonotes for collaborating. Occasionally Dimdim too.

Now, the long story

We had a few preferences for the collaboration tool to use in our startup. Had looked through dozens of them for about 2 weeks before I encountered Collanos Workplace via this WebWorkerDaily post.

We are a bunch of 5 people distributed over 4 places. The requirements we have are these:

1. A place to carry on discussions both synchronously (IM style) as well as asynchronously (email style). The discussions should be persisted so that we have a copy to refer back to. We also wanted the discussions to be topic specific and categorizable.

2. Where we can add our tasks and know who is doing what.

3. Setup meetings and conference.

4. Share documents.

5. Discuss documents.

6. Discuss website wireframes / mockups.

We wanted to pay as less as possible and ideally none to have these features. We also wanted to consolidate as much as possible into one tool instead of signing up for many of them and having content dispersed at lot of places.

Collanos Workplace handles 1, 2, 4 and 5 well for us, is free and pretty perfect for our needs Better than most in my survey and all of these in 1 tool. Setting up meetings was fine but we couldn’t conference well… There is no IM based conferencing and supports only voice. The roundtrip delay in voice communication was lot (20-40 seconds) and annoying, which is understandable given their servers might be far away from India. We are using discussions feature as a workaround for conferencing… it’s not pleasant, but does the work for now. We also occasionally use Dimdim for conferencing.

Collanos Workplace has many other features and is a p2p software implemented in Java. More technical details here.

Wireframes / Mockups :

For requirement no. 6, i.e., to discuss the wireframes, we are using Protonotes, which is simple, free, does it’s work and is a joy to use.

We are making our wireframes using Balsamiq and from the exported PNGs we are creating HTML image maps to add the navigations to the dummy buttons and links. This way, it’s easier to understand how the user interaction flows as against having a bunch of unordered image files. Will be sharing more details about our mockups sometime.

Looking forward to learning what others are using to collaborate. Please share your experience.

Below are my notes from the event and it’s pretty lengthy but filled with insights.

Suresh: I felt I started off a little too early. (at 19)

Rohit: Started techTribe 3 years ago and had worked on 5 startups before this. (Explained a bit about how they stumbled upon the techTribe idea.) It was to be a collaborative knowledge management site where people are motivated to learn in a collaborative environment. From day 1 it had thought of referral based recruiting as it’s business model. They had to shutdown techTribe and even reject investor money since it didn’t make sense to accept it when the model hadn’t been proven even after 3 years. Rohit found out that it wouldn’t scale with tech but it needed to scale with people. Since collaborating and building people base really aren’t his strengths, he decided to call it ends. There were 2 indications which made the writing clear on the wall:

1. Curves: Alexa, Comscore, etc., site stats were headed in wrong direction.

2. Money wasn’t easily coming even with a good branding. techTribe brand was successful.

Ganapathy: He told about his 15 years long journey, with 6 years as a VC and 6 years as an entrepreneur.

Santosh: They started a movie ticketing startup to facilitate easy booking in Pune. They were loved by their users and 1st year was great for them with about 60,000 tickets being sold. However, things started changing from then on… There were massive changes in how multiplexes dealth with their partners and how they distributed and sold their tickets to. This didn’t resonate well with the BookEazy team and an alternate project they were working on called Lipikaar was seeming more attractive. So they eventually had to make the tough decision and shut down BookEazy.

Q: What should an entrepreneur be weary of?

• Suresh: Need to use the experience of others who have failed.
• Ganapathy: Lack of integrity (i.e., truthfulness) The fundamental reason is the founders get too obsessed with their ideas and refuse to see reality. You need to check every quarter and check with your users about your drift.
• Rohit: It’s like a marriage. You have wife, then buy a house, have kids, etc., It gets messier as it progresses. So check early and at each supposed milestones if you are doing well and quit early if it’s really not working out. You have to accept reality. You can try some more, but when you have lost the belief, it’s better to quit.

Audience: VCs look for tags like “Serial Entrepreneur” and if someone tells they have failed in their last 2 startups, then whats the general perception?

Ans: It the current idea and execution that matters.

Audience comment: It’s like a bad marriage. You stay put because you don’t want a “divorce” tag. Entrepreneurs get stuck and don’t want to go work for a company again.

Q: What were the scars and learning due to these failures?

• Suresh: Need to specialise in something, which helps you to understand issues involved at a great depth.
• Santosh: Lots of their users weren’t happy with their decision to shutdown.

Rajiv: In startups, entrepreneurs try to do everything / too much.

Suresh: On a related note, conversely, they also tend to think that somebody else will crack the “go-to-market” strategy for them, which is a mistake. Tech guys think business isn’t their domain and that they can find someone else to handle that aspect. But in an year you’ll learn that you have to learn it the hard way.

Communication aspects:

Ganapathy: It evolves over time and the conversations are ongoing. Depends on the history and chemistry they share with the VC.

Rohit: This is something that techTribe did right. The investors, senior management and top execs were always in the know of what was happening on a daily basis. So the eventual decision to shutdown wasn’t really a surprise.

Rohit: VCs usually spend around 80%-90% of there time hunting for new deals. However, right now it’s 50% reserved for their portfolio companies and 50% for new deals… On the other hand, an entrepreneur spends aroudn 10% of his time thinking about money. So who should be chasing who? Why are startups worried about VC validation? If the product is doing good, then the VCs will definitely come to you. There is no reason to believe otherwise. If there aren’t any ethical issues, then past failures doesn’t count much and it’s all about current idea and execution.

to VC or not to VC:

Ganapathy: If you understand the kind of projects VCs tend to fund, then you’ll understand the kind of projects for which you have to approach a VC. (some VC stats). So, if you can show VC that there could be about 10 times returns, then those tend to get funded.

Audience question: Do owners loose control when they take VC money?

Everyone nodded in unison: NO.

Suresh: Of all VC investments, 20% successfully exit and 60% tend to be lifestyle business.

Audience: Whats a lifestyle business?

Suresh: Businesses that enhance the founder’s lifestyle

Ganapathy: Don’t expect too much from a VC. It’s only one of the aspects which can help you succeed. But it’s entirely on your shoulders.

Rohit: I have an exactly opposite experience. Our VC helped with changing and evolving our models and were almost like cofounders in early stages. They would even make calls to their contacts on our behalf. So, select a right VC.

Ganapathy: Don’t count on VCs to get things done. You have to handle the things yourself.

Rohit nods in agreement.

Ganapathy: If they were so smart, they would be building the company themselves.

Suresh brought up the topic of accepting Strategic money and everyone thought it was a bad idea. Alok from Games2Win explained how it would be be difficult to make any meaningful decisions on your own once you accepted strategic money.

Session ended.

Hope you found these discussions insightful. Share your thoughts on any of these topics being discussed.