Saturday, December 20, 2008

Demo Camp Chronicles: Iasi, Romania

On November 11, I had the pleasure of hosting the first-ever Eclipse demo camp in Romania, showcasing some of the Eclipse-based products being developed in Iasi.

Drama

The evening started with a little drama.

Looking at this rare photo taken on a cell phone, one might suspect that it depicts my reaction to a world economy crashing. But no.



That is the moment when I realized that the wireless internet connection at the restaurant was weak . I was unable to connect to the license server and therefore the first demo was toast.

In a brilliant move, Andrei (in the yellow sweater) suggested to use the offline trial license to start the product. The show then went on.

Preparations and Photo-ops









Master of Ceremonies

By 7 p.m., I had taken a chill pill, so I did the MC thing by welcoming the guests and giving a quick overview of the program for the evening.

Hugo Boss was the unofficial sponsor of the event. Hopefully, next year Gillette will also sponsor.



Food and Beverage

Food and drink were served right away. It is a good idea to watch demos on a full stomach and not make people wait.



Demo 1: The Latest and Greatest in SQL Development

Marius Papara gave a preview of some of the new features in the upcoming 2.0 release of Embarcadero PowerSQL.



Demo 2: XEclipse

Eduard Moraru of XWiki gave a presentation on XEclipse, an Eclipse plug-in for viewing, editing and managing XWiki pages.



Demo 3: Database Change Management

Razvan Fodor and Sergiu Vidrascu showed how Embarcadero Change Manager can help database admininstrators and developers cope with the problems related to database change management lifecycle.



Wrap-up

The event was a great success. Thanks to the Eclipse Foundation for sponsoring
and to the organizing committee for their hard work.
Next stop: the Warsaw demo camp.

2 comments:

Ed Merks said...

You look very sharp! How does it feel to actually be a model? I've always wondered being so into modeling and all...

Also, how does one go about getting Hugo Boss to sponsor an event? My attire is getting a little threadbare.

Do you ever find that folks start to treat you more like a salesman than a techie because of your sharp looks? I sometimes worry that being well-dressed might undermine my credibility...

I love the way the photos capture the story. Thanks for sharing them. Please try to be more timely next time.

Wassim Melhem said...

Thanks, Ed. As always, you are too kind.

Incidentally, that's how I weathered the world financial crisis. I invested all my money in nice clothes :)