Geeks speak at Eclipse conference

Source: SearchWebServices

Summary:
Santa Clara - Doing his best to bust the myth of the introverted geek pounding out code in a darkened room, Ward Cunningham, self-described programmer and infectiously social extrovert, took the stage yesterday at EclipseCon 2006.

He's now director of committer community development for the Eclipse Foundation and perhaps most famous for inventing one of the hottest collaborative tools on the Web, the Wiki. Since Eclipse development is done by teams of programmers working without the project management overseers usually found in private enterprise, all the projects in Eclipse require a commitment to being part of a community working in collaboration.

"What we produce is ideas, which some people define as intellectual property," Cunningham told his programmer audience. "It's done through collaboration based on a community."

In the absence of a manager who can crack the whip over reluctant workers, the Eclipse Way, as it's known, requires one thing that Cunningham put into a single word: Collaboration.