I totally forgot to mention it for the longest time, but having a fruit hat picture on my blog landed me a free entry to EclipseCon in Santa Clara, CA, USA. Alogient was kind enough to pay for my transportation and hotel room.
I'm writing this from there; the connectivity is really good overall, I wish I'd been wired like this last time I went to a conference...
I'll have more things to say about the overall experience later, but right now, there's an interesting thought I want to write down.
Today's keynote was given by the guy behind Fake Steve Jobs, who, at one point, made an interesting (if not very original) parallel between Apple and a cult. It's mostly interesting because during lunch, I sat at the "Maven" table (and unfortunately, none of the m2eclipse or q4e guys were there--guys, you suck! :-) and one of my lunch colleagues made the reflection that people get on the Maven train because they've invested so much time learning it that they want it to be worth something.
Note that the guy saying that being wry, and we all had a good laugh. But it got me to think that Maven could be seen as a cult as much as Apple, but for totally opposite reasons:
- Apple is a cult because they do products that are designed and work really really well the first time you pick them up;
- Maven is a cult because it does not work at all the first time you pick it up, and probably the converted really just want other people to suffer as much as them :-)
So, now you can decide whether that's the reason I'm a Maven fan...
