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Eric Rizzo: Top Ambassador Nominee

At 12:45 PM on Feb 12, 2007, Daniel Spiewak wrote:

Eric Rizzo (Tampa, Forida, USA) has been nominated for the Eclipse Top Ambassador Award . EclipseZone asked him a little about himself:

How did you first get involved with Eclipse, and how long ago?

I began as a newbie Eclipse user in early 2002. I came to the community from the VisualAge for Java community, where I had been a vocal third-party participant for several years. I was very disappointed to see IBM end-of-life VAJ and was skeptical of what they were trying to accomplish with Eclipse. Needless to say, I'm glad I was wrong and they did indeed succeed

What Eclipse-related projects are you working on and what are you doing?

I am not a contributor to any Eclipse projects, primarily because my volunteer time is already allocated elsewhere. I've adopted roles as unofficial Welcome Wagon, Tour Guide, Instructor, Evangelist, Idea Factory, and occasionally Critic. I have recently started learning about plug-in development and hope to eventually become a contributor (of code, that is), but for now I enjoy helping others get the most use out of Eclipse and improve it with their own ideas.

What's your favourite Eclipse feature that you've added?

Since I'm not working on any Eclipse project, I'll have to resort to my favorite Enhancement Request that I filed: Link the working sets for all views in a Perspective. It ended up being implemented as Widow Working Sets, which is actually broader scope that I originally intended. Of course, the credit goes to the Eclipse devs who actually turned the idea into reality.

What's your favourite feature/plugin (commercial or open source)?

I have to say that the incremental compiler. Coming from a Smalltalk and VAJ background, it just seems like a natural way to work. and I think it is one of the features that really sets Eclipse apart from other tools, at least in the beginning it did; lately the others are starting to catch up.

What OSes do you do development on?

Develop on Windows, deploy to Linux in most cases.

Are you attending EclipseCon or giving a talk this year?

Unfortunately, no - I can't spare the time to attend. Unless, of course, some generous company wants to pay for me to attend...

What Eclipse-related bookmarks/feeds (other than EclipseZone, of course) do you frequently use?

I am always hanging out on the eclipse.org newsgroups.

• http://www.eclipse-plugins.info
• https://bugs.eclipse.org

What do you get up to in life when you're not thinking about or working with Eclipse?

Loving my 8-month old son, outdoors activities, and watching The Amazing Race (and dreaming about being a contestant

Lastly, how do you see yourself in the Eclipse community, and why should people vote for you?

Well, I was quite surprised to garner a nomination; the other names are much more prolific than I in terms of writing about and/or contributing code to Eclipse. However, I do spend a great deal of time trying to help others on the newsgroups. I feel that if someone has taken the time to discover and post to the groups, that is an opportunity to really bring them into the fold of the Eclipse community, so I dedicate time each day to helping such people. I am also just generally a "mentor" personality - I get great enjoyment and satisfaction out of sharing the knowledge I have. I also learned a lot from that forum and feel like it is my duty to give back as much as I am able. I sincerely hope that the advice, tips, and occasional criticism I give helps not only grow the community but also improve the product. It is a product I am grateful to have and really believe in.

EclipseZone would like to thank those that took part, and please remember to vote for the individual awards prior to the closing date of February 16th 2007.

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