Stuttgart celebrates 5th Eclipse with special guest

I just got back from the Eclipse Happy Birthday party in Stuttgart. Most of the guys are probably still there enjoying the nice buffet and cocktails. As usual I will post pictures later on.

It was a great gathering of probably 70 people (I am bad at guessing crowds). Special guest at our event was Erich Gamma, one of the godfathers of Eclipse. Unfortunately I didnt get the chance to talk to him. Erich gave a brief overview of the way from closed to open source and lined out some interesting facts. Again, one of the core messages was that Eclipse lifes trough its community. This is also what Mike mentions in his blog today. We then switched to Erich's colleagues in Zurich (Daniel Megert and Martin Eschlikon) who gave a very cool and funny look back into former Eclipse versions.
This Stuttgart-Zurich interaction talk was followed by a interesting Eclipse facts quiz. I only knew the answers to questions who didnt win prices, but other were more lucky and the guys handed out books, eclipse shirts and umbrellas.

The crowd then motioned down to the main hall of the "Alte Scheune" (old barn) and started the cosy part of the night. All in all a great evening and lots of Eclipse enthusiastic people.

Hope all the other parties are as good as this one was, although it will be hard to beat Stuttgart :)