The select few to whom I’ve mentioned my blog know that it will mainly be a blog about my passion of the last few years, Eclipse. I’ve been developing in Eclipse for quite a long time and so I’m aiming for a job at a company that does Eclipse development by the time I graduate (if you work at such a company, please contact me!)

But this post in particular is about how I got some Eclipse swag that will help me promote myself as a user/developer/fan of Eclipse. I’m talking, of course, of this pretty sweet jacket.

Don’t get me wrong. I have tons of swag for different things. And the idea isn’t that I’m wearing it to show off that I’m a fanboy (which, depending on your definition, I may very well not be). But being that my career is going in an Eclipse-centric direction, I like the idea of having a jacket that conveys it.

Yes, I know I am making this out to be a big deal. I’m sure there are hundreds or thousands of Eclipse jackets around the world. But to me, it has meaning.

Background

I wish I could say that I got my jacket by winning an Eclipse contributor’s contest, where I was deemed to be one of the most useful developers. Nope. Instead, I drew the 3rd prettiest picture in a drawing contest!

Honestly, when I created this logo (I submitted a few others too), I did it as a fun exercise with no expectations of it going anywhere. It is similar to how I submit a logo every year for CUSEC. I encourage others to take my ideas, but use actual artistic skills to make it look nice. So that my logo made it past the first round (with 232 entries!), second round, and even lived on to the third and final round was to me quite something.

Maybe I’m getting better at this logo designing thing, even though it is in no way on my radar as far as a career is concerned. My hope is that I can leverage this as much as possible to work my way inside of the Eclipse community. This has actually given me an opportunity to talk to two big names of the Eclipse Foundation: Lynn Gayowski and Ian Skerrett. I even had a nice 10-15 minute phone conversation with Ian, in part talking about how I can get a job developing for Eclipse.

In the end, all good things, resulting in me getting closer to the Eclipse community and getting a nice jacket along the way.

Oh, and as for the winner of the logo contest? Well, though there was a first place finisher (who got a $650 reward!), the Eclipse Foundation decided to keep their original logo. I am quite happy, because despite respecting the submissions of my artistic peers, none of them (including my own submission) spoke to me as the fresh and modern face of Eclipse moving forward. Oh well, no rush. Hopefully they’ll have better luck next time. I recommend using one of the artists already in the community who has created some nice logos already. You just need to go to the eclipse website to see in some of their icons and product logos that they have some artistic talent right under their noses.