Name of presentation: Gaia Ajax Widgets
Description: Gaia Ajax Widgets is an Ajax library that differs from most other Ajax libraries, first of all it's commercially backed by a solid software vendor and secondly it's goal is to make developers able to create Ajax Solutions for ASP.NET and Mono without having to wade through lots of glue code like XMLHTTPRequest, JavaScript, Server-Side bindings and so on.
Gaia Ajax Widgets' main USPs are; * No custom JavaScript required (everything is still JavaScript for thebrowser though) * No learning curve * Richness in expressiveness meaning if you can dream about it you caneasily do it in Gaia
Bio: Thomas Hansen is 33 years old and is the CTO and founder of Frost Innovation AS (about to change to Gaia Innovations). He has been evangelizing FOSS ever since he started SmartWin++ 6 years ago (BSD), but he is now "strictly" Copyleft in all he does in the FOSS community. He is probably what most other would call a FOSS fundamentalist since he, in addition to (off course) the pragmatic viewpoint of FOSS (like having access to the source etc) also is a strong believer in that the Basic Building Blocks of the Fabric of Society should not be the intellectual property of one person or company.
Contact: thomas@frostinnovation.no
Interview
For a little background, can you describe the general topic of your presentation and tell us what is new in the last few months?
Gaia Ajax Widgets is a different Ajax library in that it aims to remove the concept of having to write custom JavaScript to get Ajax to work. I'll go a little bit through the semantics of Gaia Ajax Widgets and demonstrate writing a small "Hello World" application in Gaia that will show the uniqueness of Gaia as an Ajax library. In the last months the library has basically evolved at the speed of light and a couple of the new additions in Q4 2007 are Aspects, ViewPort Widget and lots of new examples. We've also gotten Eirik Chambe-Eng as a member of our board and have quadrupled the number of employers in the company the last 7 months.
Can you give a summary of what you will present? Why should someone choose to come to your presentation?
If you are interested in Ajax and are interested in reducing the Time2Market by 50%, increasing the maintainability of your projects by 80% and reducing the code complexity of your solutions by 90% Gaia is basically the only option in existence today, at least for .Net and Mono, probably for any platforms in general too. I'll demonstrate how to create a minimalistic Ajax "Hello World" application utilizing Gaia Ajax Widgets live.
How did you get involved in Free Software and in what way is it
important to you?
It started with that I needed tools for my day job as a software developer and I felt the urge for customizing my tools. Then I started SmartWin++ mostly because my current employer at that time refused me to work overtime and I didn't feel I got enough coding done in an 8 hour workday. So I started SmartWin++ just to have a "hubby project" to fiddle with in the evenings. Then I discovered how much more energy it gave me to work on FOSS compared to non-FOSS sw, and then when I realized that it was possible to create FOSS as my "day job" the choice was obvious.
Is there any other particular presentation you'll be going to? Why
is that topic of interest?
I'm interested in Qtopia, mostly because I'm curious about how our Trolls are doing in that area. OLPC I'll attend, mostly because I'm a _HUGE_ fan of the project! Also I think I'll attend Free Software licensing to listen to Shane hopefully teach me something new :)
Also I am probably what others would refer to as a "fundamentalist" in regards to FOSS and therefore I'd be interested in listening to Digital Rights by Mathias Klang. Unfortunately I'll have to go before the ending keynote on Saturday since I need to be back in Norway early Saturday evening. Georg Greve talking about Freedom at stake would be a great talk to attend... :(
