2007 Candidate:
Tracy Ragan
Chief Operations Officer
Nominee for Contributing Member representative
In early 2002 Tracy started hearing about the "Eclipse Project" from a few of the Openmake developers. She took a closer look and was immediately surprised by what she found, an open source effort focused around a common IDE platform. By the end of 2002, Tracy had become a "founding steward" of this new and exciting community, and the first women on the board.
Tracy has been a very active member of Eclipse always adding her "2 cents" along the way. Some of you may know her from her involvement in early marketing efforts such as the JavaOne show floor games, t-shirts, Eclipse logo designs as well as technical involvement in the heated debates regarding Swing vs. SWT. Others may know Catalyst Systems through their involvement in the ALF project.
Tracy's experience working with the Eclipse community for the last 5 years has given her a strong understanding of how an Add-in Provider can benefit by getting involved in this very dynamic organization.
| email: | tracy.ragan at openmake.com |
Vision
Involvement with Eclipse from Add-in Provider companies is a critical component of the overall success of Eclipse. Some Add-in Providers have learned how to stay involved even as Eclipse has grown. I believe there are many more Add-in Providers who want to be active, not passive, members of Eclipse but simply don't know how. Add-in Providers need to be better organized so that they can more easily see how to get involved. This may be done by simply adding an "Add-in Provider Help Wanted" page on the Eclipse web site.
In addition, Add-in providers need to be recognized as a core pillar of Eclipse. This can be done through better recognition programs for active Add-in Providers and an increased focus on Add-in Providers through Public Relations contacts. Add-in Provider contribution is important. What we don't want is for the Eclipse organization to evolve to a place where Add-in Providers simply serve as an audience to the Strategic Members. We are the "members at large" and represent one of the core pillars of this organization.
About the Candidate
Tracy has had extensive experience in the development and implementation of business applications. She began her consulting career in 1989 consulting to fortune 500 organizations in the areas of testing, configuration management and build management. It was during her consulting experiences that Tracy recognized the lack of build management procedures for the distributed platform that had long been considered standard on the mainframe.
This lead her to co-found Catalyst Systems in 1995 and the creation of Openmake, one of the first commerical enterprise build management tools on the market and the only build management tool that offers developers a reusable solution for scripting builds. Tracy served as the CEO of Catalyst Systems for 12 years.She has a Bachelor of Science Degree from California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA.
Affiliation
Tracy has many interests outside of the Computer industry. She is involved in animal rescue, rides quarter horses, trains dogs and holds a first degree black belt in ISKF Shotokan Karate.