highlights from ebay devcon in chicago

Boy I'm pooped. Ever since I returned from maternity leave back in March, I've been working non-stop on a little developer event we call the eBay Developers Conference in Chicago, from June 16-18. If you are friends or family who haven't heard from me in 3 months, here's why. :)

On Monday, the major buzz for the show and the blogosphere was around Project Echo and the opening keynote demo showcasing the ability for developers to embed their applications built on the eBay platform where hundreds of thousands of sellers manage their businesses on eBay.com. On Tuesday, Mike Shaver, Chief Evangelist for Mozilla spoke to developers on the same day that Firefox 3.0 browser launched, celebrating Download Day 2008 right here at eBay DevCon and giving a shoutout to the Firefox Companion for eBay. woot woot!

eBay also honored ten members of our developer community, who are building applications on the eBay platform for achievements in improving user experience and customer service, increasing platform engagement and extending eBay in exciting new directions:

eBay Star Developer Award winners:

• DSR Rockstar: ShipRush by Z-Firm (USA)
• Most Innovative Application: Jaast for Wii by Scendix Software (Germany)
• Early Adopter: iRibbit by Aduci (USA)
• Service to the Developer Community: Joe Fox (elzorro) of BD Network (UK)
• Best Design: Kyozou Widget by Kyozou (Canada)

Runners-up:

• DSR Rockstar: ezSupport for eBay by HostedSupport (USA)
• Most Innovative Application: Mobile Alerts for Sellers by ahTXT (USA)
• Early Adopter: GarageBuy by iwascoding (Germany)
• Service to the Developer Community: Anthony Sukow of Terapeak (Canada)
• Best Design: Video advertisements for eBay listings by Vzaar (UK)

For those of you keeping count, we've got winners represented across 4 countries from our global e-commerce platform. Congratulations to our 2008 winners!!

For full coverage of all the news out of eBay Developers Conference 2008, you can check out the eBay Developer blog.

developers got social at ebay devcon

We all know that sometimes the best part of conferences is what happens outside of the sessions. Developers got social this year at eBay Developers Conference on our eBay DevCon Twitter. Chicago is a fun town and so was looking into the thought cloud surrounding all of the ideas and conversations happening in the hallways of our DevCon event. Blogging, photo sharing and adding friends from our Facebook event were also popular ways to spend time in our Developer Lounge.

Of course there were also offline ways to network as well, including our Beer Bash and PayPal Party at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Online or in person, the eBay developer community is a social bunch.

eBay devcon 2008 in chicago

Reflecting thing- Chicago art.
Originally uploaded by rinklefree

I'm here in Chicago for the eBay Developers Conference. I challenge you to name a better city for kick ass public art. Check out my favorite below, called Cloud Gate.

See you all for the keynote tomorrow @ 9:30AM, McCormick Place West!

Make sure all of you blogging and taking photos are tagging them ebaydevcon and ebaydevcon08, and follow the devcon twitter at ebaydevcon08 to jump in on the microblogging.