David A. Thomas (software developer): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:10, 25 July 2023

Revision as of 05:43, 29 January 2024

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'''David A. Thomas,''' sometimes known as '''"Big" Dave Thomas''' is a software developer, researcher and entrepreneur. He was founder and CEO of [[Object Technology International]], which created the products that became [[IBM VisualAge]] and eventually [[Eclipse (software)|Eclipse]].

He has taught and researched at universities in Canada and Australia, and advises R&D teams in [[big data]] and fast data, [[agile software development]], and [[object technology]]. Thomas iswas the CEO and Chairman of YOW! conferences and workshops until the business was acquired by Skills Matter in 2020.

== Career ==

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Thomas was part of the organizing committees for [[OOPSLA]], [[ECOOP]], and the Danish Java and Object Oriented (JAOO) conferences for many years.

In 2008, he brought a conference much like JAOO to Australia. English speakers tended to spell out the acronym, while Danes and Germans pronounced the name "Yow". As the conference became less Java-oriented, the decision was made to remove all doubt and call it simply YowYOW. In Europe, JAOO was renamed GOTO conference in 2011.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://gotocon.com/aboutjaoo/ |website=GOTO conference |title=About GOTO |access-date=2020-06-10}}</ref>

There are now Yow conferences and other events every year in several Australian and Asian cities. In 2023 the YOW brand was acquired by Trifork, the organiser of the GOTO conferences in Europe.

== Awards ==