Help with promoting Apache Pivot

[Roger Whitcomb <rw...@apache.org>]

Hi ComDev,
     From the last ASF Board report for Apache Pivot, it was suggested 
that we (the Pivot PMC) reach out to ComDev for help with promoting the 
Pivot project.  We seem to have reached a point where very few new 
people are attracted to the project and most "old" users have finished 
their applications and moved on.
     In addition, the move by Google Chrome to eliminate Java Applet 
support (via removal of the old NPAPI interface) leaves the potential 
market for IIAs (Installable Internet Applications) even smaller.  
Personally my (big) Pivot application is still being developed and 
extended, so I'm still very active in the project, but I feel we need a 
"kick start" to attract new blood.
     One thing I have been toying with, but since I have no experience 
here haven't had time to do anything with, is trying to move into the 
Android market, since Pivot is a tool for building Java GUI 
applications.  But I have no idea whether we could even build Pivot, 
much less an application on top of it, with the Android SDK.
     Another option I have tossed around is "something like" the Falcon 
compiler that was developed for Apache Flex, so that Pivot applications 
could be built and deployed outside the Java applet world (as "native" 
HTML5/CSS/JS applications).
     I have also talked to a few people (including Shane Curcuru) about 
tie-ins to other Apache projects.  I have done a tiny bit of that by 
building a Pivot file browser component that leverages Commons VFS2 in 
order to browse any number of remote file systems. But I can imagine a 
number of other places it *might* fit into the Hadoop world (for 
instance), or some of the Apache internal applications (Whimsy??).

     So, I'm coming to ComDev in hopes that others may have some ideas 
(just in general, even) for building up the Apache Pivot community and 
attracting other interest.

Many thanks,
~Roger Whitcomb
Apache Pivot PMC Chair