Shedding Some Light

Cool Tool: Remind Me Attachments

2009-05-16T23:07:00.004-04:00

I am sure this only happens to me, but it happened a couple of times this week and is one of those things that quite frankly is embarrassing: forgetting to attach a file to an email.

Email: Please see the attached file for your review and comments.

Response: Uh Rick, nothing attached.

Me: Doh!

So today one of my colleagues was kind enough to point me toward Remind Me Attachments. She said she recently started using it and it helps. I checked it out and the developer only charges US$5 and is compatible with Outlook 2007. Cool. I will try out almost any software that saves me time or frustration for less than $50.

It was a slight pain in the neck to get installed and working, but the short FAQ was helpful. There is no documentation, and I actually tripped over the settings dialog while I was looking for the add-ins dialog in Outlook. Once you have it installed (simple Setup.EXE) you need to go into the Outlook Options dialog. A new tab is added for the Remind Me Attachments. This new page has a checkbox to turn the feature on and five text boxes for keywords to be recognized. I added:

Attached
Attachment

No sooner did I get it installed I found myself testing it out purely by accident. It already has saved me once. A dialog is displayed if you don't have a file attached and one of your keywords is found in the message body. You still can send the message after the warning without attaching a file.

So far I have not run into any compatibility issues. I don't know if it is compatible with Outlook versions prior to 2007. But so far it saved me from one embarrassing moment, which completely makes it worth the US$5!

Southwest Fox 2009: Registration Opens

2009-05-01T09:14:00.004-04:00

Months of preparation come to a climax today as we announce our speakers and sessions, and get rolling on the registration for Southwest Fox 2009. Even though this is our third year doing this, it is still exciting and still fun. We also added some new wrinkles into the event.

Sleep in a little more in the morning - 8:30 start times instead of 8:00.
"Green option" for registration to skip the conference binder, but still get materials in PDF before the conference.
New registration application to electronically send in the registration.
Super-saver, early-bird, and regular registration levels and times.
New "Technology" track looks at tools and technologies to make life as a developer easier or more productive, including such things as virtual machines and source control.

There still may be a few surprises to come too.

We also worked very hard with the budget to ensure people had the opportunity to register for the same price as last year. We are doing the best we can to continue to make Southwest Fox fit into your budget this year. The conference center hotel rooms are the same price as last year, and the conference fee is the same price as last year if you register before September 1st.

Topping the first five Southwest Fox Conferences is not an easy task. Coming up with new ideas while retaining the best of the past is a challenge each year. Still, I think we have put together the foundation to make this year the best ever.

One of the other new things is our first ever Ceil Silver Ambassador. Cesar Chalom is coming to represent the Fox Community from Brazil and South America. We made this announcement a couple of weeks ago. Since the announcement I have heard from a lot of people who are really excitied to meet Cesar in person. I know I am one of his fans and look forward to seeing him in Mesa.

Over the last six months or so we have been working very hard to encourage some new people to share their knowledge with the Fox Community. This has been a goal of the organizers since day one. Over the last couple of years we had a few speakers who have not spoken in a while return to the speaker circuit and have introduced a couple of new people, but not to the level we initially hoped for. This year is completely different though and I am really excited that we have what I am refering to as the fab five freshmen (Steve Ellenoff, Walt Krzystek, Jody L. Meyer, Paul C. Mrozowski, and Jim Nelson) speaking for the first time at Southwest Fox. Jim and Walt took part in the "Show Us Your Apps" session last year, Steve spoke at Fox Forward a couple of years ago, and Paul and Jody deliver regular presentations at their local Fox user groups so they are not really rookies. I think this is super important moving forward to grow the speaker community and this is a huge step in the right direction.

Naturally we are also bringing back some seasoned favorites too. Menachem Bazian, Rick Borup, Craig Boyd, Mike Feltman, Toni M. Feltman, Tamar E. Granor, Doug Hennig, Cathy Pountney, Rick Schummer, Alan Stevens, and Christof Wollenhaupt. A terrific line up.

Some of the great things you already expect from Southwest Fox:

Terrific selection of sessions from great presenters.
28 regular conference topics, 4 simultaneous sessions, 4 pre-conference sessions, and a keynote will pack your days with learning opportunities and inspiration.
White papers from every session (mandated by the organizers) so you can read about sessions you can't fit into your schedule, or review material you saw at the conference when you return home.
Lunch Thursday if you register for two pre-conference sessions
Lunch Friday and Saturday for all attendees
Dinner Friday night

I hope you take some time to review the sessions when you have a chance. I also hope you will consider joining us in Mesa this October.

All the details are posted on the Southwest Fox Web site. Watch for more news on our conference blog and follow us on Twitter too.

VFP 9 - Reporting Bugs

2009-04-08T16:07:00.004-04:00

Microsoft moved all bug reporting for VFP to their Connect system years ago. The FoxPro Community followed the Microsoft direction with some kicking and screaming. One of the drawbacks of this was the VFP reports went through the Visual Studio group and we never got the feeling of being a first class citizen in the process.

Microsoft has fixed this. Well, sort of fixed this. {g}

About a month ago Gianni Turri posted a message on the ProFox list server noting a bug report he posted was rejected with the following message:

Thank you for submitting this Connect Issue. Visual FoxPro is no longer supported though Connect. Please use the Visual FoxPro Support Center (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb190294.aspx) or the Visual FoxPro Discussion Forum on MSDN (http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=60&SiteID=1) for more information or suggestions. You can also contact Microsoft Help and Support (http://support.microsoft.com ) for further assistance. For additional information please visit the Community Resources page on Visual FoxPro MSDN site (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb190227.aspx) as well as the VFPX project on CodePlex (http://www.codeplex.com/VFPX). Thank you, Visual Studio Product Team.

[Editorial note: interesting plug for VFPX - yeah!]

I confirmed this with Milind Lele. He told me Microsoft Connect is great for products in continuous development and allows better management of the reports to flow into the next release. All Visual FoxPro bug reports need to go through Product Support Services.

To get to Product Support Services you go here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vfoxpro/bb190294.aspx

Near the bottom of the page you will find "Get Help from Microsoft". Click on Assisted Support. Scroll through the list of products to find Visual FoxPro 9.0 (or 8.0) and click on the link. Or you can go to this link:

http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?Gprid=7992

You will see three options:

Email Support (24 hour response time, two free incidents, US$99 for support)
Online Request to be called (US$259 per incident, response time based on severity)
Request by phone (US$259 per incident during business hours, US$515 after hours)

Other options for contracts are available.

So I asked about "paying" to report a bug. You do initially have to pay if you are past your two free support emails. But if the support people determine it is a product bug (their definition of being out of spec, not your perception of what you might consider a bug), your payment will be credited. Exact words from Milind:

Actually for a valid bug, the charges get reverted. The quickest way to get a fix is to have a hotfix issued. And the fastest and surest way to do that is to create that request from support.

The good news: you will be routed to the folks that know VFP best and in my opinion, some of the sharpest folks supporting software anywhere. Plus the reports are going directly to them, not through a system that treated our favorite product as less than first class.

My recommendation: if you think you have run across some "buggy feeling feature" in Visual FoxPro, post the issue on one of the forums. Let the Fox Community help you flush out any issues to see if it is indeed a bug. Then report it though the Product Support Service channel.

VFP 9 SP2 Hotfix Update

2009-04-07T23:12:00.003-04:00

I just downloaded the latest update to the VFP 9 SP2 Hotfix this evening. This latest file includes the missing VFP9T.DLL (Multi-threaded runtime) file.

Same place, same bat channel...

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB968409

I have been told the other hotfixes are no longer password protected too, but I have not had time to test because of a limited bandwidth while on vacation.

VFP 9 SP2 Hotfix Minor Glitch

2009-04-03T22:15:00.004-04:00

Earlier today in the comments section on my post about the release of the new VFP 9 SP2 hotfix, Sergey Berezniker and Emerson Santon Reed noted the VFP9T.DLL runtime file is not included in the post. It is something I noticed the day of the release but was tainted by the fact the Report Designer is not valid in the runtime. What I forgot is about the rollup of the previous hotfixes and how they should be included. The multi-threaded runtime is in the included Merge Module so you can get it by building an installer and installing the file. But it would be much simpler to get the file in the hotfix download.

The other issue is the previous two VFP 9 SP2 hotfixes (not the latest) just posted on Code Gallery still have the download files password protected. Annoying for sure, but not super critical because the new hotfix has these two rolled up. The business case for the old hotfix might be valid for some developers.

I contacted the Fox Team at Microsoft this morning and they jumped on the issue. This evening I got word that the fixes are in the final stages of getting prepared for release and should be ready in the next few days.

So the choice is yours. You can pull the hotfix and start testing the changes and how they impact your application. If you want the multi-threaded runtime and don't want to build an install to get it, just hold still for a few more days. Things are getting fixed in all three downloads.

VFP 9 SP2 Hotfix Released!

2009-04-02T16:33:00.003-04:00

10, 9, 8, 7, 6 (main engine start), 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…. Liftoff!

I bet you think I am talking about a launch of NASA's Space Shuttle. If you know me this is a good guess, but this time you are wrong. I have better news!

Microsoft has released a hotfix to the most serious Report Designer bug in VFP 9 SP2. This is the Data Group bug Cathy Pountney first blogged about here: Gotcha: Serious report bug with Data Groups introduced in VFP 9 SP2.

You can read about the fix in the Microsoft KnowledgeBase article #968409, titled “FIX: The group header of a data grouping is not printed at the top of each page as expected after you install Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9.0 Service Pack 2”

This fix is considered by many to be the most serious bug introduced in VFP 9 SP2, and has often been referred to as the main stumbling block to the adoption of VFP 9 SP2. I am hopeful with this news that you will consider downloading the new hotfix and giving it a try to see if it works well for your apps. Only you can make the determination on what is best for your customers. Yes, there are more bugs to squash, but a high percentage of them have decent workarounds where this particular bug did not.

Additionally, there is some terrific news on how you can get the hotfix. Previous to this release Microsoft only made Visual FoxPro hotfixes available by calling Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS), report the bug in the hotfix, and then Microsoft would make it available to you. Hotfixes are easier for the team to release because there is less overhead, but getting it to the Fox Community is a pain in the neck because of the PSS bottleneck. So the “Fox Team” came up with releasing this important hotfix through MSDN Code Gallery so any Visual FoxPro developer can download and apply the patch without calling PSS. I think this is a real positive move for the Fox Community.

The hotfix can be downloaded on the download page of Code Gallery for the KB article.

Both the other hotfixes released for VFP 9 SP2 are rolled up into this release so if you have patched SP2 for the following fixes they are included in the new build:

FIX: The toolbar on an SDI form is disabled in Visual FoxPro 9.0 Service Pack 2 (build 6303, 12-Apr-2008, KB 948528)
FIX: Records from another user session that violate the criteria for a parent table are displayed in the browse window for a child table in a Visual FoxPro 9.0 Service Pack 2 multiuser environment (build 6602, 03-Jun-2008, KB 952548)

Update: Milind Lele tells me the previous hotfixes for VFP 9 SP2 are also available on MSDN Code Gallery (just in case you are not interested in the Group Header fix. {g})

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/kb948528
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB952548

Just in case you have not heard, in addition to the core EXE and runtime hotfixes we have a new VFP 9 SP2 Help file available on VFPX.

I am very excited about this news. I want to thank the “Fox Team” for their hard work and personal efforts to make the hotfix happen. I also want to thank those in the Fox Community who have reported VFP 9 SP2 bugs, those who have documented the workarounds, those who researched when some of the alleged SP2 bugs really surfaced, and those who tested out the hotfix to ensure it is the best possible fix for the reports at this time.

Hopefully this is just the third in a string of hotfixes we will see from Microsoft as they support the product we all love. Today is a very good day. This is one small step for VFP, one giant leap for VFP developers. Please spread the word!

Update: Read more about this release on Cathy Pountney's blog!

SWFox: Session Proposals Due Today

2009-03-16T12:50:00.000-04:00

Today is the day the session proposals from potential speakers are due. If you sent topics in for consideration and did not get a response from Tamar, please resend them to speakers AT swfox DOT net. You can also copy to info AT swfox DOT net if you want to have a backup submission.

Making Migration Choices

2009-03-09T17:25:00.005-04:00

One of the hallmarks of FoxPro and Visual FoxPro is the level of backwards compatibility the Fox Team was committed to during the decades it was created and enhanced. The compatibility was not just from FoxPro to FoxPro versions, but often was extended to other XBase flavors such as dBASE and Clipper. One of the side-effects of this decision by Fox Software and Microsoft is that developers can easily port code forward, even when there might be easier or better ways to accomplish the same thing.

Over the last week I have helped another developer migrate some Clipper DOS code to Visual FoxPro. The decision to do a direct port of the code was made way before I was asked to help. Because of the deep commitment of the Fox Team this port was working except for three areas where the developer requested my help. The one aspect that caused me the most grief was colors - requirements are to match the colors exactly as the old system.

I figured the color issue would be a snap because the color settings were done through procedures, not on individual @SAY,@GET lines. Each procedure had SET COLOR TO commands. What I did not realize was the color pairings in Clipper were done in numbers instead of letters (apparently Clipper supports both). Visual FoxPro seems to run the code, but the colors were not matching. Took me a while to figure this out,but VFP is more accurate with color pairings as letters. Once I understood this trap I was able to get the colors going in the right direction.

One issue with the colors though was the background color was not set correctly on many of the screens. The @SAY and @GET code displayed correctly. What I learned is that VFP is setting the screen backcolor to the backcolor of the first @SAY done after a CLEAR. Unfortunately that took me a long time to figure out. Once I understood how it works I developed some code that handles it. Oh, and don't think you can just set _SCREEN.BackColor, it does not work well with @SAY or @GET code.

I guess the Fox Team did not sufficiently test scenarios with @SAY and @GET compatibility (tongue firmly planted in cheek).

Why am I posting this? Is it because I believe many people are running Clipper or FoxBase/FoxPro code in Visual FoxPro these days? No. Just as a reminder to those developers who are faced with the choice of migrating old code to Visual FoxPro and some of the headaches you might face if you select to go the route of running the "compatible" code in Visual FoxPro. The backwards compatibility with old style user interface elements might not be as compatible as you would like. I believe the developer I am working with made the right call for his customer's situation, and the customer's requirements and budget, but the cost is going to be many hair pulling moments. Unfortunately in my case I was working with a fixed price budget, and I blew the hours by three times the allotted amount of time. So much for my weekend being fun.

Another lesson re-learned at the school of hard knocks.

VFP Upsizing Wizard Tip

2009-02-06T17:37:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week I finished writing the chapter on the Upsizing Wizard for the upcoming Sedna update book we are close to completing. In the chapter review Doug Hennig pointed out a possible third way to run it (the first two being from the VFP Command Window and from the Data Explorer). He suggested trying to rename the Sedna Upsizing Wizard to the name of the old Upsizing Wizard and copying it in the Wizards folder under the VFP root.

This got me thinking. All the Wizards are driven off a table called Wizards.DBF. What if I just added a record in this table and pointed it to the new Sedna version? It works. All part of the extensibility of the Visual FoxPro IDE.

First locate the Upsizing Wizard record in the Wizards table:

USE (HOME() + "Wizards\Wizard.DBF") ;
   IN 0 SHARED ALIAS VFPWizard

SELECT VFPWizard

LOCATE FOR Name = "Microsoft SQL Server Upsizing Wizard" ;
      AND Type = "Upsizing"

Change the Program memo field to:

c:\program files\microsoft visual foxpro 9\sedna\upsizingwizard\upsizingwizard.app

Or alter the path to your environment setup as needed.

If you want both the original and the Sedna version, just do a SCATTER and GATHER and make the change in the second one. I recommend also changing the Name column because each time you start up the Upsizing Wizard from the menu you will select between the two and the Name column is displayed for you to pick which one you want.

The downloads for the chapter will include a program you can run to correct the registration.

VFP 9 SP2 Help file (fixed) coming to VFPX

2009-01-22T23:09:00.006-05:00

As you may know, the April 2008 version of the VFP 9 SP2 Help file is broken. Actually I would consider it a serious mess. Lots of cosmetic things broken, and hyperlinks broken on important things like properties, events, and methods. I blogged about many of the problems found. A real mess, literally unusable, and not much hope from Microsoft to get it fixed by the Help team because of resources.

Several people (who will remain nameless at this time) started working behind the scenes to fix the Help file by decompiling it, repairing the problems, and rebuilding it. Some of us allegedly got closer than others and there allegedly was lots of collaboration, but one person allegedly made a serious breakthrough with lots of time put into getting it corrected.

I contacted Alan Griver and asked if a Help file allegedly was fixed, would Microsoft post it for the Fox Community to use it. You see, there are lots of legal entanglements with copyrights and third-parties and no one wanted anyone to be thrown in jail. It took a while and I was starting to lose hope.

A couple of nights ago Alan emailed me with the news that we can post the changes on VFPX under the Creative Commons license. This means the Fox Community has the rights to improve the VFP 9 SP2 Help file! Some final tweaks are going to be made to the new file, and one additional fix has to be made, but soon a usable VFP 9 SP2 Help file will be posted.

Thanks to Alan Griver for spending time battling Microsoft Legal and going to bat again for the Fox Community. Proof again that even though there might not be an official Fox Team at Microsoft, we still have friends who are helping us out. And thanks to all allegedly involved in the battle to assemble the Help file without some key source files. You know who you allegedly are and you folks rock!

VFP: Grid Header Pictures

2008-12-17T21:05:00.003-05:00

Those following along on Twitter know that I am working with Craig Boyd's GridExtras class in one of my customer projects. This is an interesting tool that is making me look really proactive to my customers.

One of the features is the ability for users to double-click on the header and the RecordSource is sorted on the column in the grid. Jody Meyer enhanced this to toogle from ascending to descending to no order. The columns can also be filtered which is an awesome feature because Craig mimics the dialogs to work like column filtering in Microsoft Excel. Both of these features put images in the headers of the columns to give the users a visual clue of what is going on for the grid.

For some reason I was not getting the images in my grids. Obviously it is working for Craig because the sample app he ships has the images displayed. It is not a VFP 9 SP2 thing, because I could run his app in VFP 9 SP2 without any issue.

On a whim I moved the images from the gridextras folder I have under a different directory tree on the same drive, and put them into an images folder underneath the project. I then removed all the pointers in the project to the image files and added the images from the new folder into the project. Rebuilt the EXE and presto, the images show up in the grid header. Nice.

My question is why? All the images are compiled into the EXE either way as I did not exclude them in the Project Manager. VFP should be able to find the images in the EXE. Is there a logical answer, or is this one of the VFP quirks I have to remember to work around in the future?

Avoiding the recession

2008-12-17T20:12:00.003-05:00

I have a minor in economics and have always found it interesting how economic forces that appear negative for the masses still leave many untouched, and in some cases benefit some who work around and avoid the downturns. Might have to write a white paper some day how I am avoiding the media created recession of 2008. Over the last few months I have been looking for ways to be one of those who avoid the recession. I know, crazy talk if you listen to the so-called experts in the mainstream twisted media. I for one refuse to become a casualty of this economic situation, and so far am winning this battle.

This evening on Twitter I tweeted some of my keys to being successful during these times. I figure that only 10 people will read the tweets, and if I blog about it maybe 10 more might take the time to read.

You will not find sage advice on how to invest or how to survive smaller revenues. I have not had good luck working with investors (bad luck listening to alleged experts, see key #1), and I have no intention to making less money (see key #2). I am once again sharing key strategies of my success, which some people think is nuts (see key #4). Please be advised, your mileage might vary, and take it for what it is worth (free).

Key numero uno - most pundits are full of themselves and advice should be avoided. Same for elitists and extremists.
Key numero dos - know how to duck when morons throw shoes at you, and know how to laugh about it afterwards. Translate: avoid negative people.
Key numero tres - Be willing to take on work no one else wants to touch. Finding a niche funds growth and builds loyalty in customer base.
Key numero quattro - something learned in Kindergarten: share. Sharing with others helps promote good will that lasts a lifetime, good karma.
Key numero cinco - positive thoughts, positive results.
Key numero seis - surround yourself with good, genuine, and smart people.

Sure these are more zen-like than solid things you can add to your to-do list, but that is how I work. Take a view that is higher and visionary and work down. I am sure you can take each one of these keys and build to-do list items that will move you forward. These to-do items will be specific to your situation and environment.

Key #5 has served me well over the years and is one that negative people hate. "It never works" - if you believe this you are correct. I prefer to work the opposite way. These are words I repeat all the time. Hope you enjoyed some initial thoughts on how I am planning to live above the recession experienced by others. I look forward to hearing other ideas too.

VFP: File and folders via indirection

2008-12-09T17:22:00.004-05:00

Last night one of my clients was implementing their vertical market application half way around the world. The onsite support people were reporting an error when the app was started: "Invalid path or file name."

Thanks to the new error handler we implemented in the app I tracked this problem down to a single line of code:

CD &lcDataPath

Looking at the value of lcDataPath it became instantly apparent what the problem was, spaces in the folder name. The tech support person right away explained to me the standard for the install is no spaces in the folder names. This site deviated from the standard folder name recommended by my customer. Now she knows exactly why the original developers proclaimed this "requirement" years ago.

I have not been burned by spaces in code for a long time because I always use indirection in my code whenever I deal with file names or folders.

CD (lcDataPath)
USE (lcFileName) IN 0 SHARED AGAIN
DELETE FILE (lcFileName)

I posted this issue on Twitter earlier today and Andrew MacNeill noted this is probably a great rule to add to Code Analyst up on VFPX. I agree. I am now curious how many developers do not test their applications in folder structures with spaces in the name. I just checked my development machine and all my test folders are space free. But I do install my applications on a virtual machine in the Program Files folders and this tests out the space problem.

Yet one more reason why we have standards at White Light Computing and why the adoption of industry best practices gives us more solid deployments and apps in production. Fortunately the onsite tech people were okay with renaming the folder, otherwise my customer would have been hiring us to review the application for other macro expansion gotchas.

German DevCon - Day 3

2008-12-07T18:32:00.002-05:00

The final day of the conference in Germany is like the final day of any conference, you start out the day exhausted. Add on top of the fact I have not slept more than a couple hours a night because of the jet lag and the time zone difference from home.

I also did not have the first session of the day so I was able to attend Bo Durban's 8:30 session on "Creating Custom Controls with Sedna." Yes, another reporting session I am sure will be very useful to me in the near future. Bo showed us how to take the Sedna reporting architecture and extend it for our own purpose. His extensions show how you can drop a shape on the report and have it be one of the custom shapes he has predefined. His custom shape takes on the attributes (size, color, etc.) of the standard VFP shape you drop on the report. Very interesting and will take a little to sink in.

Up next is Tamar's "Solving Common Problems with VFP SQL" session. It sort of was a session that gave me that time-warp sensation. I recall sitting in on one of Tamar's SQL sessions at one of the early DevCons (probably 1993 in Orlando). Tamar has been giving SQL sessions for many years so I am not sure if it was then or 1996 in Scottsdale. Or maybe both. It does not matter how many times I see sessions like this, I always walk away being reminded of some technique I have forgotten about. It also reminded me I probably should reread her book: "Taming Visual FoxPro's SQL - Real World Data Solutions For VFP". There are techniques I just have not used that were introduced in VFP9 like the ability to create SQL Selects from virtual tables (another SQL Select).

I skipped the Microsoft keynote given by Tim Fischer of Microsoft Deutschland because I probably would only understand about 1% of it. The topic was interesting as it was about Software + Services and VFP, but it was given in German and my mind was not prepared to pseudo translate.

After lunch was "Practical Uses of XML" by Doug. I really liked this session. I definitely have used XML in my customer applications and developer tools, but it is always interesting to see what applications other developers come up with. Doug's session gave a brief overview of XML and some of the gotchas you have to be aware of and some techniques for working with XML data.

Last session of the conference was my "Extending the Sedna Data Explorer" session. I have done this session numerous times and I got tripped up in the last example where I display the ShowPlans for all the views in a database. The demo crashed and burned. This is a demo I did in the morning when I ran through all my examples one last time. During the day I was working on the Upsizing Wizard chapter and upsized the VFP NorthWind database. I was testing the upsizing of VFP views and when you do this it turns them all into remote views. Well the ShowPlan code is counting on local views and I was seeing the SQL Server login dialog during the demo. Not cool. Fortunately everyone was understanding that the demo gods were not kind during the last 5 minutes of the session. See why I don't update my machine for a couple weeks before a conference? Even something a silly as a demo can get tripped up by changing data.

Later in the evening of the last day is the speaker dinner. Rainer always comes up with a spectacular spread of interesting food. Each year there is fun discussion and lots of laughs. I thought I would leave by 11:00 but they kicked us out sometime after midnight. I was nearly falling asleep at some point, but got my second wind along the way.

The conference was terrific. I learned a lot, got some important work done, and was able to get some ideas spawned for VFPX during my time in Germany. In fact, during the conference one of the German speakers submitted a project to automate VFP builds. It was accepted and is the first time I was able to tell the project manager face-to-face that the project was accepted. We have not announce the project yet because the project manager is busy with his real job, but expect to see it soon. Looks real interesting. I am looking forward to next year if I am so blessed to be selected to speak in Germany for the fifth straight year.

German DevCon - Day 2

2008-12-07T18:26:00.001-05:00

I skipped all the morning sessions so I could work on my customer projects since I have seen all the English sessions already. I did not get a lot done Wednesday and Thursday and was feeling the heat to produce some code for the deliverables I promised. The code is not very glamorous as it is changes to a FoxPro for DOS app, but the implementation is extremely important for my customer and the code I am working on has some cool elements in scheduling service calls out for the repair people. My customer is changing the process of assigning the calls to the repair people for the first time since the 1990's so I have to make sure it works and assigns the calls correctly every time.

The first session I attended was Doug's "Creating Explorer Interfaces in VFP", a session I have looked forward to since he submitted it as a session for SWFox. His screencast generated a lot of interest among the people who registered for SWFox and it received a lot of praise from people I talked to who went to it (both at SWFox and in Germany). During the session Doug went into something I am coining as "high-speed Canadian" as he started speaking quickly. You can tell when a speaker is really excited by the material they are presenting. Doug is a natural high energy speaker and he was ramping up during the early part of his session. He did slow down eventually. You see, while the Germans are terrific at English, it is not their first language so it is the responsibility of English speakers to conscientiously slow themselves down. The session did not disappoint. Doug has a really powerful treeview wrapper class with all the bells and whistles you could want. I also know he added the ability to disable the treeview after his session based on feedback he got during the session. He also showed how he uses VFPX components from the Themed Controls project as well.

The second part of my "Using VFPX Components in Production Apps" session was next. I presented a couple of components and filled in the rest of the session by showing off the new changes to the New Property/Method and the Edit Property/Method Editor being worked on by Jim Nelson and Doug Hennig, and the recent FoxTabs project lead by Joel Leach.

The last regular session of the day was Kevin McNeish's "Rich Internet Applications in Silverlight 2.0." There has been some buzz around Silverlight and I have a potential project that might be best done as a Web app so I wanted to get the scoop on Silverlight.

Rainer asked me to talk about VFPX in the second bonus session during his segment on the future of Visual FoxPro. He wanted me to briefly discuss the importance of VFPX, why it is so important to the future of VFP. I took the opportunity to ask people to get involved one more time.

German DevCon - Day 1

2008-12-07T18:14:00.003-05:00

Rainer Becker (organizer) starts out the first day at 9:30am with a brief Welcome session. It is in German, but I still catch part of it based on the technology words he uses.

First up was Tamar's "Making the Most of the Toolbox" session. I vaguely recall seeing Tamar do a session like this many years ago, and Toni Feltman did a session on this tool several years ago at DAFUG. I even present a couple of uses of the Toolbox during my "Get Productive with VFP" sessions. That said, I rarely use the ToolBox. I drag and drop classes from the Project Manager. But Tamar reminded me that the Toolbox is way more than the Form Controls toolbar on steroids. There were lots of interesting things presented, but the one I really liked is how you can set properties on an item in the toolbox. The property settings you make are applied to the control when it is dropped on the designer. For instance, you have a command button in a class library to close forms. I drop this on to the designer and right away I am compelled to name the control cmdClose via the Property Sheet. You can set this up in the Toolbox so it is done for you. This works almost like a builder or property editor, but handled behind the scenes and is custom to the class you are working with.

Up next was the conference keynote and keynoteX (where Ken "KenX" Levy talked). Ken gave a little history of VFP and how Microsoft actually at one point killed the product after the 6.0 release, but it was not killed based on the community uproar and the efforts of the Fox Team. He also noted that developers need to try VFP 9 SP2 to make the appropriate business decision for themselves instead of making the decision based on what they hear SP2 is like. There are over 100 bugs fixed and a couple of serious regression bugs that might not affect your application. Ken also mentioned some interesting statistics from community surveys. The one I remember is half of VFP developers are using SQL Server.

As far as the future of VFP, Ken mentioned several things. He expects Microsoft to provide hotfixes for VFP 9 if there are issues related to Windows 7 (note these are Ken's opinions, not Microsoft official statements - he no longer works for Microsoft). He said that the Fox Community must remain active to support each other. He had high praise for VFPX and the efforts of the people working on projects. He even referred to the developers as the "New Fox Team." He is watching and recommends the community watch the progress of VFP Studio, Guineu, .NET Extender for VFP and the VFP Compiler for .NET.

Ken finished up noting the four pillars of the VFP Community:
1) Product and Experience (VFP9, Sedna, & third party products)
2) Frequent Communication (online forums, online content, Web casts, screencasts, blogs and white papers)
3) Deep Engagement (conference, events, influencers, open source)
4) Product Enhancement (VFP tools online, VFP XSource, and VFPX)

After lunch I gave the first part of my "Using VFPX Components in Production" session to a crowded room in the auditorium. As a speaker I prefer crowded rooms because I feed off the energy. Rainer said my two VFPX sessions had the highest attendance of the conference. Sweet. I think the session went okay. I did have trouble finding a couple of examples, which is uncharacteristic of my sessions at a conference (I blame the jet lag). I did get some positive feedback afterwards and during meals. VFPX is really taking off in the community right now so it is not unexpected that there is some buzz going on at conferences too.

Doug Hennig followed my session with his "Advantage Database Server for Developers" session. I really looked forward to this session and was not disappointed. I am learning bits and pieces of ADS and Doug's session really helped me understand the positives and minor negatives with this product. One of the things that impressed me is the full text searching you can do on memo fields. If I recall correctly it took five minutes to do a search with the $ operator in native VFP and less than a second using the ODBC drive and the full text index capability of ADS. Very cool stuff.

Bo Durban's session on "VFP 9 and SP2 Reporting Component Basics" was one of the sessions I really wanted to see at SWFox, but knew I could see in Germany. It is always cool to have this in my back pocket when I am picking sessions I want to see. Being able to spread them across two conferences rocks. I arrived a little late as I was talking with Igor Vit and Christof Wollenhaupt between sessions. In this session I was hoping to pick up some tips on working with some of the new SP2 reporting enhancements because I have not had a lot of time to work with them based on my current projects. Getting a refresher on the Dynamic properties was worth the price of admission. Bo has a knowledge packed white paper for the session. It is definitely going to be one of those white papers I will need to read several times for everything to sink in.

After dinner is the evening sessions. The first was more from KenX. Ken showed the NET4COM and My Intellisense tools from Sedna. He also showed his AppScanX tool he has been working on this year and plans to submit to VFPX as a new project. Ken mentioned AppScanX to me several months ago and was planning on showing it at SWFox, but decided at the last minute he was not ready. I have been wondering how this new tool was different from Code References. It is actually a cool tool that takes a different approach to searching for text in all the source code in the project. You can search for text strings just like Code References, but you can also tell it to skip instances of the string based on different conditions. The tool is a little rough based on the fact the UI is done by BROWSEing a table, but it shows a lot of promise and should be something to look at in the future. I am looking forward to seeing Ken submit the project to VFPX. We kidded Ken at the speakers meeting that we are under strict orders to reject anything he submits. I am sure it will be accepted.

That is all I could take for the day. It was busy for sure and I was feeling a little guilty because I was neglecting my customer work, but I make that up on Friday as you will read: I played hookie in the morning to work on my customer projects.

German DevCon - Day 0

2008-12-07T18:07:00.003-05:00

Sorry for the delayed posts, but life has been very busy since returning from Germany.

Traveling to Germany is not high on the physical fun list when you go and come back in less than a week. I like the conference and the people, but my body does not do well on the trip. The flight to Frankfurt was empty when I booked the trip and nearly as empty when I checked-in online the day before leaving. Wouldn't you know, someone picked the seat next to me when there was an empty row behind me. So I moved my seat so I could have two seats. When I got on the plane the person across the aisle made a bed out of 5 seats. I watched a couple of movies (Wall*E being one of them) and tried to sleep, but instead worked a little on customer code and some on the Upsizing Wizard chapter for the Sedna book.

We made it to Germany 30 minutes early. Normally I get there before Doug and I would go to his terminal. This time my flight was arriving after Doug and Tamar and so they came to my terminal. We got a taxi to the hotel. Rooms were not ready so we ate breakfast and talked about Southwest Fox feedback. Once the rooms were ready I took a nap and did a little bit of work before the speaker meeting Wednesday evening. Before the meeting I met Bo and his wife and listened to their stories about traveling in Germany before the conference. This is exactly what I did with Doug and Jeff the first year I came to the conference.

All the VFP sessions I attended at the conference were excellent. Normally you will see me rate them with a certain number of stars. I learned something in every one of the sessions and rate them all 5 of 5 stars.

I did a lot of live posts during sessions on Twitter using the #GerDevCon hashtag, but Hashtags.org is dead and Search.Twitter.com does not find them which bums me out as I was hoping to use them as notes for these posts. I did have lots of fun interacting with my friends on Twitter, especially when I offered twitter beer when Rainer brought in beer during the evening sessions.

The conference hotel rooms have a new digital TV and digital service. I thought it was cool that I could filter channels by language. Mostly watched the BBC to keep up on news, and CNBC to hear about the financial crisis and watch the Tonight Show for some American humor. After the speaker meeting I went back to the room and slept as solid as I have in Germany.

Joel Leach blogging

2008-11-03T10:26:00.001-05:00

Joel Leach has entered into the blogosphere over the last few days over on Foxite. In case you don't know Joel, he is the new project manager of FoxTabs over on VFPX.

http://weblogs.foxite.com/joel_leach/default.aspx

Welcome Joel!

Blaming It on Rick

2008-11-02T20:49:00.003-05:00

Just in case you are not one of the 3 people who follow me on Twitter, I have a new Web site. If you need to blame someone for something you did or want to avoid the responsibility, please check out the newest social Web site:

http://BlameItOnRick.com

Just in time for election day, a new week of the job grind, or just living everyday life.

And for the record, it could be: BlameITonRick (IT as in Information Technology), but we want the non-geeks to have a place to shirk responsibility too. {g}

The site is all cutting edge Web 1.0, with hints on where it will go next. All the important details are found on the About page on my newest technical experiment.

Southwest Fox: The Wrap Up

2008-10-26T01:22:00.002-04:00

Finally to the wrap up. Based on feedback given to me at the conference, emails received since, and scanning through a third of the evals handed in, I can say we are getting the same positive vibes about Southwest Fox 2008 as we did in 2007. Many people have noted that we did an even better job this year, which I honestly thought was going to be tough to do. We are also getting lots of suggestions for improvement and I can assure you we take each suggestion and give it serious consideration. I hope those who attended Southwest Fox 2007 noticed several improvements in 2008 based on ideas submitted.

"Bring a FoxPro Ambassador to Southwest Fox 2009" - $1161 (collected and pledged)

All I can say is WOW! There are a couple of things I want to mention about the fund. The first is 100% of donated money will go to the travel costs for the ambassador. Not a single penny will be used to cover administrative costs. The conference fees will be covered by Geek Gatherings (Rick, Doug, and Tamar). All time managing the fund and working through the selection process will be donated. No one will be paid for their time. So if you want to donate to the fund, please send a check or we can arrange non-credit card PayPal transaction so we don't have to eat unnecessary discount fees. Checks can be made out to Geek Gatherings, LLC. Please note the "Ambassador Fund" in the check memo even though it will be obvious. All checks can be mailed to:

Geek Gatherings, LLC
Ambassador Fund
42759 Flis Dr.
Sterling Heights, MI 48314

We definitely will share more in the coming months as far as the nomination and selection process. We will be consulting others in the worldwide Fox Community to define the selection process and hopefully get something in place around the first of the year.

Southwest Fox Final statistics

9 countries (more than last year)
37 US states (more than last year)
135 attendees registered
58 people attending their first SWFox
28 people attending first Fox conference
16 speakers
10 vendors (more than last year)
3 staff
164 in total

SWFoxTV - I have heard a lot of positive feedback on the live broadcasts. I was amazed how people from around the world watched this live and provided feedback in the chats (which is unfortunately lost once the live feed is done). The VFPX session was particularly interesting as it turned out to be sort of a teleconference with questions being posted from those watching. I think we need to expand a little on this next year.

Our bribe for evals worked. 78% of the people turned in evaluations this year vs. the 60% from last year. A huge THANKS! I was hoping we would get 80-90%, so close enough. If you accidentally or even intentionally took your eval home and still want to help us out, please drop it in the mail to the address above. I already received one via the postal service so be assured you won't be the only one. The more the merrier. If you prefer to send us ideas without the eval, please email them to me, or drop me a letter in the mail if you want to remain anonymous.

I want to finish up by thanking a few people. First our core "staff": Therese and Marshal. These two individuals know a little about our community, but have nothing to do with software development. Their real affiliation is to be married to one of the organizers. Yet over the last couple of years they handled and solved many of the behind the scenes issues that pop up during the conference like making sure the chairs in the back of the room were distributed as needed based on popularity of some sessions. They just handled things and I am sure to this day there are things I don't even know about. I am grateful for their help and support of our conference. Without them we would be even busier during the conference.

To our speakers - we are once again in debt to you. I know how much work and sacrifice it takes to put together your sessions. Some of our speakers have to take vacation time to come to Southwest Fox, or give up billable hours to be there. It absolutely is not easy even though they might make it look like it is. For my readers: each session averages between 40 and 80 hours of planning, writing, assembling and rehearsing. Some obviously spent more, and some probably spent less. I know one of our speakers this year put 200 hours into one session. This is five man-weeks! They do not get paid for this. They do it for the love of the community, and it is in their genetics to share with others. While some of the speakers have threatened to retire, I already look forward to seeing what the rest offer us for next year. I have already seen some ideas proposed and it is exciting. Our speaker community is one of the best around and I look forward to hearing from new people too, so get inspired and consider submitting ideas next February when we make the call for speakers for 2009 (we will post the announcement on the conference blog, personal blogs, and on the forums so watch for it).

To Doug and Tamar - I cannot say enough about these two. The success of this conference is highly dependent on the partnership of the three of us and our workload distribution and areas of expertise. It is absolutely good to know I can rely on my partners. When something gets delegated I know it will get done and done well. Each time I felt the water level raise around my neck one of these two stepped up and made sure to pull the stopper out so the water level would stop rising. I already posted some where that Doug may be the single most organized person I know. I thought I was pretty well organized, but Doug is light years ahead of me. His handling of our vendors and door prizes, the Web site, our conference booklet, and marketing was terrific this year. Tamar handles all the speaker details once the three of us make the selections. I am not sure the schedule of sessions could be any better, and I doubt there is a speaker out there that does not know when our deadlines are and what our expectations are for materials. We know how important our speakers are; they are the reason most people come to the conference.

Finally to the people who attend Southwest Fox. Your support for this conference over the last couple of years has surpassed our expectations both times. THANKS! Without people like you this conference would be fading into the sunset as many people have predicted. When I told people I was taking this over from Bob after the 2006 conference I was told by some I was crazy. Wasting my time. Conferences are on the down slide, people will not support it, the Internet has destroyed the business model. Me thinks not. The networking I observed during this year's conference may have surpassed the networking I have seen at any conference I have attended. My Twitter list has grown significantly since the conference finished as many of the attendees discovered it is not a complete time sink, but another way to connect with colleagues. I met a lot of new people in the community this year. I also have seen the interest in VFPX swell over the last couple of weeks. All of this would not have happened if the conference did not occur.

So thanks all for your support and please look forward with great expectations for Southwest Fox 2009 being held in Mesa October 15-18th, 2009.

Only 354 days until we gather in Mesa! {g}

Southwest Fox: Day 4

2008-10-26T01:13:00.000-04:00

The final day of the conference. People are dragging after two or three full days of sessions. The dreaded Sunday 8:00am session slot is feared by speakers and attendees alike. Amazingly though, more people showed up for the 8:00am slot on Sunday morning than the 4:15 slot on Saturday. I guess I should not be real surprised since people are dragging just as much by the end of Saturday's sessions.

I volunteered to do the APEXSql vendor session because APEX does not have the resources to send people to every conference. No one showed up even though I had door prizes to hand out (which we gave away at the closing session). I hung out until 8:15 and then bailed. Based on the other speakers (Bazian, Wollenhaupt, Hennig, and Granor) I was not the least bit surprised. I used the time to get some breakfast and made one more pass through my Data Explorer session, which went well.

I had to sit in on Cathy Pountney's Customizing Your Vertical Market App session to see how she adjusted it for the new go-karting times. You see, part of her customization to "Rick" app was to show how I prefer to rank the racers by average lap instead of fastest lap. Cathy actually stayed up until 3:30am entering in the scores and was gracious in her loss the night before. I bailed right after she demoed the apps. Well done Cathy, well done.

Last up is the closing session. We like to have a closing session because the conferences we have attended in the past that don't have one feel like they end without closure. Kind of end flat. So we try to end with some buzz by giving our some final prizes, announcing next year's conference, and a call to action to end on a positive note. I think we accomplished this.

The closing does not mean we are done. We have lots of things to pack up and clean up, break down the White Light Computing booth and the registration table, make sure the vendor monitor rentals are packed up. After that we are off to meet with the conference center staff to review our bill, and discuss some of the good things that happened and address any issues we may have. Overall it was a very positive meeting. I feel the conference hotel had a few minor glitches, and there were minor issues with some of the service, but they did a terrific job ensuring our guests were comfortable during their stay and our sessions did not have problems from a facilities point of view. I honestly cannot say enough good things about the staff. They jumped on every request and when things weren't perfect they tried to correct the issue.

After that meeting Doug, Tamar, Therese, Marshal and I meet to discuss the conference while it is still fresh in our minds. We note things we think we can improve on for next year. I have 14 items in my notes for things we think we can improve on or tweak. Some are really simple and some will take some brainstorming. The biggest problem we had in my opinion was the wireless. Some people had real problems getting connected and some of us had no problems getting connected. We rebooted the routers each morning and at lunch which helped, but not for everyone. The conference center is in process of implementing free wireless throughout the facility, and actually started rolling it out the weekend we were there. We could not count on it and when I tried to connect it would not let me. Hopefully next year they will have it working and we won't have to use the routers we used last year and this year.

Sunday evening was a blast. Normally Therese and I head out to Sedona for some rest and relaxation, but this year decided to leave Monday morning instead of Sunday afternoon. We went to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory which was delicious. Afterwards I hung out with a group of people who congregated at the Feltmans' place. I think I left around 2:00am as I could not stay awake any longer. I am not sure I have laughed any harder in months. What a great way to end a terrific week in Mesa.

Southwest Fox: Day 3

2008-10-26T01:07:00.001-04:00

Saturday morning comes way too early. I am still stuck on Eastern Time so I am wide awake at 5:00am. Once again, take a moment to catch up on email before heading over to the conference center to get things rolling by 7:00am.

The hot breakfast hit the spot before I gave the first discussion on Extending the Sedna Data Explorer. I notice the attendance is a little light so I go and check out who is speaking in the other rooms (Hennig, Boyd and Peisch). I was lucky to get close to 20 show up with this lineup. No matter, it is one of my favorite sessions to give because the Data Explorer is a fun and productive tool to use. I had to change my session a little bit on-the-fly because I asked how many people in the room were using the Data Explorer and barely anyone raised their hand. At first I was not sure if it was the 8:00 session, but the session was active and lively. So I tried to give a brief overview of the tool as I showed off what was added in Sedna. Thanks to everyone who made suggestions and enhancement requests during the session. I have always said that I learn more about the topics I present during the sessions so you are not the only one who has this opportunity.

Next up was Christof's Optimizing and Debugging session, which was packed. Christof is brilliant and this session was high up on my list of sessions I expected to be popular. I was right on. Christof discussed many opportunities for debugging and baffled several people with his demonstration of a messagebox coded in the Init of the form, but not running when the form was started. I cannot recall the exact issue, but it had to do with Vista and some code he had in the DataEnvironment. I have to say, Christof delivered the quote of the conference for me: "If it is cool - fix it." Great session.

I skipped the sessions during the next slot to prepare more for my Sunday morning APEXSql vendor session.

Lunch was Trip to Italian and included stuffed shells and chicken cutlet with marsala sauce, breadsticks, and canollis for desert. I sat at the Visual FoxExpress Birds of a Feather table because White Light Computing uses VFE as our primary framework. Mike and Toni Feltman detailed some new stuff they are working on and some plans they have for developers to contribute to the framework.

I got a chance to sit in Craig Boyd's VFP Studio session, followed by my second session of Using VFPX Components in Production Apps session (which went well from my perspective).

I spent the last session of the day talking with others in the foyer where we started planning some VFP-guy, .NET-guy commercials patterned after the I'm a PC, I'm a Mac commercials. We have several ideas and it is only a matter of time before these get formalized and recorded. I am so looking forward to this. Just one small hint, watch for the VFP-guy to run circles around the .NET-guy in one of them.

The afternoon break was the Screamin' Sundaes (ice cream or frozen yogurt) with toppings. Perfect on a hot day.

Most attended sessions of the day (all tied with 44 people) included Craig Boyd's Creating a Professional VFP App, Christof's Optimizing and Debugging, and my Using VFPX Components in Production Apps.

The evening activities included the official speaker dinner. I always struggle with this because on one hand the speakers like to hang out at the conference center, but as an organizer we like to take them out as a small way of saying thanks for all your hard work and efforts to make the conference the success it is. Dinner was excellent.

After dinner was the much anticipated go-kart race. In case you were not at Southwest Fox 2006, Bob Kocher organized an unofficial offsite activity for those who wanted to race go-karts. According to the house rules, the person with the fastest single lap is the winner. In the race I was in Cathy Pountney had the fastest lap and I was second, followed by Doug. Cathy beat me by 0.03 seconds. She pretty much reminded us of this fact for the next year. Last year we tried to go but we did not get reservations and the wait was too long. So we heard about how she beat us for another year. The trash talk got notched up just before the conference this year. All in fun, but revenge would be ours. We headed over to the course and made sure the three of us were in the same race. It was a race inside of a race. It did not matter who finished where except for the three of us. The racing was absolute fun and in the end Doug had the fastest lap, followed by me, and then Cathy. For the entire night I had the fastest average lap so in my own mind I was the winner. If you include everyone else, Rick Strahl is the man with the fastest lap. He drives like he codes! I am looking forward to doing this again next year.

Back to the hotel where we had to stop by the bar and let the others know who won, but I had to get to bed because I had an 8:00am vendor session and the 9:30 session on the Data Explorer.

Southwest Fox: Day 2

2008-10-26T00:57:00.001-04:00

Friday is the start of the full day of sessions. People are walking around the center with high energy levels and are generally excited for the start of the conference.

As an organizer I make a pass through each session room to ensure the projectors are working and the room is set up properly for the speakers and those attending the sessions. There are always a couple of tweaks I have to make on Friday because the walls were put in place late the night before. Our facilities people are right on any changes we need, and normally things are all set by 7:30 or so. I also make sure the session signs are set up for each of the rooms. This year we added the fifth room for vendor sessions so I have to remember to set this one out each day too.

Someone else handled the remaining registrations from folks arriving later Thursday. As I mentioned in discussions with someone during the conference, it runs mostly on auto-pilot once things get rolling. When I say auto-pilot, I mean things happen and they get taken care of by our staff or the facilities people.

Off the breakfast which was one of the bonuses we offered again this year. We state up front we will provide lunch on Friday and Saturday, but based on attendance this year we were able to offer the breakfast and afternoon snacks again this year. I know people really appreciate it because they noted on evals and in feedback that they did not like the "bagels only" Sunday morning offering {g}. Breakfast was good. I love scrambled eggs. I also enjoyed the discussion at the table I briefly sat down to wolf it down.

Back to the registration booth where I rehearsed my Using VFPX Components in Production Apps session one last time. Determining the length of this session was nearly impossible because of the variety of questions I got during the user group rehearsals. This session also was one of the most difficult to prepare because all of the components are still being developed. I always wondered how the speakers at the Microsoft DevCon in 1995 pulled off their materials for VFP 3.0 when it was still under development. First they had to learn all new material and then had to work with an ever changing target. I have always had a high level of admiration for those speakers. I know my VFPX session was not to the level of the VFP 3.0 beta difficulty wise, but in many ways there are parallels.

I had to skip all the morning sessions unfortunately because of my duties at the conference, and the last minute prep for the session.

Lunch was Deli Meats and Cheeses, salad bar, and Italian pasta salad. Desert was brownies and cookies. We also introduced Birds of a Feather topics for some of the tables. I sat at the Future of VFP table and really enjoyed the discussion, and offering my perspective on the subject. People should not be surprised by my positive outlook on the future with respect to VFP and VFP projects in light of tools like Guineu, the eTecnologia compiler and extender, and VFP Studio.

I left lunch a little early because I had to print out my slides for my session. I had a heck of a time printing them for some reason (most likely Murphy's Law). It took close to 20 minutes to print them to a PDF file so I could print them on the kiosk computer. I almost ran out of time and the stress of the situation gave me a killer headache just before my session started at 1:15. I definitely should have planned better.

Normally I am not nervous for my sessions, but with the headache going I kidded with the audience that I wanted to set the expectations lower. Fortunately I completely feed off the energy in the room and the room filled to capacity with people standing in the back. I was hoping this session was going to attract a lot of people and thought it was going to be one of the more popular session attendance wise. It was the driving force behind my decision earlier this summer to do this session instead of the session on the Upsizing Wizard. 40 people showed up and was the most attended session on Friday! My headache disappeared about 20 minutes into the discussion. I brought some White Light Computing "ninja" mousepads to pass out to some of the folks who asked really good questions. You see, I love interactive sessions and try to make all my sessions have audience participation. Some speakers understandably don't like overly interactive sessions because it is hard to gauge how much material you can cover. I prefer to adjust my material on-the-fly to get other people involved and gain their perspective as well. The session went well and I have had a lot of positive feedback from those who came, including some emails from a couple people in the room before the next session started. Talk about instant feedback. Very cool, and thanks.

Snack break in the afternoon was titled "At the Movies" and included popcorn and lots of candy. I made sure to deliver chocolate candy bars to Cathy Pountney because of her obvious addiction to the stuff, and as a kind gesture before we kick her butt on the go-kart track Saturday night. {g}

During the afternoon I got a chance to briefly sit in on Rick Borup's Hidden Treasures of the FFC, and Cathy Pountney's Customizing Your Vertical Market Application, and Rick Strahl's Using .NET with VFP for Reliable Web Services. I enjoyed the parts I was able to listen to. Each of these speakers are always well prepared and their materials are top notch. I am looking forward to reading their white papers.

Friday evening was filled with new things. First up was the Dinner Party. One of the things we got in the evals last year was to have a dinner to help people network more, and to give people additional opportunity to meet with vendors. The plan was to host the dinner outside in the courtyard and for people to eventually mingle into the vendor area if they felt compelled to do so. During our pre-con meeting with the conference center we got the news that the dinner was going to be inside because a wedding party wanted to use the courtyard. I think it worked out well. The food was really good (NY Strip Steak, Atlantic Salmon, baked potatoes with the fixings, fresh vegetables, rolls, and desert) and the discussions at the table was fun. We also pulled more names for door prizes. Ken Levy showed up with some old copies of FoxPro and Visual FoxPro to give away. Boudewijn Luterink won a FoxPro for PowerMac which he turned around to auction for the "Bring a FoxPro Ambassador to Southwest Fox." Thanks to Andrew MacNeill for being a good sport when he "accidentally" raised his hand when the price went to $30. Overall the feedback is overwhelming "do the dinner again next year." I have no doubt this will be the case.

One problem with the dinner we did get feedback on is the cost for a spouse/SO/friend to attend. We charged $50, which I agree is outrageous. Unfortunately we actually lost a few bucks on each additional person. People might not understand, but this is hotel catering, and as Whil and Bob were kind enough to tell us a couple years ago - "hotel catering" is Latin for "thief." I am not sure what we can do about this next year, but some people have made some suggestions. If you have some ideas, please let me know.

After dinner was the bonus sessions. The Show Us Your App session was the overwhelming favorite followed by the VFPX Meeting (recorded live and available on http://ustream.com/channel/SWFoxTV). The user group meetings for Stonefield Query and Visual MaxFrame (VMP) were well attended by the dedicated user base too. I did not get a chance to peek into the EPS VFP to .NET Migration strategies meeting. I do know that the VMP meeting has the most legs though as I had to kick them out after 2.5 hours so the hotel staff could go home. {g}

It was a long day, but I made a quick pass through the patio area where the gang was hanging out for a quick lemonade before heading back to my room.

Southwest Fox: Day 1

2008-10-23T12:43:00.002-04:00

Finally, after 10 months of organizing the conference we get to the opening day. I am still on Eastern time so I wake up at 5:00am. I took the opportunity to get some work done that I have neglected over the last couple of days. Caught up on email and then headed over to the conference center to open registration at 7:15am.

The conference center is quiet at 7:00, but things get rolling quickly. I made sure the projectors were up and running and connected two of them in the combined Fairway 3/4. We combined the room because there were 40 people signed up for Andy and Menachem's pre-conference sessions. All the equipment worked fine.

Back at the registration booth, Doug, Tamar, Therese and Marshal were busy delivering the materials for those registered for the pre-cons. Just before Andy was about to get going he noticed his machine was not cooperating with the projectors and the splitter. So they called in the guy who HATES hardware. Fortunately we got it working by having Andy reboot his machine and getting the output on one screen. Once we got it working on one we were able to get the second projector to work.

Back to the registration area where I had to process a couple of last minute registrations. I have to do this because I run the accounting software, have the merchant account to process the credit cards, and process all the registrations in our database. This is a single-threaded process, and is the only time it really is a pain in the neck.

Thursday is also vendor setup day. More boxes get delivered, and the vendors start to set up their booths. Bo Durban had the best innovation this year with his signs next to his booth. These signs were done up at the UPS Store for under $50 each. Much cheaper than the $1500 to $2000 it costs for one of the standard booths by the more experienced vendors. For those of us who have smaller operations, but still want a professional presence I think Bo found the perfect solution.

Mid-day we found Menachem's older laptop did not want to cooperate with the projectors and splitter. See the trend starting? No luck this time, we could only get it running with one projector. Yes, this is better than zero, but not as good as two. No complaints from the people in the seats though, which I was thankful for. I appreciate the understanding that bad things just happen. Maybe the majority of the people sitting in the room are members of my "I HATE Hardware Club"?

The rest of the day was spent handing out materials and scrambling to order a last minute monitor for one of the vendors. There always seem to be some sort of glitch that needs to be solved. Later in the afternoon Steve Bodnar arrived so we could test out the technology to broadcast the keynote on the Internet - live. At first we ran into problems getting the camera to talk to the computer. I asked Frank "Mr. I don't hate hardware" Perez to see if he could work with Steve to get this solved. Fortunately Frank had a different cable to make the connection and everything was up and running.

Keynote time was 7:00pm. Steve had us live as we set up so people could see what was happening. I was testing the equipment and ensuring my FoxCharts demo was working and looked good on the screen. Bo Durban was also testing his computer because he was going to demo VFP Studio with Craig Boyd. Up popped Cesar Chalom (creator of FoxCharts) asking why I was running an older release of FoxCharts (less than a week old {g}). He told me to download the latest version which fixed a couple of bugs. Not going to happen minutes before we go live with the keynote {bg}. Sorry Cesar, but people were still wowed by the older one.

They keynote can be watched here: http://ustream.com/channel/swfoxtv

You will see the whole thing as it happened. Overall I think the keynote went well. The core presentations was known as the VFPX Showcase. We wanted to show people some of the components and tools the VFPX team is working so hard on each day, and how they can be leveraged in the Fox IDE or as part of an application.

We also announced something we initially call the "Worthy Developer Fund." We know we need a better name for this, but the creative juices are not flowing fast enough. The concept is to bring one or more developers to the conference who normally would not be able to attend for what ever reason. The developer(s) needs to be contributing to the Fox Community in a very significant way such as leading and contributing to one or more projects on VFPX or something else of that magnitude (exact criteria to be determined). What will happen is the three organizers of Southwest Fox will donate the conference registration and the fund will be used to pay for travel costs for the individual(s) selected. We are working out the selection process guidelines in the next month or two. We wanted to get the idea out to the community so they could start funding the fund. If you have suggestions for the selection process you can email those to me and I will forward it to those involved in the process of defining the process. Initial ideas include a nomination step, and then some sort of selection process from those nominated. More details later.

[Edit] Based on some discussions after the conference we have changed the name to "Bring a FoxPro Ambassador to Southwest Fox Fund". This is brilliant as it really expresses the ideas behind the concept we have for this fund. Thanks to Christof Wollenhaupt for making the suggestion. [/Edit]

Next up was the VFPX Administrators Award for Outstanding Service. This is something new this year and was given to one person who really has given a lot to the Fox Community via the VFPX open source project. While there are many deserving candidates for this award, the administrators felt there was no person more deserving than Bo Durban who leads the GDIPlusX project. GDIPlusX allows you to work with the GDI+ DLL via some well built Visual FoxPro classes. GDIPlusX turns out to be one of the foundation classes as it is used in several VFPX projects and numerous other projects put together by the Fox Community.

Bo and Craig then literally performed some magic. Well maybe not good magic as the team put on a Penn and Teller skit with a sledge hammer, a watch, and a saw (I was a little nervous before the keynote when I heard explosives might be involved in the presentation). My recommendation to the two of them is to stick with better tools like Visual FoxPro and Visual Studio {g}. This magic lead to the real magic which was a demo of VFP Studio. I know many in the Fox Community have been wondering what is going on with VFP Studio and I was glad the two gave us a little peek at the future. From my perspective the future looks quite bright with these two geniuses working on VFP Studio.

The last part of the keynote is the birthday surprise for the Class of '58. If you don't know, the Fox Community seems to have a unusual number of people born in 1958 and they turn 50 this year. Two of the organizers turned 50 last month (yes, I'm the youngster in the group {bg}). Toni Feltman did a surprise demo with some stats on aging people, and then brought in birthday cake for all to share. I called Whil Hentzen on the phone so he could listen in as he is one of the Class of 58, as is Barbara Peisch who is speaking at the conference, and Dan Freeman who was visiting us. It was fun to surprise them. Thanks to F1 Technologies (Mike and Toni Feltman) for organizing this and sponsoring the whole thing.

The rest of the evening was the Tradeshow Reception, which I heard went well for the vendors. I did not get a chance to man the White Light Computing booth, but did mingle with the other folks and watched the vendors deliver numerous demos of their products. If I let anyone down by not demoing our developer tools please let me know and I will be happy to do something after the conference to show you what we offer and what they do.

Southwest Fox: Day -1

2008-10-23T12:35:00.003-04:00

Wednesday (Day -1) is prep day. I woke early at 5:00am (8:00am Eastern) and it was like Christmas morning. I went out into the family room of our suite and started opening some of the boxes. I couldn't help myself since there were a few things I did not see before shipping. One was the Techsmith boxes. Once again Techsmith really came through for use with Camtasia and SnagIt as give-aways and tons of pens and marketing materials. The other thing I was looking for was the VFPX Administrators Award we had made up (more on that later).

Bright and early was the delivery of the AV equipment for Rick Strahl's training session. I worked with the conference people and the AV-dude to ensure the equipment was set up in time for Rick's sessions.

Off to breakfast with the organizers followed by our "pre-con" with the facility staff. The people at the Arizona Golf Resort and Conference Center are top notch. Special thanks to Sharon, Liz, Mark, Bennie, and Nancy for making this a pleasure. We found out last year how well these people work together and worked with us to ensure comfort for those attending the conference. Nothing goes perfect, but these folks work hard to get as close to perfect as possible.

After our "pre-con" meeting we had the warehouse in our room moved to the assembly area in the board room. We assembled the binders by inserting all the materials printed for us by Smooth-On this year. Next up were the badges. The schedules you got in your badge had to be cut and folded. Once they were done we laid out all the materials around the table we want in the conference bag. This is when we noticed we were missing the CDs from DBI. I made a call to Rod Miller who gave me the tracking number to find out where they were. Unfortunately they were delivered, but no one was available to take delivery. That meant they had to be delivered on Thursday. Minor crisis, adrenaline rush, but not a disaster. We had established the backup plan early by delivering the goods to everyone via an FTP site earlier in the week. Frank Perez arrived in town and made an emergency run to his dad's place to see what other goodies were delivered at the last minute and tried to track down the CDs in case we could get them before Thursday.

Marshal (Tamar's husband) and Therese (my wife) made a couple of trips to the airport to pick up speakers. Therese also picked up the remaining shirts from our vendor.

Over in the main building the rooms were getting fitted for the screens. We upgraded the screens to the 12 foot kind purposely because they look better and are more functional than the 10 foot ones. I kind of think of it as getting the 24 inch LCD instead of the 19 inch. Both are functional, but the bigger one is way better than the standard size. The rest of the AV equipment is delivered in the afternoon. I take the opportunity to make sure it all works. We had to make a couple of minor tweaks to the room setup to fit in the projectors for optimal viewing.

During the afternoon I processed a last minute registration and provided details needed by another person to get their registration authorized and a check cut.

Back to the assembly room where things were not slowing down I found the crew going in circles. This is a good thing! All the materials are laid out around the table. Each person goes in circles to pick up the materials and place them in the conference bag. Putting together 160 bags went quite fast.

Special thanks to Rob and Chris who work at Stonefield, Therese, Marshal, and Cathy Pountney who helped the three organizers get everything put together. Once assembled we moved it over to Fairway 1 (the staging area) in preparation for the registration opening Thursday morning.

Last thing was the battle to get the wireless working with the conference Internet connection. Frank and I battled the hardware until it finally worked. Fortunately Frank likes hardware (unlike his boss who hates it) and was persistent until we got it working (more on this later too for those who claim it never worked).

We decided to head out to dinner at Chili's so Tamar and Marshal could see their Phillies win the National League Championship. Go Phillies!