Southwest Fox Polo Shirts

Doug Hennig Uncategorized

Every Southwest Fox registrant gets a t-shirt at conference check-in. In addition, we’re selling polo shirts with an embroidered Southwest Fox logo. The order form is available on the Web site (http://swfox.net/SWFPoloShirtOrder2008.doc). White shirts, available in a variety of sizes and in both mens’ and womens’ styles, are $50 each. Great for souvenirs for family and geek friends back in the office.

The deadline to order shirts is September 30th if you want them in Mesa. If there’s enough interest, we’ll take additional orders at the conference, but you’ll have to pay an additional shipping fee to be determined.

Southwest Fox News

Doug Hennig Uncategorized

As we get closer to the conference (it starts four weeks from today), the news gets as hot as the Phoenix weather!

Visionpace is offering a free six-month subscription (or a six-month extension for existing subscribers) for Visual MaxFrame Professional (VMP) to all Southwest Fox attendees. Between all the offers (VMP, xSQL, and CoDe magazine) and prizes to be won (over $100,000), this conference will pay for itself before you attend your first session!

Five bonus sessions are planned for Friday night at 8:00 pm after the dinner party:

  • Stonefield Software is hosting a Stonefield Query Developers Meeting. This meeting is open to everyone.
  • Visionpace is hosting a VMP Developers Meeting. This meeting is open to all developers using VMP (developers not using VMP are also welcome).
  • Bo Durban is leading a VFPX meeting. Everyone interested in VFPX is welcome to attend.
  • Mike Yeager of EPS Software is presenting a bonus session titled "VFP to .NET Migration Strategies." This session provides a detailed overview, based on best practices and real world experience, of the optimal way to transition a mission critical application from any version of FoxPro to .NET and SQL Server.
  • "Show Us Your Apps" is an opportunity to show the crowd what cool things you’ve done in VFP. Because there’s a limited amount of time available, presenters are limited to 10-15 minutes each. Please email info@swfox.net to let us know what you’d like to show.

Creating Your Personalized Schedule

Doug Hennig Uncategorized

Dave Aring of Visionpace has created a very cool session scheduling application for Southwest Fox called Kokopelli (the name of the figure with the flute in our logo). It automates the selection of the sessions you want to see and even creates a handy printed schedule that fits in your conference badge.

Download the ZIP file and extract it in its own directory, then run Kokopelli.EXE; it requires that VFP 8 or 9 be installed on the system. Although it’s very intuitive, it also includes instructions on how to use it.

Here’s a screen shot of Kokopelli:

kokopelli

Here’s an example of the printed schedule. It’s kind of hard to see in this small snapshot, but it has the complete schedule listed with grey boxes highlighting my selected sessions. It also lists those sessions I didn’t select as a check to make sure I’m hitting everything I want.

schedule

Southwest Fox News

Doug Hennig Uncategorized

The Southwest Fox 2008 session schedule is now available. One thing you might note is that we’ve planned a dinner party for Friday night this year. Also, vendor sessions are held concurrently with other sessions rather than in the evenings as they were last year.

I posted a new video demoing one of the cool features I’m showing in my session on Advantage Database Server: full text search capabilities, even against VFP tables.

Former VFP Product Manager Ken Levy will be at Southwest Fox, hanging out at the VFPConversion booth and showing a new utility he’s created and releasing into the public domain.

One of the bonus sessions this year is "Show Us Your Apps", an opportunity to show the crowd what cool things you’ve done in VFP. Because there’s a limited amount of time available, presenters are limited to 10-15 minutes each. Please email info@swfox.net to let us know what you’d like to show.

Southwest Fox Rehearsals

Rick Schummer Uncategorized

If you do the math with respect to 15 slots and 32 sessions you quickly realize you cannot see all the sessions at Southwest Fox 2008. Impossible, and one of the main reasons the organizers demand the speakers do a white paper for the sessions.

So you might be asking: short of cloning or a time machine, how can I see more than 15 sessions offered at Southwest Fox? Simple, go to more sessions. {g}

One way to do this is to head to one of the many rehearsals offered at various user groups around the USA. Here is a partial list I was able to dig up on the Visual Fox Wiki:

Chicago FUDG

  • September 9, 2008 – Toni Feltman, “Leveraging .NET Technology in Visual FoxPro Using .NET Extender from eTechnologia.net”
  • September 9, 2008 – Mike Feltman, “Java Script for FoxPro Developers”

Philadelphia VFP User Group

  • September 9, 2008 – Tamar Granor, “We Used to Do it That Way, But …”

Detroit Area Fox User Group

  • September 11, 2008 – Cathy Pountney, “Customizing Vertical Market Apps”
  • October 9, 2008 – Rick Schummer – “Extending the Sedna Data Explorer”

Grand Rapids Area Fox User Group

  • September 13, 2008 – Rick Schummer – “Extending the Sedna Data Explorer”

FoxPro Developers Network San Diego

  • September 11, 2008 – Barbara Peisch, “Understanding Scope”
  • October 9, 2008 – Barbara Peisch, “Overview of WMI”

Los Angeles FoxPro Users Group

  • September 16, 2008 – Barbara Peisch, “Overview of WMI”

Please support the FoxPro related user groups around the world. They are a terrific resource for VFP developers.

I personally get great feedback from user group rehearsals to refine the sessions before I present them to at a conference. The VFPX session I am giving this year bubbled out of some less informal session I presented at the Chicago, Grand Rapids and Detroit groups earlier this year. As an organizer I get to see sessions in advance, and offer suggestions to the speakers. It is a huge advantage to me because I rarely get to sit in on sessions at Southwest Fox. Thanks to all the speakers who have time to share their knowledge in advance of the conference.

Only 41 days until we meet in Mesa! (no wonder rehearsals are getting scheduled fast and furiously)