Southwest Fox Conference

Southwest Fox 2009 on the Web

2009-10-24T17:18:00.008-04:00

SWFox TV Schedule

2009-10-12T16:40:00.006-04:00

There will be a few Southwest Fox 2009 sessions broadcast on UStream if all goes well with the Internet and the related technologies. Last year we had success so we are very hopeful this year will go well.

All the details on the sessions are here:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/swfoxtv

Note the times on the site are denoted as Pacific Standard Time. Arizona has its own timezone (GMT -07:00), which is the same as Pacific Daylight Time.

Current line-up of broadcasts planned include:

Southwest Fox 2009 - Conference Keynote
Thursday, 10/15/2009 07:00 pm (Arizona Time)

VFPX Users Meeting - Bonus session
Friday, 10/16/2009 05:15 pm (Arizona Time)

The Future of the VFP Developer - Bonus session
Friday, 10/16/2009 08:30 pm (Arizona Time)

Enhancing the VFP IDE with VFPX Tools
Saturday, 10/17/2009 11:30 am (Arizona Time)

You can participate via the chat session, especially for the VFPX User Meeting and Rick's "Enhancing the VFP IDE with VFPX Tools" session.

If you miss the shows they are recorded and posted. You can still watch the 2008 keynote and VFPX User Meetings from last year.

We hope you can join us for those sessions even if you are unable to join us at the conference.

Southwest Fox is just around the corner

2009-10-04T11:06:00.003-04:00

There are less than 2 weeks to go until the best Visual FoxPro conference in North America kicks off. The pace is picking up here at Geek Gathering's World Headquarters in Michigan, the two remote offices in Pennsylvania and Saskatchewan, and at the Arizona Golf Resort in Arizona. The conference is about to materialize right before our eyes.

The menu is finalized, the schedule is updated (late vendor adds), the conference CD is getting burned, the Conference Guide is getting printed, evaluations are finalized, badges will be assembled next weekend, and speakers are preparing to deliver you the best sessions around. The white papers for this conference total over 1000 pages of fresh and interesting material that is sure to bring value for years to come.

We want to let the folks who have registered to know over the next 10 days you will be getting several emails. These emails have some important information about the conference and helpful hints about getting the most out of the Southwest Fox experience.

You can follow up to the minute announcements on Twitter: @SWFox

Not yet registered? Yes there is still time and available slots! Give Geek Gatherings a call at 586.254.2530 to discuss your options or head to the registration page. We can process registrations up to the moment the conference is starting.

What would make you turn in your eval?

2009-09-15T15:24:00.003-04:00

We're working on lots of details for Southwest Fox right now. One of them is figuring out what to offer attendees to ensure that evaluation forms get turned out.

As you can see from some of our previous posts (like The Economics of Conference Food or They like us! They really, really like us!), we really pay attention to the evaluations that our attendees submit. We crunch the numbers they give us and we read all the comments more than once. We may not be able to implement all the changes that people request, but we do at least consider them.

We provide every attendee with a packet of evaluation forms at registration. The packet includes an overall conference evaluation and a short evaluation for each time slot. Unfortunately, lots of people don't turn in their evaluation packets.

Last year, we were able to increase the yield of evals significantly. Microsoft had given three MSDN licenses to each developer MVP to give away. A number of our speakers and several other friends of Southwest Fox donated some of those gift licenses for raffles. We reserved the last three for a drawing including only those who submitted evaluations.

This year, we don't have a big-ticket item like that to give away. So our question is what would make you turn in your eval? We know that some people will turn in evaluations with no prize at all. If you're not one of those, help us figure what to use an incentive.

We want to keep making Southwest Fox better and to do that we need feedback. So give us some ideas on keeping those cards and letters coming.

Recession Buster Deals Offered

2009-09-09T16:45:00.003-04:00

It is hard to believe we are into the second week of September already. What this means is the speakers are scrambling to finish their white papers and polish up their sessions for the conference.

Here at Geek Gathering Headquarters it means we are busy making decisions on what we can do within budget, starting to order things we need for the conference, and firming up details with the conference center.

We're definitely seeing a drop off with registrations this year. Based on what people have told us, it mostly has to do with the condition of the global economy. So we have a couple of special "recession buster" deals we hope will encourage a few more people to sign up for the best Visual FoxPro conference in North America.

Deal #1: "Organizers: please share my deal!"
If you already registered and paid for the conference and you know someone who wants to register, you can give them the same deal you got when you registered. If you want to come to the conference and you know someone who got in at the Super Saver ($620) or the Early-bird ($695) registration, you can sign up for the same price they did. Sharing is caring!

Deal #2: Southwest Fox "Pair Programmer" deal
Have one or more FoxPro friends who are considering coming to Southwest Fox? Sign up together and take $50 off each of the registrations.

No matter what deal you take, we will give you your first pre-conference session for free!

There's only one catch. You have to take advantage of this deal by 11:59 PM September 30, 2009 Eastern time. We have to make some serious commitments on October 1 for various expenses we have for the conference.

Need some more convincing? How about some new news about the conference:

1) Sara Ford, Program Manager for CodePlex (home of VFPX) is going to present: "Towards a Stronger Open Source Ecosystem on CodePlex.com" at the Thursday night keynote.
http://swfox.net/blog/2009/09/southwest-fox-2009-keynote-announcement.html

2) Schedule of the conference sessions is posted
(http://swfox.net/schedule.aspx)

3) We have added a couple of bonus sessions on Friday, including "Show Us Your App," "Getting involved in VFPX" and an open space discussion "The Future of the VFP Developer."

Got suggestions? info@swfox.net
Got questions? info@swfox.net
Got registrations? register@swfox.net

Or you can call the Geek Gatherings' World Headquarters at 586.254.2530.

Read about the registration process and get the registration application here:
http://www.swfox.net/register.aspx

Check out our list of amazing speakers:
http://www.swfox.net/speakers.aspx

Dig into our six session tracks:
http://www.swfox.net/sessionstrack.aspx

Follow the news about the conference on our blog:
http://swfox.net/blog/index.htm

Use our brochure to convince your boss (or spouse or SO) to let you go:
http://www.swfox.net/brochure.pdf

Only 36 days until we meet in Mesa. We hope to see you there.

Southwest Fox 2009 Keynote Announcement

2009-09-04T10:15:00.000-04:00

We have some exciting news about the Southwest Fox 2009 Keynote Session.

For the past several years, the Southwest Fox Thursday night Keynote Session provided everyone with some reminders and last minutes details about the conference. It also included some of our speakers who were eager to share new technology they’d recently been involved with. In past years, we’ve had a keynote on Visual FoxPro code development moving past the standard VFP approaches via Guineu, eTecnologia.NET, and VFP Studio. Last year we showcased some of the new components and tools available on the open source project called VFPX.

As you may know, the organizers of Southwest Fox have always been keen on borrowing “best in class” ideas from other conferences. During one of the Essential Fox conferences, someone from outside the FoxPro Community was brought in as a keynote speaker and it was a huge success. Since taking over Southwest Fox in 2007, we’ve always wanted to do this with our keynote. Unfortunately, either budget constraints or timing constraints have always been a roadblock for fulfilling this goal. This year we started early and back in March, we secured a commitment for our keynote speaker!

We are very excited to announce that Sara Ford from Microsoft is coming to Southwest Fox 2009. Here are the details:

Towards a Stronger Open Source Ecosystem
on CodePlex.com

For those who do not know who Sara is, she is the Program Manager for CodePlex, Microsoft's open source project hosting site (and home to VFPX). Prior to CodePlex, she worked on the Visual Studio team for six years and ran the popular Visual Studio Tip of the Day series. In 2008, she authored her first book, Microsoft Visual Studio Tips by Microsoft Press and donated all her royalties to start a scholarship fund for Hurricane Katrina survivors of her hometown. Her life-long dream is to become a 97-year-old weightlifter, so she can be featured on the local news.

Sara is an energetic speaker and will probably show you her rebellious side. How many Microsoft people do you know who are willing to walk around the Redmond campus wearing a FireFox t-shirt? After the keynote, you will know at least one.

We need to thank some very important contributors who helped make this happen. The Southwest Fox registrations are down this year because of the economic situation. The conference budget is already stretched to keep the Southwest Fox experience a quality experience. So the organizers got creative and tapped some friends in the FoxPro Community to sponsor the Keynote Session. We want to thank F1 Technologies and White Light Computing for sharing the costs to bring Sara to Mesa for the night. Without their generosity, we could not have pulled this off. We also want to thank Sara’s boss for letting her travel to our conference and sharing her vision on how CodePlex is going to evolve to support open source initiatives like VFPX.

We really hope you will join us in Mesa, but if you cannot, you might be able to catch it on SWFox TV because we are going to attempt to stream the keynote on the Internet like we did last year. More details on the broadcast will be posted closer to the conference.

Only 41 days until Sara talks about CodePlex in Mesa! We hope to see you there.

Ceil Silver Ambassador News

2009-08-25T13:01:00.001-04:00

We have bad news and good news. First the bad news: Unfortunately, for reasons outside of his control, César Chalom is unable to attend Southwest Fox 2009. We are really disappointed because many people, us included, were looking forward to meeting César. Hopefully, next year.

The good news is that Emerson Santon Reed has agreed to come in César’s place. Emerson, a software developer from Americana - SP, Brazil, has worked with Visual FoxPro since 1999, and is an active member of the Brazilian VFP community. He presented a session at the Brazilian VFP conference in 2008. He is well known to the global VFP community for his ThemedControls project at VFPX. He also has a blog where you can find useful material on Visual FoxPro. We are very excited that Emerson can attend Southwest Fox 2009 and know that many attendees are looking forward to meeting him in person.

Rehearsing

2009-08-21T09:55:00.004-04:00

I've been speaking at FoxPro conferences since 1993, but until the last few years, I didn't often get the opportunity to practice my sessions in front of a live audience. Since reviving the Philadelphia VFP User Group about four years ago, I've learned how helpful it can be to give the session to a real audience before taking it to a conference.

In the past, I've generally done user group rehearsals after my materials were complete, just to polish my presentation and get rid of all the fumfering as I move from one idea to the next. This year, because of the way the calendar worked out, I've rehearsed both sessions with several weeks before my notes and examples have to be submitted. While getting them both finished in time was a huge struggle, I'm going to end up with improved materials on the conference CD because of it.

Last week, I rehearsed "Top Ten (or more) Reasons to Use the Toolbox" for my user group in Philadelphia. It was a good session and I got some great ideas from the group on how to improve it and on how to cut it down to fit the conference time slot.

However, our remaining schedule in Philly before Southwest was full, so I had to take my second session, "Getting Your Head Around Business Objects" on the road. PAFox, the Washington, DC, area user group, was kind enough to schedule a special meeting for me (to coincide with a planned trip to the area).

This session is a bit of a departure for me. I tend to give "tips and tricks" types of sessions, filled with lots of little items. "Getting Your Head Around Business Objects" is aimed at getting across one big idea (though I certainly hope to include lots of tips along the way). With a "tips and tricks" session, timing doesn't matter as much; if you don't get to the end of your material, well, you've still provided lots of value. But with a "big idea" session, generally, you need to get to the end to really make your point.

I was a little surprised to find that the session ran quite long. At Southwest Fox, I'll have 75 minutes. Last night, it took close to two hours, so I need to do some judicious cutting. One audience member gave me a great idea for adding a couple of graphics to a slide that will save me 5-10 minutes of hand-waving. Now that I know the session runs long, I'll also go back and take a good hard look at what examples I show and which ones I can skip.

The user group members also pointed out to me what they saw as the key insight into the big idea of this session: that the business objects form an "engine" for the application. While I had used the term, now I'll look at building more of what I say around that idea.

I don't think I'll get another chance to practice these sessions in front of an audience before the conference, but there's no question in my mind that they'll both be much better because I've done so.

You still have the opportunity to help make Southwest Fox better by attending a rehearsal and offering your feedback. Check out the Upcoming Events page of the VFP Wiki for a list. Almost every user group session listed between now and Southwest Fox offers at least one speaker rehearsing.

Rehearsal Review - Eric Selje

2009-08-17T12:50:00.003-04:00

Today we have a guest blog post from Eric Selje, president of the Madison FoxPro User Group (MadFox). Below you will read one review of a recent Southwest Fox 2009 rehearsal day held in Chicago on a beautiful sunny Saturday in August. A group of 15 people showed up to listen to three of our speakers practice their sessions. Eric is registered to attend this year's conference and posted the following message on the MadFox's Yahoo Group, and is letting us use it here with his permission:

Hey MadFoxers,

Here's a recap of what went down in Chi-Town today at the ChicagFUDG Pre-SW Fox Speaker Party.

The day started with an F14 flyover. Now some might argue that that was part of the "Air & Boat Show" that may be happening on the lakeshore, but I think these Chicago people just really know how to do meetings! There also were doughnuts. A good start!

Cathy Pountney took the pre-lunch spot with a 2 part sessions on the Report Writer. Now you might think the report writer is too simple of a topic to speak on for 2 and a half hours, or you might think that the report writer got WAY too complicated after VFP9. Logically you cannot hold both of these thoughts, but either way you would be wrong. Cathy crammed a bookful of very useful information into her presentation, showing how the VFP9 report writer is both extremely powerful and, especially after SP2, pretty easy to extend. I learned a *ton* from this session.

After lunch, or during for us slow eaters, Rick Schummer spoke about ways to access remote data with Visual FoxPro. As it usually is with great speakers, Rick conveyed a boatload of information in such an easy manner that I only now realize it as I review my notes. He discussed the decision making process for why to use remote data and then choosing a server, the three primary ways for VFP to get at the data (and the surprising test results for the speed of those methods), the considerations for rewriting existing applications, and the tools he uses to simplify the whole process.

Finally new speaker Jody Meyer discussed her creation, the "Smart Grid." This is not a technology to distribute electricity from wind farms in Minnesota to Las Vegas efficiently, but rather a subclass of the grid which adds a plethora of new features. For example, can you imagine dropping a grid on a form that allows the client to reorder the columns, rename the headings, or export the grid's data and formatting to Excel or Word? How about subtotals for the columns? It's all possible with Jody's Smart Grid. She's clearly put a TON of time and effort into creating this object, and it shows. And the most beautiful part is, it's all data driven. It reminded me of Stonefield Database Toolkit, except for grids. Intrigued?

You may have noticed that I didn't include too much detail about these presentations. That's because there's still time for you to register for SWFox and see these for yourself, and I cannot encourage you enough to do so. What I saw just today will easily save me the registration costs, by saving me time and not having to purchase 3rd party software. Airfare is a real bargain right now, and you can sleep on the floor of my room ;)

It was great to see old friends like Tom Hayward, Bill Drew, and Randy Bosma again. And of course the speakers were already in prime form and ready to go. Thank you Rick, Cathy, and Jody, and everyone at ChicagoFudg for a great day.

Eric

Thanks for sharing your review with the Southwest Fox blog Eric. We are glad you enjoyed the sessions last Saturday.

New Session Video Available

2009-08-02T19:10:00.001-04:00

Jim Nelson has created a video previewing his session on the PEM Editor. In case you haven’t see it, PEM Editor is one of coolest tools on VFPX and certainly a tremendous productivity tool every VFP developer should have in his or her tool belt.

Microsoft Virtual PC Video

2009-07-24T11:09:00.001-04:00

Doug is doing a session at Southwest Fox 2009 titled “Microsoft Virtual PC for VFP Developers.” VPC is one of the indispensible tools every developer ought to use (or if not VPC, one of its competitors such as VMWare), and yet many haven’t embraced it. Hopefully, this session will convince you to start using it immediately.

Doug created a short (5 minute) teaser video showing part of his session: how VPC is useful to test application installers to make sure all dependencies are included. Attendees of Southwest Fox will receive a complete white paper on installing, configuring, and using VPC. See you there!

Free Software for All Southwest Fox Attendees

2009-07-14T13:19:00.001-04:00

KnowItAll, LLC is generously providing a free copy of KnowItAll, document and knowledge management software, to all Southwest Fox attendees.

Super-saver deadline extended to July 7

2009-07-02T14:05:00.002-04:00

We've extended the Super-Saver registration deadline to July 7. So you have a few more days to get $125 off conference registration and one free half-day pre-conference session ($99 value). If you're on the fence about whether to come, maybe this is just the push you need.

Super-saver deadline is July 1

2009-06-27T14:04:00.002-04:00

Your opportunity to save big on registration for Southwest Fox ends soon. Super-saver registration offers $125 off the price of the conference, and gives you one free half-day pre-conference session, for total savings of $224. But hurry, because the super-saver offer expires on July 1.

Check out the the complete list of speakers and
topics on the Southwest Fox website.

Southwest Fox is good for user groups ... and vice versa

2009-05-29T10:18:00.006-04:00

One of our goals for Southwest Fox is to be a good citizen of the VFP community. Obviously, just offering a conference is a big way to do that. But we're also committed to having Southwest Fox support VFP user groups (VFUGs). So last year's conference binder included a list of VFUGs with contact information.

Since Rick, Doug and I took over management of the conference, we've also offered VFUGs a bonus for encouraging their members to attend. The group registers with us in advance, and after the conference, we send the group $25 for each of their members who signs up. VFUGs tend to operate on a shoestring. So we think this is a much better approach than the traditional one of giving user group members a discount, especially since this helps the group from the first person to register. Traditional user group discounts usually require a minimum number of registrants.

However, the biggest way we support VFUGs is a little indirect. We encourage our speakers to preview their conference sessions at user group meetings. Why would we do that when it means people can get conference content without attending?

The most important reason is that we know that sessions get better with rehearsal. Even for experienced speakers, practicing in front of an audience improves the session. So when a speaker presents at a user group meeting, we know that the people who come to Southwest Fox will get an even better session. (It's not an accident that last year's highest rated session, Cathy Pountney's session on customizing vertical market applications, had been previewed at no fewer than three VFUGs.)

The second reason we encourage speakers to do previews is, of course, that it promotes the conference. Every time Southwest Fox is mentioned in a user group meeting or website or email, we increase the change of people coming to the conference.

Whether you're coming to Southwest Fox or not (and we sure hope you are), in the next few months, you may get the opportunity to see one or more Southwest Fox sessions at your local user group. Here in Philadelphia, we've booked Southwest Fox previews for July (Menachem Bazian), August (me), and September (Toni Feltman). Christof Wollenhaupt will be previewing his sessions at a couple of VFUGs (Atlanta and Chicago) on his way to Phoenix. And Detroit's FUG has so many speakers within an easy drive that they're considering a special full-day event.

If you've never attended your local VFUG, this summer is a good time to give it a try. If you used to go and stopped, ditto. If you're a user group leader looking for speakers, consider the SWFox speaker list a resource.

And, of course, if you attend one of those previews and decide you like you what you saw, give Southwest Fox a try.

Conference Registration App Update

2009-05-09T21:24:00.003-04:00

Based on our customer feedback we have released a new version of the Conference Registration applet. If you have already installed the first release (Build 151) you can install the new version (build 161) right over the existing folder. All your data will be preserved, but a new version of the EXE and the Help file will get installed. The newest build is a full install if you have not installed this applet at all. The same one install works for everyone.

There is no need to resend your registration if you have already registered (yes, several people have)!

Here is the list of changes for this build:

Message is displayed if you previously sent in a registration when you start the application. If you cancelled the registration before it was emailed you can delete the ZIP file(s) from the SendZip folder if you don't want to see this message.
Tooltip on the highlighted area warning you contact information is shared with select vendors. The tooltip tells you which information is shared with the vendors.
Added shortcut menu to all textboxes and editboxes to help with undo, cut, copy, paste, clear, and select all functionality. This was added specifically to meet a request from a tablet PC user, but naturally works for everyone.
Additional adjustments were made to help out those with low resolutions or for those working on tablet PCs in portrait (tall and narrow) mode.
Added hyperlinks to conference Twitter page and the Southwest Fox Conference blog.
Updated specific data entry elements in the Help file to note the information shared with vendors. (Name, company, address, city/province/region, country, email, daytime phone number)
Updated the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) topic.

There was one minor bug:

Corrected the registration date and time when registration is sent to organizers.

Please download the new setup file before sending in your registration to enjoy some of the tweaks and to provide the smoothest of experiences. All the details about the registration process can be found on the conference registration page, including the download and a 15 minute video showing you the installation and using the registration applet.

Southwest Fox Sessions and Speakers Announced

2009-05-01T11:57:00.001-04:00

We announced the speaker and session lineup for Southwest Fox 2009 today. This year was the hardest yet selecting from the list of proposals because we had a record number of submissions. Once again, there are great topics such as using Visual Earth in VFP applications, implementing MySQL, getting the most out of FoxCharts, and adding full-text search to your applications.

Registration is now open, so be sure to sign up today for a fun three days in Phoenix in October. Take advantage of the “Southwest Fox Stimulus Plan”: if you register before July 1, you save $125 and get a free half-day pre-conference session, a $99 value. With sessions on Web development, source control, and refactoring legacy code, the hard part will be picking which one to attend.

We also offer an early-bird special: register before September 1 and save $50.

We're looking forward to seeing you in October!

2009 Ceil Silver Ambassador

2009-04-20T16:39:00.001-04:00

We are pleased to announce that César Chalom has been selected as the 2009 Ceil Silver Ambassador. He will attend Southwest Fox 2009 and represent the Brazilian VFP community.

César, a software developer from São Paulo, Brazil, has worked with Visual FoxPro since 2003, and is an active member of the Brazilian VFP community. He has attended the Brazilian VFP conference since 2004 and presented sessions at the conference in 2006 and 2008. He is well known to the global VFP community for his contributions to several VFPX community projects, including GDIPlusX and FoxCharts. His blog is an excellent source of technical material on GDIPlusX and other VFP topics.

We are very excited that César can attend Southwest Fox 2009 and know that many attendees are looking forward to meeting him in person.

Choosing speakers and sessions: harder than ever

2009-03-31T14:35:00.013-04:00

We're deep into the speaker and session selection process and it's harder this year than ever before. We have a record number of submissions, both of speakers and topics. What makes this really exciting is the number of submissions from "Southwest Fox virgins."

We received proposals from 27 people, nearly twice as many as we need. About half of the 27 have never spoken at Southwest Fox before; some have previously spoken only at user groups. We're really excited that so many people want to share what they've learned.

We have proposals for 92 topics; we need 28 to 30, plus 4 pre-conference sessions. Obviously, there's some overlap among the topics proposed by different people. However, there seems to be less of that than in previous years. That's both good and bad. It means we don't have to do as much of "Do we want person X to present topic Z, or would we rather that person Y do that topic?" On the other hand, this means that we have a lot more topics proposed that aren't going to make the cut.

The number of topics proposed per speaker ranges from 1 to 19! The median and the mode (most common) is 3. Veteran speakers know that giving us more than 2 to choose from is a good idea, and increases the chance of being chosen.

The topics proposed are pretty well distributed among the tracks. We allowed people to designate two tracks for each topic they proposed. Not surprisingly, the most common track is "Solidifying VFP Development" with 33 submissions. We have 29 topics that fit into "Integrating VFP" and 25 each for "Extending VFP" and "Technology for VFP Developers." We got 9 proposals for pre-conference sessions and the same number for "Taking Advantage of VFPX." What's amazing about those statistics is that, for four of our tracks, we have enough topics to practically fill the whole conference.

So what does all this mean? First, that I'm really glad we gave people a VFP application to submit their proposals this year. Consolidating the submissions into our database was pretty easy. I just unzipped each submission into a separate folder and wrote a little program to loop through the folders and populate the master tables. If we'd had the usual mishmash of Word docs, with some speakers submitting a single document and others submitting one per session, I would have spent much, much longer. (And, of course, now that I have it working, the program is reusable. Maybe next year, I'll extend it to handle processing the emails and unzipping the data.)

For the three of us, it's meant somewhat more time working through the proposals and making our individual selections. Interestingly, though, the amount of variance among our individual choices isn't a lot higher than in the past. We have a conference call scheduled to resolve the differences. (Think House-Senate Joint Conference Committee.)

For those who submitted, of course, it means more competition and that we'll have to say "sorry, thanks, please try again" to more people than ever before.

For our attendees, we think it means the best line-up of speakers and topics ever. We hope you'll agree.

Session Proposals Due Today

2009-03-16T12:18:00.006-04:00

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.

Session proposals due Monday

2009-03-12T13:24:00.002-04:00

Session proposals for Southwest Fox 2009 are due by Monday, March 16. We've already received quite a few, including a number from people who haven't spoken at Southwest Fox before, but we're happy to get more. So if you have something to share with the VFP community, please visit http://www.swfox.net/callforspeakers.aspx, read the Call for Sand download the proposal submission application. We can't wait to hear from you.

We hope this year is the hardest one yet for choosing which sessions to include.

Southwest Fox 2009 Call for Speakers

2009-02-23T21:06:00.003-05:00

Today we released the Call for Speakers for Southwest Fox 2009. Anyone interested in presenting should visit http://www.swfox.net/callforspeakers.aspx, read the Call for Speakers, and download the proposal submission application. Session proposals are due by March 16.

We're hoping to add a track this year called Technology for the VFP Developer. It'll cover things other than VFP that make life easier for FoxPro developers, like source control and virtual machines. Of course, we still plan to offer a good selection of topics in core VFP development, extending VFP, using VFP with other technologies, and of course, VFPX.

If you think you have something to say to the VFP community, please submit session proposals, even if you've never spoken at a conference before. Our community is strengthened when more people take an active role. Do be aware that speaking at a conference is a serious commitment. Even for experienced speakers, preparing a new session takes 40-80 hours. Doing it well at the conference calls for several rehearsals beforehand, too. So make sure you can commit the necessary time--the Call for Speakers lays out all the deadlines.

We're looking forward to seeing what you all come up with. Reading through the proposals we receive each year is really exciting, and choosing among them is always a challenge.

Follow Southwest Fox News on Twitter

2009-02-23T17:29:00.005-05:00

Are you hanging out on Twitter with the rest of your FoxPro friends? No? No problem, you can still follow along at http://twitter.com/swfox to get up to date news on the best Visual FoxPro conference in North America.

Like to follow this blog to get the latest news, no problem again. You can count on this blog for all the news that is about Southwest Fox. Even more details will be posted on the conference Web site at http://swfox.net

The Ceil Silver Ambassador Fund

2009-02-05T22:27:00.004-05:00

Back in October we announced the formation of the Southwest Fox Ambassador Fund.

On January 3rd our dear friend Ceil Silver passed away after an extended battle with Melanoma. You can read some terrific writing by Ceil as she chronicled her battle with cancer on her blog "Too Much Me." You can also read a wonderful message from her daughters after her passing too.

Today I am officially announcing a name change with her daughters' permission. The Southwest Fox Ambassador Fund is now officially renamed:

The Ceil Silver Ambassador Fund

We all miss Ceil.

Tweets at Southwest Fox

2008-12-09T12:20:00.005-05:00

Twitter is one of many social networking tools where friends/followers read posts about what someone is working on, something happened in their life they want to share, debate world events, get advice personal and professionally, and generally interact or converse with each other. Twitter is known as micro-blogging and each post is limited to 140 characters. Each post is known as a tweet.

One of the uses of Twitter that has bubbled up in the technical community is getting a feeling of what is going on at conferences as they happen. People at the conference post comments about sessions they attend, what they learned, who they talked to, and problems solved. These tweets can help other people at the conference to alter their schedule to make sure they catch the next offering of a great session, or find a meet-up that is happening later in the evening. Those who could not make it to the conference can live vicariously through the posts too. There have been several non-VFP conferences I have followed through Twitter this summer and fall. It is an interesting experiment for the social networking community.

I have lived on both sides of this. During the Prague conference this year I read terrific posts from Olaf Doschke (VFP MVP from Germany) who posted tweets throughout the conference. I read each post wishing I was there. During Southwest Fox I did not get to tweet at all because I was busy speaking and helping run the show. At the recent German DevCon I tweeted throughout the conference, but not as much as Olaf did in Prague. I found my tweeting experience to be fun. The key to tweeting at a conference is to include a hashtag in each tweet/post. Hashtags are a keyword you can use later for searching. At SWFox the tweeters settled on #SWFox.

So how can this hashtag be used now? Twitter has a search site you can enter in keywords or hashtags to read posts with those keywords. So if you want to read what people were tweeting about during Southwest Fox 2008 all you have to do is go here:

http://search.twitter.com/

and enter in #SWFox in the search text box. You will find many posts and see what sessions people were going to and what they learned. I went through them this morning and re-read some of the posts. Made me almost feel like I was back in Mesa.

Since the conference several new people who were at the conference have joined Twitter and are following others they met at Southwest Fox this year. You may think Twitter is a time sink and I am not going to pretend I don't spend time reading posts, but I learn stuff from the posts and have fun interacting with friends. Best part of Twitter is you are in full control of who's posts you track and who tracks your posts. You also control when you read and when you skip reading.

It will be interesting to see how this develops at Southwest Fox 2009. There are already a lot more people who are on Twitter so I expect next year's tweet volume to be much higher than this year.