Why Attend

Southwest Fox and Southwest Xbase++ are run for developers by developers. You will walk away filled with new ideas and a renewed energy toward developing applications and solutions.

Here are some great reasons to attend Southwest Fox and Southwest Xbase++:

• Great sessions offered by many of the brightest lights in the Fox and Xbase++ communities.
• Regular conference topics, pre-conference sessions, and a keynote to pack your days with learning opportunities and inspiration.
• Great place to network with lots of other developers.
• White papers from every session 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.
• Highly rated by attendees year after year.
• Exhibitors at the trade show so you can get answers to questions about their products in one place.
• Resort atmosphere without the typical high resort prices.
• Inexpensive flights available from most parts of the US.

Kathy Sierra has a great blog post on why to go to conferences.

Conference Attendance Justification Help

Is your boss giving you a hard time about attending a conference? Let us know. Rick Schummer is willing to talk to or email each and every one of them to help you get the okay to head to any development conference. He is totally serious. Rick has fought numerous times with former bosses to get himself as well as teammates to a conference. He has a way of getting them to see the light!

In addition to Rick's help, here are some things you can tell your boss:

• The speakers are mostly independent consultants and provide training and know-how on issues from real projects. As a result, this conference provides training I cannot get any other way.
• The industry is evolving so fast that it's hard to follow and the only way I can stay up-to-date is to attend a conference every year.
• By the time I find the time to read books, they're obsolete. Conferences save time by catching me up on important areas of interest in the industry.
• Conferences typically cause me to think outside the box and see techniques, tricks, and technologies that normally aren't covered in training classes.