Speakers

Click a session topic for a description of that session.

Rick Borup

Rick Borup is owner and president of Information Technology Associates LLC, a professional software design, development, and consulting firm he founded in 1993. Rick earned BS and MBA degrees from the University of Illinois and spent several years developing software applications for mainframe computers before turning to PC database development tools in the late 1980s. He began working with FoxPro in 1991, and has worked full time in FoxPro and Visual FoxPro since 1993. He is a co-author of the books Deploying Visual FoxPro Solutions and Visual FoxPro Best Practices For The Next Ten Years. He has written articles for FoxTalk, FoxPro Advisor, and FoxRockX, and is a frequent speaker at Visual FoxPro conferences and user groups. Rick is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) and a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) in Visual FoxPro.

Sessions:

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning
Responsive Web Design with CSS

Tamar E. Granor

Tamar E. Granor, Ph.D., is the owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC. She has developed and enhanced numerous Visual FoxPro applications for businesses and other organizations.

Tamar is author or co-author of more than a dozen books including the award winning Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro. Her most recent books are VFPX: Open Source Treasure for the VFP Developer and Making Sense of Sedna and SP2.

Tamar served as Editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine from 1994 to 2000 and was Technical Editor from 2000 to 2008. She served as co-author of the popular Advisor Answers column from 1993 to 2008. She has also written for FoxTalk and CoDe; she currently writes for FoxRockX.

Tamar is one of the organizers of the annual Southwest Fox conference and founder of the Philadelphia Visual FoxPro User Group. In 2007, she received the Visual FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award. She received Microsoft Support's Most Valuable Professional award annually from the program's inception in 1993 through 2010. Tamar speaks frequently about Visual FoxPro at conferences and user groups in North America and Europe.

You can reach her at tamar@tamargranor.com or through www.tomorrowssolutionsllc.com.

Sessions:

Drag Your Applications into the 21st Century with Drag-and-Drop
Practical Tips for Working with Existing Applications

Doug Hennig

Doug Hennig is a partner with Stonefield Software Inc. He is the author of the award-winning Stonefield Query; the award-winning Stonefield Database Toolkit (SDT); the MemberData Editor, Anchor Editor, and CursorAdapter and DataEnvironment builders that come with Microsoft Visual FoxPro; and the My namespace and updated Upsizing Wizard in Sedna.

Doug is co-author of VFPX: Open Source Treasure for the VFP Developer, Making Sense of Sedna and SP2, Visual FoxPro Best Practices For The Next Ten Years, the What's New in Visual FoxPro series, and The Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro 7.0. He was the technical editor of The Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro 6.0 and The Fundamentals. Doug wrote hundreds of articles in 20 years for FoxRockX, FoxTalk, FoxPro Advisor, Advisor Guide to Visual FoxPro, and CoDe magazines.

Doug spoke at every Microsoft FoxPro Developers Conference (DevCon) starting in 1997 and at user groups and developer conferences all over the world. He is one of the organizers of the annual Southwest Fox conference. He is one of the administrators for the VFPX VFP community extensions Web site. He was a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) from 1996 through 2011. Doug was awarded the 2006 FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award.

Sessions:

Fix Problems Fast with Advanced Error Handling and Instrumentation Techniques
VFPX 2018 Edition

James S. Heuer

Jim has had a long career applying computing technology to business problems, starting in the late 1970s with a DataFlex application built to run on an MPM-86 "micro-computer". After experience with DataFlex, Knowledgeman, SPSS, and numerous other data management tools, he jumped into FoxPro for DOS 2.5 in 1990 and started building applications for his clients as well as supporting his logistics management consulting with custom-built analytical tools. From FoxPro DOS, he migrated his skills to FoxPro for Windows 2.5 and then all the versions of Visual FoxPro through the last, lamented version 9.0.

In 2002, Jim developed logistics analysis software implementing advanced AI problem solving technology built in Visual FoxPro with a high-performance computing component built in C for heavy number crunching. Over the years that software has grown in capability to today where it is marketed as PlanTools by Jim's company Evos SmartTools. Jim has continued as the primary designer and developer of the product as it currently deployed as a web-only application serving the needs of large corporations in the U.S. and Canada to manage their inbound and outbound freight. Starting in 2012, facing the demise of Microsoft support for Visual FoxPro and pressure from potential investors to begin a migration to a more active platform, he explored several options for a way to build on the current application while retaining full compatibility with the 200,000 lines of existing VFP code. After considering .NET, Java, PHP, and others, he settled on Python as the most compatible and VFP-like of the options.

In the years since, Evos SmartTools has built scores of new modules for new capabilities in Python—all smoothly interoperating with the existing VFP code, much of which will remain functional indefinitely as new features are built out in Python. Today, Evos has over 100,000 lines of Python code which enhance and extend the original VFP applications so seamlessly that users have no idea which parts are built in Python and which in VFP.

Over the years, Jim has attended numerous VFP conferences, including several SW Fox events, but never, so far, as a speaker.

Sessions:

Python as a Way Forward for VFP Developers

Kevin McNeish

Kevin McNeish is President and Chief Software Architect of Oak Leaf Enterprises, Inc., and an eight-time recipient of the Microsoft. .NET MVP Award. He is a well-known .NET and iOS speaker and trainer throughout North America and Europe including DevConnections, VSLive!, DevTeach, SDC Netherlands, Advisor DevCon, as well as numerous Code Camps and Boot Camps.

He is author of the ".NET for Visual FoxPro Developers" and "Learn to Code in Swift" books and co-author of the "Professional UML with Visual Studio .NET" book, as well as many software development magazine articles. He has also been interviewed multiple times on the .NET Rocks! Internet Radio Show. He is the Chief Software Architect of the MM .NET, MMiOS, and MM Xamarin Frameworks.

e-mail: kevinm@oakleafsd.com, Web: www.oakleafsd.com.

Sessions:

Building iOS, Android and UWP Apps with C# and Xamarin (pre-conference)
Choosing Your Best-Fit Data Access in .NET

Rick Schummer

Rick Schummer is the president and lead geek at White Light Computing, Inc., headquartered in southeast Michigan, USA where the team guides the customer's Information Technology investment toward success. He enjoys working with top-notch developers, thrives on the mode of continuous learning, has a passion for developing software using best practices, strives to surpass customer expectations, and shares his knowledge with others whenever he can. After hours you might find him creating tools that improve developer productivity, or writing articles for his favorite technology journals and his blog.

Rick is a co-author of VFPX: Open Source Treasure for the VFP Developer, Making Sense of Sedna and SP2, Visual FoxPro Best Practices for the Next Ten Years, What's New In Nine: Visual FoxPro's Latest Hits, Deploying Visual FoxPro Solutions, MegaFox: 1002 Things You Wanted To Know About Extending Visual FoxPro, and 1001 Things You Always Wanted to Know About Visual FoxPro. He is regular presenter at user groups across North America and is founding member and Secretary of the Detroit Area Fox User Group (DAFUG). Rick is the lead organizer of the Southwest Fox Conference, and is a regular presenter at other conferences in North America, Europe, and Australia. He is an administrator of VFPX, and a Microsoft Visual FoxPro MVP from 2002 to 2011. Rick was awarded the FoxPro Lifetime Achievement Award in October 2010.

You can contact Rick via email at raschummer@whitelightcomputing.com or via his company Web site: White Light Computing, Inc.. Read more of his thoughts on Visual FoxPro and software development on his blog: Shedding Some Light.

Sessions:

Mindfulness: Reaching Developer Nirvana

Phil Sherwood

Phil Sherwood is the president of SherWare, Inc., a software company founded in 1994, with offices in Ohio and North Carolina.

Since graduating with a BS degree in computer science 34 years ago, he's gone from IBM mainframe computers to today's laptops and tablets. He started SherWare, Inc. 24 years ago and develops and markets oil & gas accounting and investing software.

Today SherWare, Inc. provides accounting software to over 700 oil & gas operating companies around the U.S. and Canada. SherWare can be found on the web at www.sherware.com and www.wellprofits.com.

Phil has recently started coaching individuals and entrepreneurs on business and mindset. He's a certified Life Coach in the Strategic Intervention coaching method taught by Robbins Madanes. You can find his coaching blog at philsherwood.com.

When Phil is not working he's playing. He enjoys boating, rock climbing, paddle boarding and playing with his 4 grandkids.

Phone: 330.465.3569 Email: phil@sherware.com

Sessions:

Going From Desktop to SaaS with VFP: The Easy Way to Get to the Web (pre-conference)

Rick Strahl

Rick Strahl is the Big Kahuna at West Wind Technologies on on Maui, Hawaii. The company specializes in Web and distributed application development, training and tools with focus on ASP.NET,.NET and Visual FoxPro. Among the tools created and sold by Rick's company are West Wind Web Connection, West Wind Internet Client Tools, West Wind WebSurge, West Wind Html Help Builder, Markdown Monster, and Web Monitor. Rick has been working with Microsoft technology close to 25 years, is an ASP.NET MVP and Insider, a frequent contributor to magazines and books, and speaks frequently at professional developer conferences all over the world. For more information please visit: www.west-wind.com, contact Rick at rstrahl@west-wind.com or check out his WebLog at weblog.west-wind.com.

Sessions:

Marking up the World with Markdown
Securing West Wind Web Connection Applications

Tuvia Vinitsky

Tuvia Vinitsky is a principal in Vinitsky Consulting. Vinitsky Consulting develops and markets major vertical applications for non-profit organizations, community centers (JCC, YMCA), and delivery management. They also provide custom database software and website development.

Tuvia's Fox experience dates back to the days of FoxBase and CompuServe. He has written for FoxTalk and has been a presenter numerous times at regional users' groups. Tuvia has always enjoyed expanding the capabilities of FoxPro, whether it was graphic printer drivers in the days of DOS or Web-enabling the latest VFP 9 features.

Tuvia believes in having both breadth and depth of experience and has served as project leader for many large projects, including projects at companies like Avis-Rent-a-Car, Chicago Board of Trade, Marmon Group and Lotus.

Tuvia and his family are long time Chicago residents. He attended Northwestern University, and is an ordained Rabbi. His years at Northwestern, with its reputation for the performing arts, must have left a mark—not only is he known for his popular presentations on software development, but he frequently is a guest speaker on Jewish philosophy and teachings.

Sessions:

Running VFP Apps as Windows Services
Slick and Slicker: Creating a Modern UI Appearance in VFP

Christof Wollenhaupt

Christof Wollenhaupt is the owner of foxpert Softwareentwicklung und Beratung. foxpert is one of Germany's leading FoxPro companies with offices in several states. We offer FoxPro and .NET development and consulting services as well as a number of vertical market applications in the healthcare business. We are currently hiring. More information on http://www.foxpert.com.

Christof founded foxpert in 1996. He's been a regular speaker at international conferences and user groups since 1997, an international author for half a dozen magazines, and was a contributing editor to FoxPro Advisor for a decade and a Microsoft MVP for 13 years. He's the organizer of the monthly Microsoft Database Developer meeting in Hamburg.