Thursday, April 08, 2004
Paging Dr. Berntson...
The MVP Summit ended today here in Seattle and I must say that it was the best day yet. We spent all day with the Fox team show us great new features in VFP 9.0...and a couple of surprise guests. The day started with Eric Christenson. If you've been doing Fox for years or read Fox Tales, then you know who Eric is. He was responsible for putting Rushmore into FoxPro. He's still with Microsoft, working on the SQL Server team.
David Anderson of the Fox team was up next. He showed us many of the great new data enhancements coming in VFP 9.0 including enhanced SQL support, data types, and more.
Richard Stanton...remember this name because Rick Schummer says he'll be your new hero...showed off the new Report Writer enhancements. Richard is doing much of the work, along with some help from another long time Fox developer, Lisa Slater Nichols and her husband Colin. We got to see how the multi-detail band works, how you can get different output types, and control the different report objects. You're going to be amazed at what can be done. If you can make it to Dev Essentials in June, I highly recommend that you attend my pre-con reporting session or catch Doug Hennig's or Cathy Pountney's sessions there. You'll see lots of great things.
Tim Laverty of the VS Data Tools team (yag's other group), came in during lunch and we had a discussion about data modeling. If you're not familiar with what the VS Data Tools team does, look at the SQL Server tools in Visual Studio.
In the afternoon, Calvin Hsia and Randy Brown continued the VFP show with a bunch of new features. I can't remember all of them and I'm not sure which ones have been publically announced so I can't go into detail. However, several of the enhancements shown by all the presenters received applause from the MVPs. Visual FoxPro 9.0 will be a "must have" version.f
The day's official activities ended with another surprise guest, Rob Copeland. He had also worked at Fox Software and is also still with Microsoft.
This evening, I had organized a dinner for the Fox MVPs. Most of us that were here went out to Cutter's Bayhouse. Hopefully those that had to fly home early can stay and extra night next year as we are planning to go again after the next summit. Ken, yag, Randy Brown, Richard Stanton from the Fox product team, and Trevor Hancock from PSS Fox support joined us. Also former MVP Nancy Folsom and C# MVP and former Fox developer Bonnie Berent were also at dinner. In all, there were about 30 of us in the group. yag noticed that other MVP groups seem to hang out in small groups, but with Fox, it tends to be all of us. That's one thing that makes the Fox Community so great!
After dinner, many of us went to the lobby bar here at the hotel. Markus Egger, Rick Strahl, Claudio Lasalla, and Kevin McNeish came and joined us. Kevin greeted me as "Dr. Berntson".
The past three days have definatey been worth it. I have learned alot, had fun, and as is tradition at a conference, gotten little sleep. I'm looking forward to next year's summit.
I have lots of pictures that I'll post next week sometime after I get home. I'll be offline the next few days while I take a short vacation on the Washington coast and Olympic Penninsula.
David Anderson of the Fox team was up next. He showed us many of the great new data enhancements coming in VFP 9.0 including enhanced SQL support, data types, and more.
Richard Stanton...remember this name because Rick Schummer says he'll be your new hero...showed off the new Report Writer enhancements. Richard is doing much of the work, along with some help from another long time Fox developer, Lisa Slater Nichols and her husband Colin. We got to see how the multi-detail band works, how you can get different output types, and control the different report objects. You're going to be amazed at what can be done. If you can make it to Dev Essentials in June, I highly recommend that you attend my pre-con reporting session or catch Doug Hennig's or Cathy Pountney's sessions there. You'll see lots of great things.
Tim Laverty of the VS Data Tools team (yag's other group), came in during lunch and we had a discussion about data modeling. If you're not familiar with what the VS Data Tools team does, look at the SQL Server tools in Visual Studio.
In the afternoon, Calvin Hsia and Randy Brown continued the VFP show with a bunch of new features. I can't remember all of them and I'm not sure which ones have been publically announced so I can't go into detail. However, several of the enhancements shown by all the presenters received applause from the MVPs. Visual FoxPro 9.0 will be a "must have" version.f
The day's official activities ended with another surprise guest, Rob Copeland. He had also worked at Fox Software and is also still with Microsoft.
This evening, I had organized a dinner for the Fox MVPs. Most of us that were here went out to Cutter's Bayhouse. Hopefully those that had to fly home early can stay and extra night next year as we are planning to go again after the next summit. Ken, yag, Randy Brown, Richard Stanton from the Fox product team, and Trevor Hancock from PSS Fox support joined us. Also former MVP Nancy Folsom and C# MVP and former Fox developer Bonnie Berent were also at dinner. In all, there were about 30 of us in the group. yag noticed that other MVP groups seem to hang out in small groups, but with Fox, it tends to be all of us. That's one thing that makes the Fox Community so great!
After dinner, many of us went to the lobby bar here at the hotel. Markus Egger, Rick Strahl, Claudio Lasalla, and Kevin McNeish came and joined us. Kevin greeted me as "Dr. Berntson".
The past three days have definatey been worth it. I have learned alot, had fun, and as is tradition at a conference, gotten little sleep. I'm looking forward to next year's summit.
I have lots of pictures that I'll post next week sometime after I get home. I'll be offline the next few days while I take a short vacation on the Washington coast and Olympic Penninsula.
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