Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Southwest Fox Wrapup
Here it is Tuesday evening. I got home early yesterday from Phoenix and Soutwest Fox. As I expected, Bob did a fantastic job of organizing the event with great speakers, prizes, and attendees. It was good to see Jim Booth again and bringing in Christof Wollenhaupt was genius. We had been trying to get him to speak for several years and now that he finally did, he didn't disappoint.
Thursday afternoon were several pre-con sessions. I attended the .Net for VFP Developers session presented by Kevin McNeish. He covered all the basics and clarified a few things for me.
After that was the poolside welcome reception. Attendees and speakers enjoyed great snacks and conversation. Then, it was time to move inside for the keynote by Craig Boyd, Rick Schummer, and Doug Hennig. The theme was FoxPro past, present, and future. It featured an old Fox Software video about the power of FoxPro DOS. Rick said, "If you close your eyes, everything still applies today." He was right. During the keynote we saw glimpses of Sedna and VFP running on Vista. But the highlight of the evening was Doug getting the VFP Lifetime Commumity Achievement Award. I can't think of anyone more deserving.
Sessions started Friday morning. I hit the .Net circuit again, this time, Understanding the .Net Framework by Rod Paddock. He took a different approach than Kevin did the previous day, but an excellent session, again answering a few lingering questions I had. This was a double session, so I was ready for a break when it was over.
However, I was scheduled next and did my presentation on Agile Software Development. I have found several great reviews of this session online. Thank you all for the kind words.
I skipped the session after lunch, then it was time for my Designing with UML session. It was a bit bumpier than I would have liked, but was encouraged by the response. Then I saw the first part of Toni Feltman's Infopath session.
The evening featured attendees going to different activities. Some went to the casino. I did the go kart racing. Cathy Pountney had challenged me to the race, saying she would beat me. I had to accept the challenge, a Mountain Dew was on the line! After getting our safety lesson and eating dinner, it was time for our race. We donned jump suits and helmets, then we were off! We had been told that the winner was the person with the fastest lap. Cathy ended up beating me, but truthfully I had expected this. She grew up driving go karts...but I had better average lap times than she did.
Saturday morning, I was up first with a repeat of my Agile session. I then sat in on Christof's Security Cookbook session. Holy Crap!!!! It scared me seeing all the holes that are in VFP, but it was good to see there are things you can do about them.
After than it was Using Software Design Patterns from Bill Anderson. A great session. I've been studying design patterns lately and Bill filled in the blanks in some areas and presented some patterns I hadn't gotten to yet. He also showed how the patterns were implemented in VFP.
Following lunch, it was time to dive in again with Cristof. And dive is the right word. No wading about with him...he doesn't just jump in, he cannonballs. This time the topic was Crashing VFP and Preventing Crashes. Lots of great stuff and even some tips on how to determine what's causing a C5 error.
The last session of the day was Rick Schummer's Professional Developer's Toolbox. I saw this session in the spring at GLGDW and got lots of great tips. Rick said it had been updated, so I was interested in learning about some new tools to add to my toolbox. I did...and got reminded of things that I'm not doing, but should be.
The evening was the speaker's dinner. This year it was at the hotel. The food was delicious, but it was also time to pay up my bet with Cathy. I walked out of the room to the vending machine in the hall and bought a Mountain Dew. I went back into the dining area, got down on one knee and presented the bottle of Dew to Cathy and said, "I present you with the fruits of your winnings, oh Speedy One."
Only two sessions on tap Sunday morning. I started off with one of my sessions. It was printed in the schedule as Agile, but I had repeated that one and not repeated my UML session, so I asked those present which one they wanted to see. The vote was for UML, so that's the one I did.
The last session was Rick Borup's RSS: Catch the Wave. He presented some interesting ways to use RSS. It's definately something I'll look into some more.
Things wrapped up with the closing session. More prizes were given away, but the highlight was the baby gifts given to Mike and Toni Feltman. Cathy Pountney had been working on this surprise gift for sometime and the Fox community generously donated over $500 for gift cards, etc for them. I can't believe we all managed to keep it a secret and surprise them.
As always, a huge highlight was seeing old friends and making new ones. And thanks to Bob for putting this great conference together. You should make plans now to attend next year. I'm already thinking of great topics to present.
Thursday afternoon were several pre-con sessions. I attended the .Net for VFP Developers session presented by Kevin McNeish. He covered all the basics and clarified a few things for me.
After that was the poolside welcome reception. Attendees and speakers enjoyed great snacks and conversation. Then, it was time to move inside for the keynote by Craig Boyd, Rick Schummer, and Doug Hennig. The theme was FoxPro past, present, and future. It featured an old Fox Software video about the power of FoxPro DOS. Rick said, "If you close your eyes, everything still applies today." He was right. During the keynote we saw glimpses of Sedna and VFP running on Vista. But the highlight of the evening was Doug getting the VFP Lifetime Commumity Achievement Award. I can't think of anyone more deserving.
Sessions started Friday morning. I hit the .Net circuit again, this time, Understanding the .Net Framework by Rod Paddock. He took a different approach than Kevin did the previous day, but an excellent session, again answering a few lingering questions I had. This was a double session, so I was ready for a break when it was over.
However, I was scheduled next and did my presentation on Agile Software Development. I have found several great reviews of this session online. Thank you all for the kind words.
I skipped the session after lunch, then it was time for my Designing with UML session. It was a bit bumpier than I would have liked, but was encouraged by the response. Then I saw the first part of Toni Feltman's Infopath session.
The evening featured attendees going to different activities. Some went to the casino. I did the go kart racing. Cathy Pountney had challenged me to the race, saying she would beat me. I had to accept the challenge, a Mountain Dew was on the line! After getting our safety lesson and eating dinner, it was time for our race. We donned jump suits and helmets, then we were off! We had been told that the winner was the person with the fastest lap. Cathy ended up beating me, but truthfully I had expected this. She grew up driving go karts...but I had better average lap times than she did.
Saturday morning, I was up first with a repeat of my Agile session. I then sat in on Christof's Security Cookbook session. Holy Crap!!!! It scared me seeing all the holes that are in VFP, but it was good to see there are things you can do about them.
After than it was Using Software Design Patterns from Bill Anderson. A great session. I've been studying design patterns lately and Bill filled in the blanks in some areas and presented some patterns I hadn't gotten to yet. He also showed how the patterns were implemented in VFP.
Following lunch, it was time to dive in again with Cristof. And dive is the right word. No wading about with him...he doesn't just jump in, he cannonballs. This time the topic was Crashing VFP and Preventing Crashes. Lots of great stuff and even some tips on how to determine what's causing a C5 error.
The last session of the day was Rick Schummer's Professional Developer's Toolbox. I saw this session in the spring at GLGDW and got lots of great tips. Rick said it had been updated, so I was interested in learning about some new tools to add to my toolbox. I did...and got reminded of things that I'm not doing, but should be.
The evening was the speaker's dinner. This year it was at the hotel. The food was delicious, but it was also time to pay up my bet with Cathy. I walked out of the room to the vending machine in the hall and bought a Mountain Dew. I went back into the dining area, got down on one knee and presented the bottle of Dew to Cathy and said, "I present you with the fruits of your winnings, oh Speedy One."
Only two sessions on tap Sunday morning. I started off with one of my sessions. It was printed in the schedule as Agile, but I had repeated that one and not repeated my UML session, so I asked those present which one they wanted to see. The vote was for UML, so that's the one I did.
The last session was Rick Borup's RSS: Catch the Wave. He presented some interesting ways to use RSS. It's definately something I'll look into some more.
Things wrapped up with the closing session. More prizes were given away, but the highlight was the baby gifts given to Mike and Toni Feltman. Cathy Pountney had been working on this surprise gift for sometime and the Fox community generously donated over $500 for gift cards, etc for them. I can't believe we all managed to keep it a secret and surprise them.
As always, a huge highlight was seeing old friends and making new ones. And thanks to Bob for putting this great conference together. You should make plans now to attend next year. I'm already thinking of great topics to present.
// posted by Craig Berntson @ 5:59:00 PM 
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