You can check out Steve’s sessions by heading over to Steve’s Southwest Fox speaker page (linked above). I think you will find his sessions are more must-see topics to the conference. And I thought the schedule was already going to be difficult to figure out this year, now it just got more complicated, but in a very good way.

If you have not registered for the conference yet, there is no time like the present moment! We still have a few Saver discounts remaining. More details on the registration page.

Only 35 days until we gather in Gilbert!

Back in July White Light Computing randomly selected two winners from the list of registered attendees to Southwest Fox 2011. Each year since 2006 White Light has offered $300 of scholarships to people who are registered for the conference. You can read all about the scholarships for the 2011 conference on the Southwest Fox Scholarships page.

This year we offered two people a $150 scholarship.

Normally our marketing director (my daughter) pulls the names, but she was out of town on vacation. In her place my wife conducted the drawing. The drawing was done by piling in all the names of the people registered by July 1st. First she pulled out ten names. From this smaller pile five names were drawn, and then the final two people. Interestingly, in the final five were three people from the same company as the winners.

The winners are:

1. Joel Leach from Memorial Business Systems
2. Stacey Violett of Black Mountain Software

Both of these individuals have been to majority of the past Southwest Fox Conferences, and both of their companies are sending more than one individual to this year’s conference. They certainly increased their odds to be winners.

Many thanks to both Joel and Stacey for their continued support of Southwest Fox over the years. And thanks to all who have registered for Southwest Fox 2011 so far. Your support for our conference is truly appreciated and critical to making the conference a success each year.

If you are interested in registering for the conference, feel free to contact me. I am always open to discussing how I can convince you to attend the best Visual FoxPro developer conference in North America, Southwest Fox!

We’re trying to get a better handle both on how many people to expect and the factors in people’s decision to attend or not. Please help us by taking a brief anonymous survey.

http://twitter.com/#!/rschummer/status/76152986992254976

http://twitter.com/#!/rschummer/status/76280482454708224

http://twitter.com/#!/rschummer/status/76286820048044032

http://twitter.com/#!/rschummer/status/76289027896115200

http://twitter.com/#!/rschummer/status/76301141113188352

http://twitter.com/#!/rschummer/status/76326750010867713

I was mostly tweeting to a couple of co-workers who wisely passed on the workshop, but it raised some interest of some followers. At the time I did not want to reveal what workshop I was in hoping it would get better, but now that it is over and I found it disappointing I thought I should share my thoughts. I do this in case it will help other decide if the session is worthwhile to them or not in the event Microsoft decides to do more of them around the planet. Since 140 characters is not nearly enough… here is my story.

This week I attended a one-day workshop from Microsoft called WebCamp. Specifically a special WebMatrix and ASP.NET MVC WebCamp hosted by a couple of Central Region Microsoft Developer Evangelists. When I signed up for this workshop the agenda stated the following:

• Web Stack Introduction
• Building a Site in WebMatrix
• jQuery Fundamentals
• ASP.NET MVC Introduction
• Migrating from WebMatrix to ASP.NET MVC
• Instructor-Led Labs

Since Microsoft is marketing the free WebMatrix to my customers as a simple way to publish Web sites I thought I might get up to speed on the tool. I also anticipate some of our customers potentially hitting a wall with WebMatrix and asking us to migrate to a more robust solution. If there is an easy path to ASP.NET MVC, and that is something we can use to help them, all the better for me to attend this session.

I should state up front that I had very low expectations going into this workshop based on the past history I have had with Microsoft developer workshops. Mostly because I walk out feeling like I just listened to mostly marketing-speak and a lot less technical-speak. That said, even the worst workshop I have attended I have walked away with something of value that allows me to justify at least part of the time spent. I also have a history of being let down by Microsoft Developer Evangelists (with the exception of a couple of exceptional ones like Jennifer Marsman who is in our region).

I also want you to know the Southfield Michigan (suburb here in Detroit) workshop was not the first time this session was given. The room was completely full with approximately 80 people. I would say the venue was completely “sold out”. Also, the WebCamp was free to register.

A couple of days before the workshop we received an email noting we should download and install:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (get the trial)
• Download and Install WebPI 3
  • Install WebMatrix (via WebPI)
  • Install MVC3 (via WebPi)
• Download and install the Web Camps Training Kit

The email arrived a couple days before the holiday weekend. I fortunately did not get this email, but one of my co-workers did and it took her hours to download and install everything. Hours that were taken away from doing billable work. These were necessary for the marketed hands-on workshop. (more on this in a minute)

In fact on the WebCamp Web site it states:

As for our presenters, initially we have lots of Southwest Fox veterans like Menachem Bazian, Rick Borup, Steve Ellenoff, Tamar Granor, Uwe Habermann, Doug Hennig, Venelina Jordanova, Jody Meyer, Jim Nelson, myself, Eric Selje, and Christof Wollenhaupt. We also have three Southwest Fox freshman: Steve Bodnar, Kevin Ragsdale and Tuvia Vinitsky.  We are hopeful registrations will allow us to bring in additional speakers as well.

I am looking forward to sitting in on lots of sessions if time allows like last year. I am presenting a couple of new sessions:

1) How Craig Boyd Makes Me a Hero!

2) Programming Standards and Guidelines for Software Craftmanship

White Light Computing is a Platinum Sponsor again this year. We will have a booth to show off our developer tools and services again so please stop by.

You can follow us in Twitter: @SWFox. If you check out who @SWFox is following you will find our list of speakers who are on Twitter.

And there are still plenty of surprises up our sleeves (some we don’t even know ourselves yet) to entice you to come to the best Visual FoxPro conference in North America!

Please help us get the word out about the conference by yelling from the mountain tops. We certainly appreciate everyone who blogs, or records podcasts, or tweets, or Facebooks (is that the proper verb?) about their positive experiences at past Southwest Fox conferences. An email will be sent to everyone who has attended Southwest Fox in the past on June 1st. Send us an email if you are interested in getting on the list. (info [AT] swfox.net)

Registration opens June 1.

Only 152 days until we gather in Gilbert!

In the past I have found that customers like to change their mind about what they want. This normally happens once they see the implementation of what they asked for during the first round of requirements discussion. Developers work hard to put together the user interface using the designers, but it is relatively expensive to the customer base if it gets thrown away. Sure there are times when we hit the nail on the head, but normally I find the real solution does not shine until the customer “spits on it.”

Balsamiq Mockups is a designer that lets developers and non-developers alike build wireframes/mockups. These are blueprints for how the application user interface can look or work. Developers and users can sit down and flow through the application before hours of development are completed. Balsamiq Mockups facilitates the creation of the wireframes with lots of controls developers are using from the toolboxes provided in the native application designers.

You will learn:
* What the benefits are when you wireframe with your users
* How you can leverage customers and designers/artists to create mockups
* How easy it is to create mockups
* That wireframing actually leads to more business, and doesn’t take away revenues from development
* The different ways Balsamiq Mockups makes you a more agile developer/team

I really enjoyed DevLink last year and I look forward to meeting up with old and new friends in Chattanooga (new home of the conference) August 17th to 19th, 2011.

OLE error code 0x8002801d: Library not registered.

To be clear, I got this error trying to get the Help menu to drop down inside of Visual FoxPro, not selecting the Help option on the menu, or by pressing the F1 key (which failed to bring up the Help file). Puzzled I ignored it and opened the CHM file directly in Windows Explorer. It opened fine and I was able to provide the feedback to Francis. I rarely use VFP 8 these days. Actually I mostly use it to compare behavior to VFP 9, which was exactly the case this afternoon, or to help other developers when I am mentoring or answer questions on the various forums.

I took a shot in the dark and tried using REGSVR32 to register the FoxPro Help EXE found in the Common Files folder. I found out immediately this was the incorrect approach as REGSVR32 barked at me that it failed. Fortunately the Visual FoxPro Wiki came to the rescue as it does so frequently for me. The correct way to register the FoxPro Help executable is to run the EXE with the /RegServer parameter.

FoxHHelp8.EXE /regserver

You can do this via the Windows Command Window, but if you are running Vista, Windows 7, or an earlier OS without Administrator rights, make sure to run the Command Window with administrator access.

[I documented this for my future self in case I need it for another machine - RAS]

This discussion boiled out of several discussions where Andrew and Dane kept running into former FoxPro people in the .NET community. They wanted to hear more about Fox Community and later found out that the root of the Microsoft MVP program was founded in the Fox Community as well. Our discussion covers a number of topics about developer communities and is what we find common and unique among them, as well as characteristics you find in people who are actively participating in a developer community. It was a fun hour.

The interview/discussion was recorded in the Microsoft Commons in a cafeteria. In the background was lots of MVPs eating and socializing so I am really impressed with the quality of the audio. I enjoyed participating. The only wish I have is that some of the other former Fox MVPs who have turned to the “dark-side” (Rod Paddock, Rick Strahl, Jim Duffy, Julie Lerman, Kevin McNeish, Markus Egger, Cathi Gero, and Craig Berntson to name a few) and other Fox people who are now .NET MVPs (Alan Stevens, Bonnie Berent, and David Giard) were not there. Although with that many people it would have been out-of-control. The list of people here is only part of the crowd though that have helped the .NET Community actually become more of community in the sense the Fox Community has known for more than two decades.

You can listen to the podcast here:

http://www.communitymegaphonepodcast.com/Show/26/FoxPro-Reunion

Thanks to Dane and Andrew for taking the time to talk with us.

Now off to get mine polished up and sent in.

The Ambassador selection committee consists of Southwest Fox organizers Rick Schummer, Tamar Granor, and Doug Hennig, former Ambassadors Emerson Santon Reed, Cesar Chalom, and Bernard Bout, and VFP community members Christof Wollenhaupt, Rick Bean, and Alex Feldstein.

We are looking for nominations from the VFP community for the 2011 recipient. To nominate someone you think is deserving to be selected, please email their name and a brief list of their contributions to the VFP community to ambassadorfund AT swfox.net. Names must be submitted no later than April 15, 2011.

Red Gate made a recent announcement in an open letter to the .NET Community, which detailed some future changes to the product with respect to the licensing and most importantly that it was no longer going to be free. I watched the reaction in the .NET Community via Twitter and on some blogs, and was not surprised how many developers were reacting. Developers are notorious frugal and love free stuff, and complained loudly how Red Gate was cheating them and going back on their word/intention of always having a free version.

Any developer with few exceptions, who makes a living developing software and finds use for a tool like .NET Reflector core to their development experience certainly can afford $35 for the standard edition. Here in the USA we are talking a few pizzas or a week’s worth of Starbucks coffee. I have talked with numerous .NET developers over the last few years including people who work with me and they find this tool indispensable. The top of the line version which allows you to step through third-party assembly code is only $95. To me, as a business owner who likes when our company delivers solid software, $95 is a steal to gain functionality like this.

I emailed one of my contacts at Red Gate giving my view point. I am in the slightly unique position of having a line of commercial and some free tools that I make available to the developer community. I have experienced the developers who complain that I charge for tools that have some premium features and how I should make the pro versions free to everyone. I explained to Red Gate that they can expect some heated posts and tweets. But in the big picture, people should understand that the survival of a product for the cost of a few pizzas is minor in the big scheme of things.

As a thank you for my feedback Red Gate has given me some .NET Reflector VSPro licenses to give-away. This came to me as a total surprise.

I gave away 10 licenses to members of the Detroit Area Fox User Group last Thursday. I have 10 licenses to give-away at the Michigan Great Lakes .NET Group on Wednesday, and I have 10 more licenses to give-away here via my blog. This is close to $3000 of software. As you can see, Red Gate is a super generous company.

Rules/Disclaimer

[Edit 15-Mar-2011] All licenses have been given away.

So if you are doing any .NET development, or expect to be doing some .NET development and would like a FREE copy of .NET Reflector VSPro please send me an email: DotNetReflector AT WhiteLightComputing.com with the subject: “.NET Reflector Please”. The first 10 people who I get an email from will get instructions on how they can get their license returned to them via email. If you don’t get a response from me in 24 hours, consider yourself too late. I am fairly certain these licenses will not be around for long.

One license per individual. All tax considerations are the responsibility of the winner (consult your tax accountant for specific details). No employees of White Light Computing, or any family members of the employees of White Light Computing are eligible. Your mileage may vary, some settling may occur during shipping. Not valid outside of planet Earth. All decisions made by me are final.

Thanks

Thanks Red Gate for the great tools and the terrific support of the developer community, you guys rock.

As in the past few years, we plan to offer a good selection of topics in core VFP development, extending VFP, using VFP with other technologies, and VFPX, as well as technology sessions to help VFP developers become better developers, not just more expert at VFP.

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.

lcLongName = padr(upper(alltrim(tcProperty)), ;
             fsize('cLongName', .cPropCursorName))

The FSIZE() function is one of the functions affected by SET COMPATIBLE ON (it defaults OFF). When the setting is ON the function is returning the actual file size. When the setting is OFF, the function is returning the size of the field. This is one of those design decisions you got to wonder about. I know Microsoft made it to make the code work for dBase developers, but I think it is crazy-nuts to reuse functions in this manner. It leads to time tracking down problems like this one.

The application we are supporting has a SET COMPATIBLE ON in the start up code for reasons unknown to me. This is a global setting and it would take a considerable amount of time to track down all the possible code I would break by turning it OFF making it high risk. One workaround I could have implemented around this problem is inserting the SET COMPATIBLE OFF before the call to the SDT code and resetting it ON after the call (low risk, but only fixes this application). I decided to modify the FindProperty method to set and reset because it could be called by other application that use the DBCX Manager code. I also sent the findings to Stonefield support for their consideration.

[EDIT * 2-Feb-2011]  I have since realized that the changes are necessary throughout the DBCX Manager code. After further consideration, both Doug and I have come to the same conclusion, there are to many places to fix the code in the DBCXMgr, and no good reason why SET COMPATIBLE should be set ON. So I have changed the application to toggle the setting before calling the SDT Reindexing, Update, and Repair functions.

Glad to have that one off the bug list for our customer.

• The shift not only from the second week in October to the last week (to avoid running into Jewish holy days).
• The shift from our usual Thursday to Sunday dates to Wednesday to Saturday this year (so you can get home in time for Halloween).
• The post-conference starts Saturday afternoon rather than the next day.

By the way, the post-conference event is guaranteed to blow your socks off, so you’ll definitely want to consider staying the extra day. Stay tuned for more details.

The speaker dinner was themed oriental with some of my favorites including sushi and Thai food. More importantly the discussion was fun and often so funny I had tears in my eyes. It started at 8:00pm and ended around 3:00am for me, just a few short hours before we had to get in the taxi for the ride to the airport for the morning flights. Lots of discussion on how we can improve both German DevCon and Southwest Fox. We have a lot of synergy between the conferences and the organizers help each other out when ever possible. I think you will find many of the discussed topics making their way into the conferences next year as some of the ideas were downright cool and genius.

Up first is Doug Hennig and his “Cool Controls for Your Applications” session. Doug’s theme this year was deep diving into various controls in both of his conference sessions. Doug is making the important point that your apps do not have to be mundane and boring. There are no more excuses. Doug covered his impressive SF Splitter control (for vertical and horizontal splitting, which I am planning to use soon for one project), the SFComboTree (found in the PEMEditor), the VFPX PopMenu project, Paul Mrozowski’s RCSCalendar control, and finally the VFPX Balloon tips by Carlos Allotti. Great session for anyone looking to spruce up your app.

I skipped the next session because my head was hurting a little bit and because it felt like I had gone non-stop for a few days.

Alaska Software was kind enough to show us where they are going with their “Polar Fox” project. They showed this off at Southwest Fox, but I did not have time to review it in Pheonix. Steffen Pirsig detailed the plans for the next major version of XBase++ and how it will transpile the current FoxPro source code into their format to run. Details include:

• Transpiler: will take existing Visual FoxPro code and transport it to XBase++ code.
• Source code control will be simplified with text based source code.
• Source compiles down to native platform executables.
• Decompilers will be a thing of the past.
• Designers will be written in XBase++, IDE can be automated (continuing the tradition of extensibility).
• Command prompt, roll your own commands (interactive just like Visual FoxPro).
• Concepts they are pushing: no limits, innovate without disruption, favor design, continue the language.

Code already is compiling and building EXEs, the initial designers are working, they are making the reporting engine 100% compatible, and have the Profiler and Debugger working.

The idea that gives me the most confidence that Alaska Software can pull this off is that they have done it before with Clipper and the Clipper Community. They also seem to have a terrific grasp on what Visual FoxPro does and how developers use Visual FoxPro, and the types of applications they write. I really appreciate the time Steffan put in on the presentation and how Alaska Software is working on a path for Visual FoxPro developers in the future.

After lunch was my “Mocking Your Customer” session. This session is the one I was most nervous about because it really counts on audience participation. Having other contribute to any session benefits everyone, and the participation I have had in rehearsals and at other conferences was terrific. So in an effort to coax people into asking questions I offered to draw names for one of two licenses of Balsamiq Mockups. It worked a little as two people asked questions. Each won a copy of Mockups. The business side of the session went faster than normal since there were no questions or observations to share. I enjoyed the session and got several nice compliments from attendees as they were leaving.

The last session of the conference for me was Servoy’s vendor session “Servoy for the Visual FoxPro Developers.” Several Fox developers have made some very public statements on how they are learning Servoy and how they like it. Ken Levy did not show up on time so I went out in the lobby to track him down and remind him he had a session to give in 5 minutes. I am not throwing stones here based on my tardiness to my first session. I normally don’t get to see vendor sessions so I decided to take the opportunity to check out Servoy. After all, they have sponsored SWFox for 4 years and I don’t really have in-depth knowledge of the specifics, and have not seen a demo of the product. It does look impressive, especially how you can literally change the source code while the code is running. Once you save the change it is immediately reflected in the running form. They offer a good deal to start with the development IDE for free. Unfortunately as cool as it looks, the one thing I did not get answered specifically is the licensing costs, which I have been told is per seat licensing. They slipped through the pricing slide extremely quick and ask that you contact them for specifics on the pricing.

The conference finished up with the closing session where lots of door prizes are given away.

Up first is Christof Wollenhaupt with his first of five sessions for the conference. This session is called “Psychologie und Softwareentwicklung” and was presented in German. All the sessions in this slot were in German so I picked the one in the same room as my next session. I listened as much as I could, but mostly I caught up on some email and other work. Christof’s sessions in German are fast, as in speaking fast and packing in the information for the attendees. I like the fact that people laugh at is jokes and he has interactive sessions.

I followed Christof’s session with my “How Craig Boyd Makes Me a Hero!” session. I enjoyed it and hope the attendees did as well. The session was more interactive than most sessions I have given in Frankfurt. I love interaction and contributions from the audience when I talk so this helped me. I got through all but one demo so the timing on this session is still not perfected (something I worked on last weekend and on the plane ride to Frankfurt). The demo gods made sure I was in check with a VFP 9 SP2 C5 crash and the same for Skype (which definitely should not have been running in the first place). Rainer, the conference organizer, stopped by the room before the session and noted how much he really liked the session title. I have plenty of material for part two next year if Rainer wants to invite me back.

Up next was Cathy Pountney’s “Making the Most of VFP 9 SP2 Reports.” Cathy reminded me about some issues with respect to installing VFP 9 SP2. Since I have seen this session numerous times at user groups and conferences I took the time to update my document “Install and Run Different VFP 9 Versions on One Computer” with her discussion about Virtual Storage in Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008. The introduction to the new Report Dynamics is delivered from one of the few experts in the community. The tips she shows in this session are outstanding. One of her tips in particular deals with the wrapping of details to the next page of reports when you have more than one object with different sizes bumping up the height of the band. This one hit home because on of my mentoring customers has a very similar problem (which Cathy helped me work through for a solution during lunch). This reminds me of an important benefits of conferences: getting help from other developers to solve problems that have you stumped. I know I try to help out other developers when ever I have a chance, but to do it face-to-face is really beneficial. This session actually was a perfect warm up to her fxReports session later in the afternoon.

Lunch followed Cathy’s session. At this point I was not hungry because breakfast was so good, but I had some salad and naturally the smoked salmon.

“Windows Presentation Foundation 4″ by Kevin McNeish followed lunch. This was the perfect follow up to the Entity Framework 4 session on Thursday. Kevin compared and contrasted the differences between Windows Forms and WPF-based interfaces. I really know nothing about either, so it was great getting background from one of the experts on the subject.

“fxReports – Sharing Custom Report Features” by Cathy Pountney is another session I saw in rehearsal at the Grand Rapids Fox User Group. Cathy added some stuff based on the fact that the VFPxRepository.com site is established. We are working on getting a place set up so the community can share add-ons and plug-ins for the various VFPX tools that have them. We decided that we needed a place separate from the VFPX Codeplex pages because VFPX hosts core projects and is not great with respect to multiple downloads. The rest of the session showed various dynamics and special effects Cathy has produced via a new reporting framework called fxReports. She showed the code and how they work, and how they are implemented in the ReportListener class hierarchy. The framework is designed to share components with other developers. Cathy has devised a VFPX project that helps developers not only design special effect classes for reports, but to load other ones by other developers, and share the ones they create. This is a really cool project and has tremendous potential for developers to create special effects on report and simple to implement ones developed by others. Really cool and a great session.

Christof (note, I only have to use his first name {g}) presented “Automatisierung des Entwicklungsprozesses” also in German. I was catching up on more work as I listened to him and tried to understand the various processes he has tried to automate in his work life. So many things to try and so little time to do so.

I skipped the two after dinner sessions since they were in German and got some more real work done. I needed to work on a proposal that was due for a customer by 5:00 EST so the fact that I was six hours ahead really helped me beat the space-time continuum limitations.

Once the proposal was completed and emailed I headed downstairs to participate in some discussions in the bar and later headed to bed because I was really tired after the long day. Unfortunately, jetlag was kicking my behind once again.

For the record, I had smoked salmon at every meal during the conference including lunch on day 1. This is a personal goal I am happy to meet each year at German DevCon.

Doug’s “A Deep Dive into the VFPX ThemedControls” session was up first after lunch and as is normal for one of the world’s best speakers, Doug did a great job. He stepped us through a deep dive into Emerson Santon Reed’s class library of fantastic controls that really helps in the quest to make Visual FoxPro applications look modern. Doug talked about the fundamental classes: ThemesManager (allows you and your customers to pick from one of six predefined themes), the ThemedContainer, the ThemedTitlePageFrame, and the ThemedButton (including the builder). After the fundamentals Doug described in great detail the classes and code needed to implement the ThemedExplorerBar, the ThemedOutlookNavBar, ThemedToolbox, ThemedZoomNavBar, and the newer Ribbon. I agree 100% with Doug’s summary that there are no more excuses for Visual FoxPro developers to create applications that do not look good. Doug’s 26 page white paper on this topic is a gold mine of information as well.

Cathy Pountney’s session “PEM Editor: An Absolute MUST HAVE in your development toolkit” followed Doug’s session. I saw this session in Grand Rapids when she rehearsed it for Southwest Fox. Cathy’s session in Grand Rapids was good, but it was obvious she refined timings and material since I saw it. I was wondering if I would learn anything new since I saw it once before, and should not have forgotten that there is so much to this tool and I was destined to learn or relearn something new. PEMEditor is always changing and being improved by Jim Nelson so any minute we can count on a new release with new features. Cathy gave a brief overview to show people in the room who did not know what the PEMEditor is. After this she showed the crowd a dozen or more different features that are new in the current version. One of my favorites was the “Go To Definition” which literally opens up the method in the method editor, the property in the PEMEditor, or an object in the PEMEditor Document Treeview. The “Extract to method” does exactly that, BeautifyX is a beefed up beautifier, and the built in Enhanced Cut, Copy and Paste are fantastic advancements in the PEMEditor becoming a serious refactoring tool.

Kevin McNeish’s “The Microsoft Entity Framework 4″ (also known as EF4) made my list of sessions because I have read and heard from others that it is Microsoft’s data access soup of the day for .NET development. Seriously, Microsoft has put a lot of resources together to improve the Entity Framework. White Light Computing purposely used EF4 in our conference session eval Web site that we created earlier this year for Southwest Fox so we could learn more about it. Kevin introduced EF4 with his normal wit and humor. The one thing I took away from the session is that Microsoft made some significant improvements from EF1 to EF4. EF4 is really the second release of the Entity Framework and in true Microsoft fashion, needs three releases to really get this product at a mature state. One thing is for sure though from what I have learned at German DevCon, Microsoft needs to listen to database developers more closely as there are some fundamentals missing in EF4, which I find disturbing, but not surprising.

I skipped the first session after dinner since I needed a bit of a break. I also needed to finalize the three tips I planned to present during the bonus session.

The second bonus session was the delivery of two “FoxPro Lifetime Achievement Awards” and Tips & Tricks from the conference speakers. Rainer started out the session with an overview of an app he is working on. Most of his discussion was in German with an occasional break in English to help out the non-German people in the audience. It looked like an interesting application.

The two “FoxPro Lifetime Achievement Awards” were given to Jürgen “wOOdy” Wondzinski, and Christof Wollenhaupt. Both wOOdy and Christof are developers people recognize with a single name, like Cher, and have made so many contributions over the years to the world-wide Fox Community. Their contributions are going to be posted soon on the Fox Wiki. I was honored to be one of the presenters along with fellow award winners Doug Hennig and Rainer Becker.

Up next was the Tips and Tricks session. Several speakers presented tips they have learned over the years. I presented an ActiveX/IntelliSense tip, ability to sort Watch Expressions in Debugger, and a DataExplorer Query tip.

Other tips presented by the other developers included:

• Doug Hennig demoed “Go To Definition” feature of PEM Editor and a instrumenting/logging tool.
• Ken Levy demoed _SetAllX FFC class he included in VFP, _EvalText found in _HTML.vcx, and advanced Component Gallery tips.
• Cathy Pountney demos Report Designer trick for “;” as CHR(13) in reports, and is showed off SlickRun.
• wOOdy is showed a field type tip, a BROWSE NAME trick, and EVAL() tip.
• Christof showed integer in Command Window does Goto, “-” concatenates and ALLTRIM(), using SET VOLUME, and killing/restarting VFP. Christof also mixed tips and tricks with humor and had the audience in stitches.

The tips might be printed in a future issue of FoxRockX. That was the end of the conference day. I hung out with folks in the bar for a while, and then headed back to my room around midnight to get some customer work completed. Day 2 would come too quickly.

Today I overslept despite setting up a wake-up call, the television alarm, and my phone as a backup. I did not wake up until Doug Hennig called me almost four hours after the alarms.

I heard the phone ring. I answered it expecting it to be someone from the hotel telling me to wake up. Strange though was the voice sounded a lot like Doug. I think I asked him what time it was. “11:20″, Doug replied. Mental check, my session starts at 11:30. Holy $%#, 10 minutes.

Need computer working so I figured I could log in and get things set up and ready so I can start immediately upon getting in the room. Blue Screen! Seriously?!? Really?!? At this point I thought I might want to wake up from this nightmare. This is not a joke. These are real thoughts. Pinch, nope I am awake, phone says it is 11:21. Reboot the machine and hit shower, dress, login, and run for session room.

I arrived and started my session at 11:35.

The first 5 minutes were the hardest 5 minutes of my presenting life. The adrenaline level was as high as I have experienced in all my years of speaking. I could feel my heart jumping out of my chest as I introduced the session. At the same time I was introducing the session I was trying to figure out where I could cut time, and slow down my racing heart.

Jet lag is obviously killing me this trip. I returned to my room exhausted last night, but could not fall asleep since my body thinks it is dinner time back home. I tried several techniques to sleep and all failed. I got up and called my family and went through my session (which turns out to be a key to delivery this morning), tweeted about the problem of not sleeping, and handled some email for customers. All tasks were done hoping to make me more tired. I ended up falling asleep at 4:30 local time.

All-in-all I was able to convey the information I wanted to share with the people in the room. One of the attendees told me at lunch after the session, after learning I woke up 15 minutes before starting the session, that I did remarkably well considering the experience. In my mind it was definitely not my best work, but appreciate the kind review. I am also hoping the adrenaline levels off some time this afternoon. Wish I could bottle it up for use later.

Thanks to Doug for recognizing my absence and waking me up. Thanks to those who stayed and attended the session. And apologies to Rainer for letting you down this morning. It will not happen again. As a fellow organizer I know how important it is to count on the speakers to show up on time and deliver a good session.

This computer is the only computer for the company and is close to 8 years old, and really did need to be replaced. This customer is running a Visual FoxPro 5 app that I developed in 1997 and has run without major issues since then. The app is so reliable I cannot convince the customer to upgrade it to Visual FoxPro 9.

So let me see, how much could go wrong with VFP 5 on Windows 7 64-bit, using Aero? The app uses Excel to import records via a remote view, and automates Word to generate letters and envelopes via VBA in Office 97. Hmmm, a few versions of Office, lots of potential glitches with Aero, and a handful of ActiveX controls and FoxTools.FLL. My response was: “I don’t have any idea the number of things that could go wrong.”

My greatest concern was the 32-bit ODBC drivers for Excel, followed by the VBA automation, and then the User Interface glitches we have seen in newer versions of Visual FoxPro on Aero. I also used a couple ActiveX controls and had no idea how well it would work on Windows 7.

I did immediately think it was my opportunity to update to Visual FoxPro 9, which means no more Visual FoxPro 5 apps to support. {big evil grin}.

I arrived at my customer’s home. He literally runs his business out of his basement. I start up the app and it immediately crashes on “API library is not found.” Easy one, FoxTools.FLL is not loaded with the run-time files. It took me a little bit of time to track down the location of the VFP 5 runtime files, and copy over a copy of FoxTools. Run-times were in the Window’s SystemWOW64 folder instead of the System32 folder. App up and running FTW. I tested out most of the data entry forms and there are no UI glitches. Customer is happy to see the app running.

Celebration lasted about 2 minutes when we tried to import the Excel file. Hardware dude who moved over “everything” forgot to set up the ODBC driver. This is easy to overlook and I had good documentation on setting it up. I dig around and find the 32-bit ODBC Manager and set up the ODBC driver. Import routine works just fine. Another round of premature celebration follows.

Surely something is bound to go wrong, right? I mean, would I even dare write a blog post about a perfect scenario for an upgrade? Probably not. {g}

Off to test the letter generation code. CRASH! It is not what you are thinking if you are thinking the VBA code was not working. It crashed on the silly progress bar update that runs as the letters are generated. It crashed on the progress bar setting the value to zero, as in zero percent. Odd. I futzed with the code and tried a few things and eventually determined the progress bar was unnecessary for the moment. The VBA code actually ran without a single hiccup once I got past the progress bar not making progress. I am curious about the progress bar, but that battle is for another day. It was more important that the letters and envelopes are generating so the business can meet their commitments to their customers.

Oh, and thanks Microsoft for keeping backward compatibility with VBA and the Excel ODBC driver in Office 2010 on Windows 7. Nice job! Kudos to everyone on the Office team for not making my life miserable and showing the customer that his investment in Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office was a well placed investment.

The only things I wished I had today was the current error handler we use, and time to dig into the progress bar issue.  The error handler I wrote back in 1997 feels weak. The one we use today is way more robust. I am speculating that the progress bar only accepts integers and I am passing decimals, or it is looking for the percent.

The moral of this story is to add one more thing to consider the next time a customer calls and wants to upgrade to Windows 7: native Windows ActiveX controls. Silly thing is I avoid most of the Microsoft ActiveX controls these days because of the deployment headaches. Not a single issue I worried about materialized. It was the unexpected problem that consumed most of my time. That, should not be a surprise.

Even as I sit down to write this blog entry I find myself a bit shocked at how the closing session revealed the award. Doug let me know before the conference that Lisa Slater Nicholls was being awarded, only because he knew I would figure it out when I saw Lisa and Colin roaming the grounds at the Legado and Elegante.

So let’s first start with Lisa. Lisa is very deserving and I am happy she got the award this year. As several others have said, it was long overdue. Listening to Doug’s introduction was chilling to me especially when he talked about the moment in time when Lisa stepped up to take the position of FoxTalk Editor when Glenn Hart passed away. Doug pointed out how that one moment in time impacted so many people in our community. If Lisa had not stepped up there might not be a FoxTalk, and that means a lot of writers might not have had the chance to write about FoxPro. I was one of the people who got my start writing in FoxTalk, which lead to conference speaking, book writing, and other contributions I have made to the community. If you want to read Lisa’s first editorial in FoxTalk head here.

I really enjoyed Lisa’s short video too. Well done. You can read Lisa’s reaction on her blog here: “Legacy” is a good thing

Then I see Doug change to the “But wait…. there is more” slide. If you know me you know I like to be prepared and this slide was not covered during the “rehearsal.” You may have noticed I am a bit confused at this point. In the next few seconds I was running through the list of people I thought might be announced and wondering if they were in the room. I am barely listening to Doug as he introduces the second recipient of the afternoon. Me. Me?!?

The moment I heard my name announced the space time continuum skipped a beat. I literally had no words in my head (all the voices stopped {g}). I completely “spaced” out. And yes, it was an emotional moment. It was a good thing I did not make eye contact with Therese and I did not see my parents in the front row. I heard later that my mom was crying and that probably would have thrown me over the edge. I was, and to this day, stunned. I am also honored, and extremely grateful for the recognition.

Tamar was kind enough to point out to me that the next slide was mine and I had to pull myself together to announce that we are already planning Southwest Fox 2011. Unfortunately we do not have the dates or location to announce at this point. I had a reasonable plan of what I wanted to say, but I lost those words as well. We will have more to come in the next month on Southwest Fox 2011.

After the closing session I realized I thanked no one. You know, the academy, all the people who helped me so I could help others, etc. No music to cut me off and tell me to get off the stage. No Kayne West to jump up on stage to explain how Rick Strahl is the best Lifetime Achievement Award winner named Rick. So here it is… Thanks!

First of all there is Therese. She is the Best.Wife.Ever. She is the woman who allows me to be successful by supporting the crazy ideas I come up with. She supports me to follow my dreams, even when I am not sure they are the right dreams to follow. Without her I am unable to do all the things I do. People often ask me how I am able to do everything I do, the answer is one word: Therese. She is my rock, and my biggest supporter. I fell in love with her nearly 30 years ago, and because of it I am one of the luckiest people on the planet.

My kids think their dad is a dork. That is fine, as long as I am their dork and they are okay with me attempting to mold them into the fine adults they have become.

Next up are my parents, who coincidentally came to Phoenix this year to vacation with us after the conference. Amazing coincidence and timing they were there, and it brings me great joy they were in the room to see their son go speechless. They would not have believed it if they had not witnessed it. They gave me the foundation that helping others is something you just do. Kudos to Doug for seeing the opportunity and making it happen. Priceless.

Next up are the people who nominated me. Wow. I am so honored by your recognition. I say this without reservation: it would have been an honor just to be nominated. I think of all the people who I hope someday will get this award, and I am amazed that you feel I deserve the recognition this year. I still get chocked up thinking about this. Thanks.

The past recipients who made the selection: Whil Hentzen, Rick Strahl, Doug Hennig, Tamar Granor, Rainer Becker are all personal heroes of mine and friends. Alan Griver is another hero of mine and also a friend. I also appreciate that Naomi stepped up when no one else wanted to and participated in the selection. Thanks for selecting me for this award. And thanks for shocking me. Well done.

Doug, even though I did not comprehend your announcement and the kind words you had to say about me at the time, I really appreciate them. I am so glad I have video (BTW, thanks Kevin Cully for recording it for me). I especially appreciated the “love you as a brother” comment and feel the exact same way.

To the Fox Community: there is so much good and generosity in our community. Being part of this group and being able to share and learn from this group is such an easy thing to do. Thanks for letting me be a part of it for so many years.

Thanks to everyone who was at Southwest Fox and for all the kind words since the conference. To know I am having a positive impact on other developers, on other human beings, is more than enough for me. To be recognized this way is mind-boggling.

This year I am hoping to reduce the effort of recording the evaluations you give us. It is one of the most important tasks we take care of after the conference.  Naturally we are interested in what you have to say about the conference, and the sessions the speakers prepare and deliver.

During the conference post-mortem meeting the organizers divide up the evals in thirds and use a couple very efficient Visual FoxPro forms developed by Tamar to enter in everything you put on the paper forms. We do this mostly because we want to get this information to the speakers. We deliver the details and summaries to them in early November (at least this is the goal). It normally takes me a couple of evenings to enter in my portion of the evals.

The biggest drawback other than the time it takes to enter in the evals is the latency to get the feedback to the speakers. Understanding what you did right and wrong in your sessions would be way more useful if you got it before you give it a second time at the same conference. The paper approach we use does not allow for this type of feedback.

So in an effort to get feedback to the speakers quicker, to save the organizers a little time after the conference, and as a terrific learning experience for the development team at White Light Computing, I designed an online Evaluation site for Southwest Fox.

To make things really interesting we decided to use a lot of new technology so everyone on the team would learn something new. In fact, some of the technology is beta itself. Oh, and I did not cut the development team any slack at all by giving them the specs and mockups just a few short weeks ago. Heh, if we cannot make it interesting, why do it at all?

The core part of the site is already developed. I opened up a private beta testing cycle late last night and already this morning we are getting feedback. If you are interested in beta testing it, we might have a few invites to share with you in the next week or so. So please email me at info AT swfox.net.

If you are interested in how I designed the site please come to my Mocking the Customer session at Southwest Fox 2010 and German DevCon.

Please keep your fingers crossed that White Light Computing can pull this off with the help from the test team, and if you like it don’t be shy about letting us know how we did at Southwest Fox. If you don’t like it, let us know in a constructive way too. We really appreciate your feedback.

Only 18 days until we gather in Glibert!

This year’s conference, held October 14-17, includes 15 speakers, 26 different sessions in the main conference, 4 pre-conference topics, and a free one-day VFP to Silverlight post-conference workshop. Plus, if you’re a member of a registered VFP user group, when you attend Southwest Fox, your user group receives $25.

In case you haven’t heard, we made a change in venue back in late July. The conference moved to a new location: SanTan Elegante Conference & Reception Center/Legado Hotel. Room rates are “run of the house” at $119 a night. You can find all the details at http://swfox.net/hotel.aspx. The room block for the conference is held through September 13th; after that room availability and pricing is determined by the hotel.

We are planning to add a “Show Us Your App” bonus session based on the success of the session the last couple of years.

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

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 48 days until we meet in Gilbert. Hope to see you there.

For the last four years White Light Computing has supported the efforts of Southwest Fox and the Fox Community with a scholarship to one person who registers for the conference. You can read all about the scholarships for the 2010 conference on the Southwest Fox Scholarships page.

The first year I did it to help Bob Kocher as an incentive to get some people to register for the conference. It is hard to measure what marketing gimmicks work and which ones are less successful, but Bob noticed an uptick in the registrations after I made the offer. During that experience I realized that it was more than getting people to register for the conference, it was about giving back to the community. I fully understand the importance of education in one’s career and good conferences are an excellent approach in the grand scheme of advancing and pushing the technology learning curve. The conversations with the winners is enjoyable because the winners are first surprised and second, appreciative that someone would help with the costs of going to the conference.

This year I mixed it up and decided to offer two US$150 scholarships, which turns out to be double the fun. The Director of Marketing at White Light Computing (my oldest daughter, and yes the title is not real because she will expect some sort of salary) picks the winners each year. This year she first picked the top 10, and then picked the final two. The winners this year are:

1. Prentiss Berry of Pensacola, Florida: last year was Prentiss’ first Southwest Fox.
2. Allan Gordon of Littleton, Colorado: this is Allan’s third year coming to Southwest Fox.

Both gentlemen are looking forward to this year’s conference and are excited by the sessions and presenters we have on the schedule.

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN

White Light Computing also contributed a copy of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN which retails at US$11,899. Now I see myself as a generous person, but even a company as successful as White Light Computing is not going to plop down close to twelve thousand dollars to give away to someone in the Fox Community. Not this year.  The Microsoft Developer Division provided each MVP with three licenses to share with other developers. I decided to offer one of these to give away to one person who registered for the Southwest Fox Super-Saver discount.

The winner of the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN is: (drum roll please….)

1. Mary Pilon of Farmington, Michigan: this is Mary’s fourth year coming to Southwest Fox and she is a fellow officer of the Detroit Area Fox User Group!

Congratulation to everyone who won!

Thanks to Microsoft and in particular S. Somasegar, who is the Senior Vice-President from the Microsoft Developer Division and provided the license for me to give away.

And thanks to all who have registered for Southwest Fox 2010. Your support for our conference is truly appreciated and critical to making the conference a success each year.

One of the definitions of “community” from Dictionary.com:

“a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists”

Software development communities have been around for a while. They are a grass roots processes driven by human instinct to learn and to share. I believe it is not something that can be formed out of an idea by a single individual and it cannot be created because a company wants it to be, it has to form out of the community’s desire to participate in the greater good of the group. I think this is obvious with the different social networking ecosystems. The fact remains that Twitter and Facebook, despite their magnificent technical achievements would disappear if the people decided it was no longer worth participating in. They are vehicles that support the community, not the actual community.

The first technical community I remember belonging to was the TI-99/4A community. The TI-99/4A was the first computer I owned. I subscribed to the industry magazine, I belonged to the local user group here in southeastern Michigan, and I found other people on bulletin board systems locally and nationally. It is where I probably learned of the importance of a technical community and how well people can help each other.

In college you form study groups to help each other. I began to understand the old story about a raising tide lifts all boats. In college it was part of the survival instinct that kicks in. Each person was learning at their own pace until we decided to study together. Some of us also learned the lesson that you can learn more by teaching. There is no question that some of us became leaders/teachers, and some people fell into the learners side of the group, but as a whole I believe it helped us all get grades better than what we would have gotten on our own, and eventually the learners started teaching.

Flash forward just a few years to when I was talking with some friends about PC-File, which is a shareware database from Buttonware. Through one friend I was introduced to FoxBase+ and how a modern and way more sophisticated database with multiple workareas could work. I started playing with it and found a couple of other people who knew Dbase. Together we sort of helped each other in the evenings. Eventually I found a new job that needed FoxBase+ experience. I felt I was learning a lot, but the firehose needed to open up and I needed to learn at a faster pace. I eventually subscribed to magazines like Database Advisor and FoxTalk. But the reality of when the learning curve smoothed out was when I stumbled on to CompuServe and the FoxForum. Questions and answers to some trivial and complex problems. I read everything I could get my hands on. What a gold mine! I also started meeting people and establishing friendships from around the globe. The Fox Community

CompuServe lead to conferences, starting the Detroit Area Fox User Group, more connections, more friends, and more knowledge. I move to a different team because I had outgrown the challenge and needed something bigger. At the same time I felt the need to start giving back once I was confident in my FoxPro skills. I started sharing developer tools that I had written for my self and my team (Project Lister was the first of many). This lead to writing for FoxTalk (thanks to Bob Grommes for giving me that first chance), writing for FoxPro Advisor (thanks to Tamar Granor for sticking with me), and eventually writing for Hentzenwerke Publishing (thanks to Whil Hentzen, Andy Kramek, and Marcia Akins for trusting my report designer skills) and FoxRockX (kudos for Rainer Becker for his continued publication). I gave back on CompuServe, and later on other forums like FoxForum.com. All that lead to speaking at conferences around the world, being awarded the Most Valuable Professional from Microsoft, working on projects like VFPX, and eventually running Southwest Fox. I literally have personal friends from all parts of the world who I know I can count on when I need help with Visual FoxPro or software development. Participating in the Fox Community is very rewarding because you know you are contributing to a greater good. You get so much more than you give.

I believe my story is similar to others who participate in the Fox Community in one way or another, at similar and different levels. You learn and for the most part you give something back when you can. This is what drives and grows a community.

If you want to learn more about the whole history of the Fox Community  the story has been documented as part of The History of FoxPro Web site.

I do want to share with you a couple of thoughts on why the Fox Community needs your continued support for the long term success of the community.

Supporting Community: VFPX (and other open source initiatives)

I recently was instant messaging Emerson Santon Reed who was the Ceil Silver Ambassador at Southwest Fox 2009. We were chatting about his Themed Controls project on VFPX. I have used some of his magnificent controls in my applications and have written about them in FoxRockX. One of my customers asked me to help spruce up their vertical market application so it looks fresh and up to date. One of the controls we talked about using is the Ribbon control. I knew Emerson was working on it so I asked him about it and where it was in the development cycle. He mentioned that the Ribbon control is a complex beast and to get it done requires the community to help through VFPX. He told me he posted his thoughts on this control and asked for help on his blog: Ribbon in ThemedControls suite?. He has the basics working, but the full spec is very wide and he needs people to help finish all the missing features, test, create builders, build samples, document, and figure out how to make it easier to integrate into an application. He is one man who like others has a full-time job and a family to take care of. If you read through the comments of this post you will see numerous people who give him kudos for a job well done and even some people who said they would love to help out, but in the end no one contacted him at the time the two of us talked. So the Ribbon control has been effectively shelved because Emerson is a busy person. Fortunately he was kind enough to point me to the Arg Ribbon control and I can go support another part of the Fox Community.

I have talked with other project managers on VFPX who pretty much have similar stories. Everyone is willing to benefit from the sacrifice and long hours put in by the developers on VFPX, some hand out a few kudos, several complain when something does not work, and move along. Some people don’t even hand out a kudo or word of encouragement. Some complain in a forum outside of VFPX, but don’t spend a few minutes posting the problem in the Issue Tracker so the project team can jump on it. I know some people are afraid they are not good enough seeing the quality of the work on VFPX. Let me assure you, you can test and provide feedback if you have looked into using anything on VFPX. You can learn to be better too. Some people claim they don’t have the time. I understand, it is a limiting factor as we cannot get more time. But if you could give a few hours a month you will make a significant contribution to the projects. Another key thing to remember is that no one gets fired for volunteering so it is a perfect place to get outside of your normal skill set and learn to do something new.

I can tell you that some of the projects on VFPX have gotten a tremendous amount of support. The most visible one today is probably the PEM Editor. I know Jim Nelson has a large group of people who do beta testing for him and this has helped the project tremendously. Jim also gets feedback, code fixes and suggestions from several people, help with documentation, and even has Matt Slay posting releases and doing the marketing to let the Fox Community know about releases. This project is fantastic from a perspective of the Fox Community working together and should be the role model for projects on VFPX. No project should be a single person unless that person wants to be flying solo.

The GDIPlusX project also had several people committed to the cause with people like Bo Durban, Craig Boyd, Cesar Chalom and others. This project went from nothing to production ready in relatively short order with numerous examples to help the Fox Community adapt this tool into their applications. GDIPlusX is also the foundation of several projects on VFPX and out in other parts of the Fox Community.

I can tell you that the party is more fun when more people help put it on and come to it. Developers who get feedback are more inspired to deliver updates to existing projects and others to propose more because they know they will not be doing it alone.

My recommendation is to get involved if you want to see VFPX grow in the future.

Supporting Community: User Groups

I helped form the Detroit Area Fox User Group back in 1994 with 5 other FoxPro developers more than 16 years ago. I also am a member in the Grand Rapids Fox User Group and I have done presentations at user groups across the United States. I find them valuable from a educational experience and from a social experience. From what I can tell the groups change in size and direction, but from what I am observing, they all have a small core group of people who come to most meetings, and a few people who come occasionally. These tight knit groups work because they they too feed off human instinct to learn and share.

At the core these groups survive by members participating. At the same time the membership have to get something out of it. Learning and sharing your knowledge, just like I mentioned back in college with study groups, raises all boats. In fact, when you think about it, user groups are exactly like college study groups. I have also noticed over the years that Fox user groups also like to dabble in other software development concepts and processes, and even other platforms and languages. It is how one grows and how one is able to offer the best solutions to your customers.

My recommendation is to join your local group, or start one if it makes sense. If you are part of one, volunteer to do a presentation, or pick up a leadership role. You will get 10x what you put into it.

FYI: I have also written about my thoughts on the important interdependency of user groups and conferences in a blog post last year titled: User Group Dependency on Conferences.

Supporting Community: Forums

I am kind of surprising myself by even mentioning forums in a post about community as the Fox Community started online and continues to thrive online. Whether you visit Foxite, FoxForum, ProFox (yes a list server, but still an active online discussion area), one of the Tek-Tip FoxPro forums, UniversalThread, or the Visual FoxPro Wiki (yes not a forum, but another online knowledgebase with un-threaded discussions), you will find lots of other people with common characteristics and interests willing to help you out. They each have their own pros and cons, and you really need to find one or more that fit your personality. Please take the time to answer a few questions too. I guarantee you that you will find it exhilarating when you help others with a problem. You may even find it addicting.

Supporting Community: Commercial Activities

How can one consider commercial activities part of the community since they are in the business of making money? Reading this post one might think the Fox Community is all about learning and sharing. There are a number of commercial ventures that support the Fox Community and your ability to make money as well.

For instance, FoxRockX is a journal you can get for an online subscription for US$99/Eur€75. I write for Rainer’s publication and I even get paid for the writing thanks to the fact people subscribe. If people stop supporting the journal it would cease to exist and Rainer would remove my deadlines. Would I stop writing. OK, not completely as I would continue to share posts on Twitter and an occasional article here on my blog, but without a deadline I will probably write less because there will be other customer priorities. Less articles means less sharing and fewer opportunities to learn for others.

The same principle applies to framework vendors, book vendors, tool vendors, and conferences. If you get value from them continue to support them so they continue to support you. I am not saying you should blindly throw your money at the products. They should provide you value. You should demand they provide you value. But if the value is there, and they help you be profitable or more marketable, or enhance your career, you should make sure to show your support by giving them incentive to keep on going. Otherwise the vendors will disappear. If you tell yourself I can subscribe next year when I might need an upgrade to the framework to support Windows 7 features, the framework vendor might not have the resources to write the functionality. If you note you can push that book purchase off until next budget year you might find the publisher no longer has stock. Anyone who believes you can skip a conference this year and go next year might find others who did the same and forced the organizers into a position where they cannot offer it the next time around. Don’t count on someone else supporting the future of the vendors.

Summary

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Community is important, whether it is the physical community you live in, or a virtual technical community like the Fox Community. Communities survive and thrive based on the members contributing, participating, and supporting others. Please continue to support the Fox Community, or some day you may wake up and notice it has disappeared.

I have been invited to present at the following conferences in the second half of the year:

DevLink

DevLink is a conference held in Nashville, Tennessee from August 5th to 7th, 2010. The technical content is for software developers, database administrators, project managers, system administrators, and business analysts. So the sessions cover a wide spectrum of topics. I have not been to one of the previous DevLink conferences, but I planned to attend this year whether I was invited to speak or not based on a conversation I had with the DevLink organizers at last year’s CodeStock conference. I was impressed with their approach and how they offer sessions on multiple development languages and how they cover business topics for people in the industry who are not developers.

Looks like there will be 10 sessions going on during the time slots so picking what session to attend in each slot is going to be a bit challenging to say the least. Also, sessions are offered once so if you miss it and you hear how great it was a lunch or during a break you, well, missed it. There are a lot of topics that interest me for sure and some really good speakers who will be presenting. I am looking forward to sessions on SQL Server, the Entity Framework 4, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight, lessons  learned while being an independent, social networking, project management, and more.

If you are going to DevLink and want to see a good session called Code Reviews: Why real developers do not fear them!, my session is at 2:30 on the opening day (August 5) in the Swang-S110 room. It is the only time I am rehearsing it before Southwest Fox. {g}

Southwest Fox

Doug and Tamar asked me to return to Southwest Fox again this year (I swear I am not making this up as I don’t actually pick me as a speaker, nor do I have final say on what sessions of mine are selected). As one of the organizers I really hope you will attend the premier Visual FoxPro event in North America. This is the seventh year for Southwest Fox and it seems to get better each time we put it on. The presenters are terrific, the networking opportunities are off the charts important, and no where else will you find that white papers are required from our speakers. So even if you miss a session you can read about it as soon as we make them available (which normally is days before the conference starts).

The conference runs from October 14th to the 17th, 2010 with currently three simultaneous conference sessions for each slot (we are hoping to add a fourth if attendance dictates this is financially feasible). There are four different pre-conference sessions to pick from too. On Monday the 18th dFPUG (publishers of FoxRockX, some new VFP books, and Visual Extend) are putting on a post-conference session on Visual FoxPro and Silverlight.  There will be some bonus sessions offered on Friday night as well. We also should have lots of vendors so you will be able to check out all kinds of third-party products to help you develop better database applications.

The golf resort is phenomenal, the weather is perfect in October, and we believe we have the perfect situation for developers to relax and learn not only about the latest and greatest Visual FoxPro techniques, but other development platforms and tools. If you need more reasons on why you should attend the conference then check out the page: Why Attend Southwest Fox!

I will be presenting the following sessions and participating in the keynote:

• Code Reviews: Why Real Developers do not Fear Them!
• Mocking Your Customer

There is a lot of work that goes into putting the conference on each year, but I am probably looking forward to Southwest Fox 2010 more than I have any other Southwest Fox. Last year was off the hook fun for everyone, including the organizers.

And just in case you have not heard, the super-saver registration deadline is coming up this week. Make sure to save a few bucks, get a free pre-conference session, and get in on the more than $18,000 in drawing prizes and scholarships available to people who register before July 1st.

I hope to see you in Mesa.

German DevCon

This is going to be the seventeenth time Rainer has put on German DevCon and I am really happy he has asked me back for my fifth time. The conference runs from November 11th to 13th, 2010 in Frankfurt Germany. This conference has presentations in German and in English so if you understand either of these languages please consider going. I have sat in on some German sessions and still get a lot from them. The language of technology is the same.

Rainer has not posted the details for 2010 yet, but you can stay tuned to the conference Web site to see all the particulars. I am presenting the same sessions in Germany as I am at Southwest Fox with the addition of a session I am calling: How Craig Boyd Makes Me a Hero!

The answer is yes! Making Sense of Sedna and SP2 is a terrific book co-written by Tamar E. Granor, Doug Hennig, Toni Feltman, Cathy Pountney, Rick Schummer, Bo Durban. This book is the the definitive coverage of all the new features added to Visual FoxPro 9 via the Sedna add-ons and the Service Pack 2 release (including the very important and latest hotfixes). I worked closely with Microsoft to test many of the components of Sedna and I still learned a lot by writing my chapters and reading the ones from the other authors. There is a lot of great information and insight packed into the 242 pages.

Special thanks to Rainer Becker who has determination to push for new Visual FoxPro books. dFPUG is simultaneously releasing Making Sense of Sedna and SP2 in English and German.

All the details for the book are on the Hentzenwerke Publishing Web site.

You can get the electronic version of the book immediately after you order it. Hentzenwerke Publishing is putting together a special print run for the book. The printed edition is available in July so get your order in today!

More details on the conference at the Southwest Fox Conference Web site.

Thanks Andrew!

I have seen the Shuttle on the launch pad numerous times in my visits to Florida, and I have seen and heard it return to the cape a couple of times. I saw it once piggybacked to the 747 transporter, and once we heard it land when it was dark just a couple of years ago. If it had landed on the first pass it would have been light enough to see it land. Still the sonic booms sent chills up my spine.

Flash forward to 1993 and the FoxPro DevCon in Orlando. The day after the conference ended a bunch of Fox developers and space geeks headed out to Kennedy Space Center for a shuttle launch. I cannot remember which conference attendee worked on the space center grounds, but we organized through CompuServe and he got our group an unbelievable good location for the launch. The weather was not cooperating as there were low-level clouds that made it difficult for the astronauts to land at Kennedy if there was something wrong with the engines during launch. We could hear the mission control announcer talk about the countdown, what was happening with the shuttle, and what the problems were they were trying to solve. The biggest was the weather at both Kennedy and the weather in Spain (used as a landing site when the launch aborts across the Atlantic). I distinctly remember praying for the weather to break. If my memory serves me right I also recall FoxPro Guru Tom Rettig climbing a sign on the grounds with “Foxtrot” on it. Tom had a framework called TRO so he climbed up the sign and covered up the last “t” so it read Foxtro. Miraculously the weather broke just as the launch window was closing for the day. The countdown continued and everything seemed to be going smooth. Under a minute I started to get really excited as I was about to see the shuttle launch for the first time. The Mission Control announcer was going through the standard milestones and I was checking things off in my head on what was about to happen. At T-31 seconds the shuttle computers take over the countdown and run the show. This is when some valve sensor triggered the computers to abort the mission. So close, yet so far. It was extremely frustrating at the time, but I thought to myself, better safe than sorry. It turned out the sensor was bad and there was really nothing wrong. We drove directly back to the airport for the flight home. I remember thinking, there will be plenty more launches to see.

I have watched most of the 130 shuttle launches on broadcast TV or on NASA TV on the Internet. When the Challenger exploded in January 1986 I was fearful that my dream of one day seeing one in person might be gone, but fortunately the NASA engineers figured out what went wrong and flights resumed a couple years later. The same when Columbia exploded over Texas in February 2003. Those were very sad days for me.

It turns out that seeing a shuttle launch is harder to see than one would think. There are probably a billion things that could go wrong to cancel a launch. Weather is unpredictable and has to be perfect in several locations here in the USA and in Europe. The shuttle system is the most complex machine ever built by humans. Sensors, wiring, computers, tiles, hatches, pressurization, fuel, valves, o-rings, engines, and on and on and on. Hardware galore. Despite the meticulous checklists and verification of work, things fail and processes don’t work. On top of that the missions to the International Space Station (ISS) have a 10 minute window when the shuttle is launched to minimize fuel usage as the orbiter chases ISS in orbit. Back in the day when a shuttle was launching satellites or doing experiments they could sit on hold for hours. Today’s missions to the space station have 10 minute windows and can only be launched on certain days when the space station is in the correct orbit. NASA also has to coordinate with other space agencies that are launching rockets to ISS.

When the Bush administration decided to retire the shuttle program a few years ago I knew my opportunities were limited. I knew exactly how many shots I had to see one in person. I started planning my calendar around flights to see if I could fit one in. Trying to plan when to fly down and hope one of the billion things don’t go wrong is not easy to solve. In 2009 I arrived in Florida two weeks after a launch and a few weeks before the next one. This year the schedule proved to be the same during our annual Easter family trip. But the unusually cold winter in Florida delayed the flight of Discovery (STS-131) by an additional two weeks and put it smack dab in the middle of our vacation. I crossed my fingers as there was still so much time left between the scheduled change and the launch, and so many variables still in the mix.

Flash forward to April 4, 2010…

The countdown of Discovery continued to go smooth and I kept reading the mission briefings. Everything was going as planned and on schedule. The night before the scheduled launch there was some discussion of fog. Seriously? Can’t we just get some fans and make sure it blows inland? My window for this launch was a couple of days and I was hoping it would go perfect since our son was leaving the next day and I wanted him to see it as well.

The night before the launch I was working, and took a few breaks to see what friends were posting on Twitter. Apparently several were also planning on going to see the shuttle the next day. Markus Egger got wind of this. He and I went back and forth as I provided him some information on viewing sites and timings to get to the coast from Orlando. Twitter made it all the more exciting. The scheduled launch is 6:21am so we had to leave my parent’s place at 3:30am to ensure we could get a parking spot and good seats. I found what appeared to be a perfect location at Space View Park in Titusville. It is 12 miles from the launch pad, but that is the closest you can get without advanced tickets to sit on the NASA Causeway (6 miles from launch pad) or the super special VIP tickets near Mission Control. I went to bed at 10:00pm hoping to get a few hours of sleep before leaving. There is no doubt that I had a difficult time falling asleep. I felt like a little kid the night before a big trip. For me, this had the potential of being one of those really special days in a lifetime.

April 5, 2010…

I woke up at 2:42am without an alarm. I turned on my computer and checked out NASA TV to see where things were in the countdown. If all was well I should be hearing about the astronauts heading out to the launch pad and sure enough they were boarding the astrovan and heading out. No issues were being tracked and the weather was cooperating. Things were going well and my fear of the external tank valve freezing did not materialize. This has been the biggest problem in the last few launches. I woke up Therese, told her we were a “go” and jumped in the shower. I was focused on leaving on time, something my family is not well known for, even threatening to leave people behind if they did not get in the car on time. Don’t mess
with a space geek ready to see a lifelong dream come true.

As we drove along the 528 (I have always known it as the Beeline, now called the Beachline) we hit some dense fog in areas. I was hoping this would not affect the launch. There was a lot of traffic too. Not bumper to bumper, but it was obvious a lot of people were going to see the launch. We hit Titusville around 4:30, right on schedule. When we arrived at Highway 1 (the road along the inter-coastal waterway) we hit a sea of people. Tons of cars, vans, and RVs parked along the road. People were walking along and across the streets. There were lots of people with binoculars and chairs and coolers. Wow. It reminded me of pictures and video of the people watching the Apollo era moon launches. I was expecting a few space geeks like myself, but we are talking about hundreds of thousands hanging along the coast. I felt a twinge of regret thinking we were too late to find a good viewing spot. Maybe I should have followed my hunch and tried to get a hotel room the night before.

We kept driving north on Highway 1 with our final destination being Space View Park. The traffic around the park was nuts and there was no parking. We still had time so I dropped off my parents, our two kids, and my nephew and headed out with Therese to find parking. We drove south about a half mile. I saw a sign for public parking on the right. To my left I saw a young guy with a sign “$20 Parking”. I like young entrepreneurs and thought it would be cool to help him out. I was thinking he was loading up his parents’ front lawn saving up for college. I got out of the car and he took my $20 after explaining the bathroom was in the pool house and the viewing is best from the dock. Dock? Cool. It was already close to 5:00am, a little more than one hour before launch. I called our son and told them we found a spot to park and a place to view the launch, and to stay at the park. I could not go get everyone and make it back in time, and they could not walk because my mom’s knee is injured.

What we found was the perfect location to watch the shuttle launch. Out on this huge dock was room for probably 40-50 people. The dock had 3 slips for boats and a huge area where people could gather. We could have stayed on shore and watched from the beautiful patio, but I wanted to be 200 feet closer. I told Therese I was feeling a bit guilty as we left the rest of our family in this sea of people at the park and we had the perfect unobstructed view. We found room on the dock and Therese decided she needed an extra jacket because the cool breeze off the water was too cold for her. I wore a fleece pullover so I was fine. She went back to the car and I talked with a couple of the photographers who were setting up to take pictures and video. I asked them about the settings they were going to use as I knew we effectively were going to see a night launch and the light from the flames shooting out of the three main engines and the solid rocket boosters would fill the night sky and make it look closer to daylight. I suspected that most pictures would be a blob of light in the dark sky. I had no intention of taking a single picture. I brought the camera, but it is only a 3 megapixel model. Takes terrific pictures, but is not going to do well 12 miles away. I did bring the Flip HD video camera, but I knew that would not get great video. I wanted to just take in the launch first hand and record the best memories possible. The video camera might get pointed toward Discovery or it might be looking at the ground. I did not care.

Therese made it back fine after stopping in the pool house to check it out. What she described meant the kid who was collecting money did not need it for college as she figured this family was doing okay. Personally, it was great that they shared their view with the rest of us. I would gladly paid $100 for the view considering I could not get Causeway tickets or VIP seats through our congresswomen.

Off in the distance you could see the Vehicle Assembly Building (the very tall building where NASA assembles rockets and shuttle stacks) to the right, and just to the left was Discovery basking in the light of numerous spotlights. We could not see detail from 12 miles away, but you knew right where to look. Several boats were going up and down the inter-coastal waterway. I suspect they were Coast Guard or NASA boats keeping people out of places where they did not belong. We also could see off in the distance the NASA plane that does fly-bys to test landing conditions on the shuttle’s runway.

All along I was reading the @NASA and @ExploreSpaceKSC tweets about how things were progressing. I also surfed the web looking for launch status stories, mostly on Space.com. Smooth sailing. I was sharing the updates with those around me. Several other space geeks were also sharing information they found on the Web. Smartphones rule! You could tell the intensity of most people around me and their love of the space program and space exploration. I felt among my kind {g}. Even Therese mentioned that there are a lot of people on this dock just like me.

At 6:00am a tweet was posted about the International Space Station doing a fly over from the south-southeast at 6:04am. My mom called me soon after to let me know too. They had a live feed from Mission Control broadcast over speakers in the park so they were getting live updates. I let others on the dock know so we could start looking for it. Therese actually spotted it first. More chills. Yes, I have seen ISS fly overhead before on numerous occasions (once paired with a shuttle), but this time Discovery was going to launch and begin the process of chasing it with the 17,000 pounds of supplies in the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module securely stored in the cargo bay. My son Chris had my tripod and used his superior camera to take some extended exposure pictures of it streaking across the sky. What a nice bonus.

Internally I was doing my own countdown. 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 3 minutes. I was imagining what Mission Control was doing, what the shuttle was doing, how the launch pad was alive with the sounds of a machine about to thrust itself skyward. I recalled that hot Florida day back in 1993 and how disappointed I was when the launch aborted. Was this the time I would see it go? Two minute to go. The sky was just starting to brighten from the soon-to-come sunrise.

One minute to go and no time to check Twitter. I turned on the video camera and pointed it east. 30 seconds to go. You could see some people get anxious as 6:21am showed on their cell phone clocks. Obviously they did not know it was scheduled to go at 6:21:25. All of a sudden the horizon got brighter. You could see the main engines light up, and then the solid rocket boosters ignited. Liftoff of space shuttle Discovery!!! Godspeed!!!

To say chills went up and down my back, well that was a given. The sky lit up and was bright as day. It was silent except for the oohs and aaahs from the people around me. You could hear the cameras clicking, especially the guy next to me who had two digital SLRs firing in rapid succession. Discovery was off the launch pad and in the roll maneuver. The thick stream of solid rocket propellant burning along with the three main engines created a long flame trail. That is all we really could see as she lifted higher and higher. The brightness of the flames made it so we could not see the orbiter, external tank or the solid rocket boosters. I miscalculated the timing on the sound reaching us. The speed of sound depends on the temperature, but travels approximately 1 mile in 5 seconds. When I was doing the math I was thinking it was going to hit us in 5 seconds, but actually it took closer to 50 seconds to reach us. I was really surprised not only by the volume, but by the vibrations that hit us. We could hear the rolling thu
nder of the rockets *and* feel it hit us in the face. You could hear what sounded like a sonic boom. What special effects put on by NASA! I later heard on TV that the water sound suppression system did not work correctly and read on Twitter that Discovery’s launch was louder than usual due to atmospheric conditions (moist air and a breeze blowing from the east amplified the sound). I have not been able to confirm the water sound suppression system failure.

We watched for about 7 minutes as Discovery went off towards the horizon, across the Atlantic Ocean, going faster and faster, higher and higher. We could see the solid rocket boosters separate which is always something you want to see every time since Challenger’s last launch back in 1986. All we could really see was two little red dots in the sky float away from the fireball. On Twitter I read a post that Discovery made it successfully to orbit. This experience was just what I had hoped for. On April 5th NASA made a billion things go right so I could witness the magnificent launch of a space shuttle. Thanks to everyone from NASA and all their partners for making it a terrific launch to watch.

My dream had been realized and it was better than I had imagined, and believe me, I have imagined it a lot and often. Nearly thirty years of wishing I could see a space shuttle blast off from Kennedy Space Center and in less than 10 minutes it was over. Now I want to see another. This was considered a night launch so maybe I can see a day launch too. Not sure of that is going to happen, but I might as well dream big, because as I have proven over and over, dreams really do come true.