Some Things I learned at Southwest Fox 2005

Finally home after some much needed rest and relaxation (and a little bit of business) in Sedona and the Grand Canyon after the Southwest Fox 2005 conference. I echo the feelings in Andy Kramek's blog post, it was the best!

In Barbara Peisch's session on Using the XFRX Preview Container I learned you can set the printer settings with SYS(1037,2) and reset them SYS(1037,3) as long as you have a dummy FRX hanging around, way cool. This was the most valuable session I sat in all day Saturday (and that says a lot based on the sessions I attended). Looking forward to the session notes to absorb all the material.

Doug Hennig's session on Cool Uses of a ReportListener was cut short because of an itinerary problem with Doug's travel agent, but in 20 minutes Doug showed some super cool tricks with hyperlinking reports and simulation of drilldown. I know Doug wrote about this in FoxTalk months ago, but seeing it in action and listening to him explain how it all works was a lot simpler than just reading about the techniques.

Craig Boyd's session on VFP Cryptography 101 was most impressive. It will take a bit to digest all the information Craig threw out during the session. The only problem I had with the session is it should have been two sessions. This way Craig could have presented all the material he packaged up and I could have taken more time to understand it the first time around.

Rick Borup's session Integrating RSS with VFP Applications pinpointed a number of things I did not know about RSS layout, but the key take-away was the Author attribute requires an email address to be fully compliant with the RSS specifications and a valid feed.

Andy Kramek did an admirable job presenting Drew's Big VFP 9 Things Come in Small Packages. My hat is off to both him and Marcia Akins for attempting to fill in for Drew and present his sessions. I cannot think of a much tougher task taken for the entire weekend. I know both felt they could only try, but I can only think Drew was proud from afar.

Tamar's session on Tips and Tricks I Learned From Drew Speedie was a great session and a great tribute. I believe I was not the only one watching who was remembering some of these tips and possibly relearning a couple. Thanks to Russ Swall and Visionpace for food and beverages after the session. Well done.

I also learned that one developer found the White Light Computing Developer Tools more interesting than attending sessions by the likes of Steve Black, Andy Kramek, Marcia Akins, Rick Borup and Calvin Hsia! Talk about a power pack lineup to have your vendor session slotted. Thanks Bill for showing up - hope you find both tools useful in your development. I enjoyed our discussion.

Naturally, I learned something in each of the sessions I presented. Thanks to all the attendees who were willing to share their experiences, thoughts, and ideas in my sessions. The sessions were better because of your participation and were easy to give because I brought the Staples Easy Button (you had to be there {g}).

There was not a bad session in the lot during the three days of the conference and I had a heck of a time picking which sessions I was going to be able to attend in person. No problem, I will read each of the white papers as time allows. In case you did not know this: the white papers are the second most valuable take-away from the conference, only second to networking opportunity in between sessions and afterhours.

I met a few new friends this weekend (thanks for the kind words in your blog Kevin), caught up with the FoxGang, and discussed some new opportunities to help out the Fox Community with several developers. Check out SednaX if you have not had a chance. This should be super place for extending VFP.

If you were not in attendance this year and are finding yourself a little jealous reading all the blog posts and UT Coverage by Craig Boyd (my eyes still have tears from the laughter - ''passenger seat looked like one of those memory foam beds..."), don't fret. Bob Kocher is already hard at work planning next year's Southwest Fox and I am already looking forward to this conference.