OzFox 2007 - Day 1

The first day of OzFox is on a Sunday and starts at 1:45pm. Doug and I went through the keynote which was similar to the one we did last year at Southwest Fox, but with new/updated material, but was a little lower energy level because Craig Boyd was busy digging out his car from a snow bank back in the USA.

The keynote was focused on the bright future of VFP and it went well. I talked about the new SP2 and Sedna CTP released last week just in time for the conference (I could not load them because of my no-new-software-before-conference-rule). I provided a high level overview of the changes in SP2, but no details because Colin and Lisa are doing five sessions on the topic. The future as we see it:

• VFP 9 Service Pack 2
• Sedna
• VFPX
• Other CodePlex projects

VFP 9 Service Pack 2 contains:

• Bug fixes (the list is lengthy)
  
• Vista compatibility
• Reporting enhancements

Sedna currently contains:

• Data Explorer enhancements
• NET4COM (.NET COM interface)
  
• DBi Technologies’ components
• My Namespace
• Upsizing Wizard enhancements
• Vista Toolkit
• Other components

I covered the Data Explorer, Net4Com, and discussed the generous DBi Technology controls (not in the CTP). Doug handled the My Namespace, Upsizing Wizard, and the Vista Toolkit (big thanks to Craig Boyd for setting us up with a great demo). We wrapped up the keynote talking about VFPX and other CodePlex projects, and made a call to action for the attendees (and the rest of the Fox Community):

• Download and start working with CTP
• Join VFPX and other projects
• Start your own blog
• Join (or start) a user group
• Tell the world about VFP

The rest of the day the attendees listened to Doug's session "Extending VFP with VFP" and Colin's session "VFP 9.0 Reporting Fundamentals."

The conference has one track so all attendees attend the same session. I first experienced this style of conference at GLGDW 2006 and it works well when you have good sessions all the time or follow a specific theme. In the case of OzFox - it is jammed with great sessions. Even listening to sessions I have already seen (like Doug's Extending VFP with VFP) has its benefits.

The last session of the day was called "Networking." Craig Bailey (conference host) asked people in the room to introduce themselves and describe how they use FoxPro and a little about their business. This was an interesting session because it showed how diverse the projects are in Australia and New Zealand.

Afterwards we had dinner in the hotel restaurant (no Thai food yet {g}). Microsoft brought in XBox 360s like they did at the last OzFox conference. Spectacular graphics on large HD TVs. I am not into video games, but it was fun to watch a bunch of geeks race cars and play shoot'em up games. In particular the chain saw slaughters were humorous.