Last night Andy Kramek stopped by the Detroit Area Fox User Group and presented his “Advanced SQL Queries in VFP 9.0″ session and wowwed the local Fox developers. It is a great session and one Andy is anticipating presenting at Southwest Fox 2006 in October. I anticipate this will be a popular session at this conference and one many developers will walk away from with a this-session-paid-for-this-conference type review.
DAFUG has really been blessed with excellent presentations in 2006. Last month Tamar Granor impressed us when she rehearsed her “Office Automation Beyond the Basics” conference session. The next two months we have more conference rehearsals with Mike Feltman presenting “How’d they do that? Inside F1 Technologies Visual FoxExpress” coming in March, and Cathy Pountney rehearsing her GLGDW “Best Practices for Project Management”.
Detroit has been very lucky when it comes to attracting great speakers from outside of our area and have several really solid presenters locally so each month we learn a lot and just as important, have a lot of fun. Our meetings do not end when the presentation is done. We always go out to get something to eat afterwards and you can learn more at these informal “sessions”.
Jealous? No problem, there are a lot of Fox Developer groups around the world so go join one. I have visited some really good groups over the years as you may know from reading past posts on this blog. Can’t find one locally, start a thread on one of the many Fox forums and see if you can hook up with other developers in your area. This is how we started DAFUG back in 1994. It will take some time and energy, but I can tell you it will pay big dividends. Sure you can get answers to your questions on the various online resources, but there is no better benefit to getting together with Fox friends than networking, just like the conferences.
I have been reading how groups are recently restarting in Toronto and Central Pennsylvania and watched the Chicago group resurge in the last couple of years. I suspect this is all part of the Visual FoxPro Surge Craig Bailey has been touting.
If you are ever in the Detroit on business or pleasure check out the DAFUG Web site to see if we are meeting when you are in town. We always welcome visitors.
Don’t forget our recently re-started group in Philadelphia.
I knew there was another one, but could not remember when I wrote this post. I talked to Michael Babcock Thursday night about a possible visit out to the Central PA group and possibly piggybacking a trip to Philly.