Shedding Some Light

The Ceil Silver Ambassador Fund brings a developer to the Southwest Fox conference as an ambassador for the developers in his or her country. This gives the recipient the opportunity to meet and share experiences with developers attending Southwest Fox and gives other attendees the opportunity to learn about VFP development in the recipient’s country. The trip is paid for by the VFP community’s donations to the Fund.

Nominations

We are looking for nominations from the VFP community for the 2013 recipient. The Ambassador selection committee consists of Southwest Fox organizers Rick Schummer, Tamar Granor, and Doug Hennig, former Ambassadors Emerson Santon Reed, Cesar Chalom, Bernard Bout, Borislav Borissov, and Jun Tangunan, and VFP community members Christof Wollenhaupt and Rick Bean. To nominate someone you think deserves to be selected, please email their name and a brief list of their contributions to the VFP community to ambassadorfund@swfox.net. Names must be submitted no later than May 31, 2013.

Donations

In addition, we are looking for donations to allow us to pay for the travel costs for the ambassador. We urge you to consider donating any amount you see fit, small or large, to this fund. See the Ceil Silver Ambassador Fund page for details. 100% of donated money goes to the travel costs for the ambassador. Not a single penny is used to cover administrative costs. All time managing the fund and working through the selection process is donated. No one is paid for their time.

Thank you for any donation you make.

Note: if you want to send in a donation via PayPal, please mark it as a “gift” so we do not incur transaction fees.

Here are a few last-minute things about this year’s conferences:

• Due to unforeseen circumstances, the Kokopelli scheduling application will not be available this year.
• We are streaming the keynote presentation again this year, Thursday at 7:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time (Arizona does not observe Daylight Savings Time): http://www.ustream.tv/channel/swfoxtv
• The conference guide (http://www.swfox.net/ConferenceGuide.pdf) is now available for download. Please download and read it because there are important details about the conference you need to know. This is the only copy of the guide you are getting; in our continuing efforts to make our conference greener, we are not printing them this year.

And yes, there is still some time to register.

Yet another reason to attend Southwest Fox and Southwest Xbase++ 2012! All registered attendees at Southwest Fox and Southwest Xbase++ are eligible to win one of two one-year subscriptions for Visual Studio Professional with MSDN. Register today: http://www.swfox.net/register.aspx

Over on the Southwest Fox blog someone asked the following question in the comments for our post announcing the Windows 8 keynote:

Why have MS promote their products when they don’t care about developers? MS discontinued VFP.

Comments often get lost, and sometimes people read the posts without looking at the comments, so I am going to post my answer here.

It is a good question. This is not about promoting Windows 8, this is about educating Visual FoxPro and Xbase++ developers on a new operating system their customers are eventually going to consider and use in their businesses. You need knowledge to help guide your customers and users. This session is going to help you learn the advantages and pitfalls of Windows 8 and how it is going to affect your customers’ business.

Jennifer is not a marketing person, she is a developer and has lots of good information to share with other developers. This keynote is about helping developers get past the pundits and press, and down to the nuts and bolts of the next OS developers have to consider when deploying applications. Plain and simple.

What is one of the most common concerns about the future for VFP developers? Answer: will my applications continue to run on the next Windows?  Xbase++ developers want to know new features their applications can work with too.

Someone on the ProFox listserver asked the question:

For many years, I have wanted to attend a conference such as the SW Fox 2012. For me, this is a very long trip, and airfares alone as substantial.  In your opinion, are these conferences worth while.

So I responded…

As you might know, I am one of the organizers and speakers of Southwest Fox so my opinion is a twisted and biased one. Buyer beware.

It is my belief that conferences are for a lot of people, but not for everyone. Those who do not learn from listening to others speak might not benefit from the conference. If you don’t learn things by reading a white paper you might consider skipping the conference. Those who do not benefit from networking should not come, after all it is like a forum or listserver or Twitter, but live and in HD. That bothers some people. If you prefer learning about vendor products by reviewing a Web site instead of talking to a sales person in person, then a conference might not be for you. If you prefer to eat alone, and not talk shop at every meal, then a conference is not really a good idea.

On the other hand, if you want to learn more about your craft, hear of tools that integrate with your favorite development platform, expand your mind past your normal comfort zone, and meet like-minded people, there is a good chance Southwest Fox might be a perfect fit for you.

Early-bird deadline has been extended until September 5th, so we can save you $50 for use on your bar/food bill when you are out networking with some of the finest people in our community. If you are going to sign up, I’d suggest learning to the FoxShow teaser interview with the SWFox organizers for a special offer.

I hope to see many of you in Gilbert in 45 days!

One last quick reminder: you can save $50 by registering with the early-bird registration discount. The deadline is this Friday, August 31st. Every registered attendee gets admission to all regular conference sessions, whether part of Southwest Fox or Southwest Xbase++, and white papers for all Southwest Fox sessions. http://www.swfox.net

As a personal favor, if you have not already, please register now!

Hear that sound? Tick, tick, tick, tick…

That’s the countdown clock at Geek Gatherings getting closer to the Super-saver deadline for Southwest Fox and Xbase++! July 1 is only a few days away and we thought we would pass along a reminder just in case you forgot to type it into your task list, or stick it on your monitor on a yellow sticky note.

The conferences take place October 18-21, 2012 in Gilbert, Arizona and we really hope you can be there. We would hate to see you miss out on the $125 discount and the free pre-conference or post-conference session. These sessions are more popular than ever this year. One person has registered for four pre-cons, and all three post-cons!

Already registered? Thanks. Can you help us remind your fellow developers who have been procrastinating that the deadline is looming? Anything else you can do to promote the conference would also be appreciated.

Also, if you sent in your registration and have not received your confirmation, please contact us to see what has happened. Everyone gets a confirmation and a paid invoice as a receipt when registration is processed.

Special drawings for people who register before July 1st:

• Two White Light Computing Scholarships of $150
• One Tomorrow’s Solutions LLC Scholarship of $150 (only those who have not attended Southwest Fox since 2007 are eligible)
• One license of Stonefield Query SDK (a $6,000 value; both conferences eligible)

Check out our list of amazing speakers and dig into our session tracks. Follow the news about the conference on our blog.

Solstice Special – beat the rush to registration

Geek Gatherings is adding an incentive to get you to register early. In addition to all the perks you get when registering before July 1st (a $125 discount, a free pre-conference or post-conference session, and a chance for a $150 scholarship or Stonefield Query SDK), one person who registers before June 21st wins a tablet!

The winner will select one of the following:

• iPad 2 with 16GB of memory (value of $399)
• Kindle Fire (value of $199)
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (value of $399)

Winner is selected on July 3, 2012 from the list of people registered before June 21st.

http://swfox.net/register.aspx