Shedding Some Light

Speakers and sessions have been announced. Registration opens soon; send an email to info@geekgatherings.com if you want us to email you when it’s ready.

And it is true, I am not speaking this year. Doug and Tamar told me to take a year off to maintain my sanity. Actually, it was me who is taking the year off to maintain my sanity. Thanks for understanding. The session list looks really good, and the speakers are the best around this year. I hope you will agree.

Only 170 days until we gather in Gilbert.

Sorry for the delayed post, but good news…

We’ve issued the Call for Speakers for Southwest Fox 2018. If you are interested in presenting, please read the document and consider submitting sessions via the Geek Gatherings Submission Web site.

Registration will begin June 1st, but we have to get the usual great topics from great speakers first. All the details are in the Call for Speakers document so get reading and get submitting. Deadlines are closer than they appear in the mirror.

White Light Computing is once again a Platinum sponsor, and Clever Fox Backup is a Gold sponsor.

Only 234 day until we gather in Gilbert!

Ooops, I goofed! I went on vacation and completely forgot to schedule the end of July reminder to get registered before the Southwest Fox 2017 Early-bird deadline. So to make up for this colossal mistake, we have decided to extend the Early-bird discount of $50 through August 21st.

The conference takes place October 26-29, 2017 in Gilbert, Arizona and we really hope you can be there. Head over to the registration Web site today: https://geekgatherings.com/Registration

Check out our list of amazing speakers and dig into our session tracks on our site: http://swfox.net. Follow the news about the conference on our blog.

We’ve issued the Call for Speakers for Southwest Fox 2017 and Southwest Xbase++ 2017. If you are interested in presenting at either conference, please read the document and consider submitting sessions via the Geek Gatherings Submission Web site.

The conferences take place October 26-29, 2017. Session proposals are due by Monday, March 13 at 8 AM EST.

Having talked with a couple of potential speakers already about the topics they are considering proposing, I am definitely excited about this years conference which is only 241 days away. I look forward to hearing about your submissions.

This past week one of my customers who is a Visual FoxPro 9 developer emailed asking for help installing the Visual FoxPro 9 IDE on Windows Server 2016. His description of the process was that the Microsoft installer begins, shows the icon on the taskbar, and dies immediately. It does not even start to present the standard installer user interface. His normal application installers for a Visual FoxPro app install fine, but the Visual FoxPro 9 installer from Microsoft does not. He tried installing from the install CD, a USB stick, and an ISO with the same results.

I recommended trying to Run as Administrator, but that also did not work. Since it was not even giving him the user interface, it could not be a problem with permissions to the designated folder or something along those lines.

Knowing I have run Visual FoxPro 9 from a USB thumb drive, I figured we could copy over the development folder from one computer to another and get things working so I recommended the following steps to him.

1. Copy an existing Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9 folder from a different machine to the Windows Server 2016 machine.
2. Start the CMD.EXE in Administrator mode using the Run As Administrator option.
3. From the Windows Command Window, change directory to the VFP folder on the server.
4. To register the core VFP settings in the Windows registry, run the following command in the Windows Command Window:
   VFP9.EXE /regserver
5. Run Visual FoxPro 9 to test the install.

It worked like a charm!

I also provided him a link to the MSXML 4.0 Core Services in case this was not installed on the server. One other thing I do when I am setting up a new computer (it has been 2 years since I have had to do this) is to export the VFP9 registry using RegEdit, and importing that by double clicking on the REG file that I exported. This moves over all my favorite Visual FoxPro settings and preferences.

In case you are not familiar with the parameters you can pass to the VFP9 executable, from the Windows Command Window:
VFP9.EXE /?

Hoping this helps out someone else along the way. I’ve never run a server operating system on my development machine and don’t foresee the need to do so anytime soon.

Listen to Andrew MacNeill interview Tamar Granor and Doug Hennig about Southwest Fox and Southwest Xbase++ 2016 on the FoxShow #81. There’s a special registration discount offer for FoxShow listeners until September 2.

In case you are wondering why I am not in on the interview, I have left the partnership putting on the conference. I’m kidding! I was in an undisclosed bunker with a limited data plan and no other access to the Internet. Even I need to take a vacation day periodically.

No time like the present to get registered. We have 100% of our registration processing staff not on vacation ready to handle you registration. Get to it!

Only ONE MONTH until we all gather in Gilbert!

I have some good news to share today. Thanks to the support of both the Visual FoxPro and Xbase++ communities, Southwest Fox and Southwest Xbase++ 2016 will proceed as planned September 22-25, 2016 in Gilbert, AZ.

We really appreciate all the support people have shown for the conference with early registrations! That said, the decision comes with a calculated risk because we are still many registrations short of the breakeven point. Please continue to spread the word to your colleagues, clients, user group and anywhere else Visual FoxPro or Xbase++ is spoken.

If you haven’t yet registered, there’s still room for you. Register before August 1 for a $50 early-bird discount.

Only 83 days until we gather in Gilbert!