Shedding Some Light

I am thankful that the sessions at German DevCon start at 8:30. I woke up with wake-up call and proceeded to fall back to sleep for 30 minutes. I still was able to get to Steven Black’s “Niche Marketing for VFP” session. I learned several important points during this session. Steven pointed out a new marketing term to me called SERP (Search Engine Results Page). What Steven talked about is owning your name property. Where does your web site come up in the results when you type in your company name or your name in Google? I am happy to say mine shows up at the very top via Google Germany. Steve provided several tips to include in the HTML and tweaks you can do using Google Analytics. This session also covered what a niche is and a number of niches available for VFP developers. I found this session to be very beneficial and glad I did not oversleep a minute more. Five of five stars.

Marcia Akins was up next with her “The 26 Hour Day” session. I saw this session earlier this year as she was starting to develop it. In this session Marcia shows a number of productivity tips and tricks and talks about how much time she thinks it will save you. I told her that her time estimates are conservative. This session covered a couple of my personal favorites: DeclareLocals.PRG (from MegaFox: 1002 Things You Want to Know About Extending VFP) and the new Edit Property/Method replacement dialog (soon to be added to VFPX). These two tools save me time. Marcia also showed her form and class hacking tool and pointed out how my HackCX Professional is like her tool on steroids. Her plug was very nice (and unnecessary), but she incorrectly pointed out that HackCX will even clean your kitchen. This is not true in the current version. Doug Hennig mentioned that I need to finish the MenuDesigner before I add the kitchen cleaning feature into HackCX {g}. Another five of five stars.

Craig Berntson followed Marcia’s session with “Continuous Integration.” This is a fairly new term (well new to me at least) that encompasses the automation of the build process and testing. This really is about development processes with respect to using source code control, building, and testing the build in tight iterative loops. Make small changes to the code, unit test, check it in, build, review the build results, use automated testing, and check the status of the tests. Better quality software based on a repeatable and proven process. Craig showed a number of free tools and talked about some very expensive tools to implement this process. He did this from the perspective of the .NET developer. .NET developers are evidentally ahead of the curve on automating the process. Craig did have one slide to show some of the tools that work with VFP like FoxUnit (automated testing), Code Analyst from VFPX to help with refactoring, and mentioned Rick Borup’s paper on FinalBuilder with VFP for “Automating the Build.” Four of five stars (would have been even better if this was presented from a VFP perspective).

Lunch – more good food, and of course more good smoked salmon.

I had ti get sine more work done in the afternoon along with some interesting discussions with Christof Wollenhaupt and Igor Vit (from Prague). I wanted to go to Michael Niethammer’s session “VFP – Tools und Assistenten.” I reviewed his materials a couple of days ago and figured I had a thing or two I could learn. Instead I ran through my demos for the VFPX session I was about to give.

I did give my session “VFPX Tools and Components – Live.” There was a big crowd in the room and you could feel the excitement as I revealed each of the tools and components. A quick poll at the beginning of the session revealed very few developers have heard of VFPX. It was consistent with the findings at Southwest Fox (15-20%). Looks like we need a “Tell a friend about VFPX” campaign. As I went through each section of the session I asked if anyone was using what I just showed and a few hands would go up. Then I followed up with the question asking how many developers might use it in the future and most of the room raised their hands. The session was definitely more interactive than any session I have given in Frankfurt the last three years. There definitely was a buzz in the room. I was very fun for me, I just hope everyone else was having a good time too.

One more day to go – conferences sure seem to fly by.

My day started out with Doug Hennig’s “Developing VFP Apps for Vista.” I first saw this at OzFox 2007 and have recommended every VFP developer should see this session. This session was very popular at Southwest Fox and Advisor DevCon too. I am also getting closer to purchasing my first Vista computer so the session has more relevance this time around. Doug has real world practical experience on the topic and is considered the authority. I think there are two key take-aways from this session. The first important ideas is security and not working around it, but rather work with it. The second is that even if you do not want to use Vista for development, note your customers eventual will be so you need to develop this expertise. Doug has lots of useful code to help make your applications compatible too. Still a six out of five stars.

Next up is the keynote. Alan Griver started the session by presenting Rainer with the VFP Lifetime Achievement Award as I posted yesterday. Alan also talked about “the announcement” from last March. Unfortunately Alan’s machine was suffering from a serious hard drive problem. He was able to boot in Vista safe mode, but none of his demos were working because they have registry dependencies. This was a bummer since I have seen his keynote material at the Advisor conference and it was very interesting, and showed some key technologies VFP developers will use for years to come. Doug Hennig stepped in with some Vista demos, and Steven Black made some compelling points on why VFP developers will be successful for many years to come. Stability is reliability. I have enjoyed Steven’s sessions over the years, but today I realized during this session that Steven could become a religious evangalist if his software career wanes. Steven basically whet the attendee appetite for his all evening session “FoxPro is dead! Now What? The Case for VFP.”

After lunch I had to work on some projects so I skipped the first two afternoon sessions. My “Fishing with a ProjectHook” session was the last afternoon session. It was not attended by a lot of developers because it was against Christof’s “Cross Platform with VFP and Guineu” and Andy Kramek’s “SQL Server for VFP Developers Part 2.” Personally I would have read the white paper for the ProjectHook session, and attended Christof’s session (which I heard was top gun). My session went okay, but definitely was not the best I have delivered it. It could be the fact I am still suffering a bit from jet lag, or it could be that I thrive off more energy from more attendees. I really appreciated the attendees who selected my session. Thanks for coming.

Dinner was very good. The only disappointment is they did not serve smoked salmon. This broke my streak of smoked salmon at every meal. Marcia Akins and I hunted for it for a while, but there was none to be had.

I also skipped the evening sessions to catch up with several clients. Skype is a lifesaver.

Alan Griver announced that Rainer Becker is awarded the Visual FoxPro Lifetime Achievement Award during the keynote here at the German FoxPro DevCon.

Rainer is the organizer of the German FoxPro DevCon and is one of the leaders involved with everything FoxPro in Germany. This is well deserved based on his incredible contributions to theFox Community for many, many years.

More posted on the FoxPro Wiki by Steven Black already!

Congratulations Rainer!

I arrived in Germany Wednesday to attend the 14th German DevCon.

Wednesday is a transition and travel day. It is brutal getting use to the new timezone so this year I took a new approach and decided to take the 10-minute power nap approach. I have tried the stay up all day without success, and tried the long-nap approach. It worked. I actually slept through the night Wednesday and woke completely refreshed Thursday morning. Nice.

I had lunch with Steve Black, Alan Griver, Craig Berntson and Doug Hennig (both Craig and Doug will be blogging about the conference too). I spent the rest of the day working on some projects, power napping, and attending some speaker related meetings.

More to come…

I am now able to focus on the next two conferences I am speaking at, and realized this morning I might not be blogging enough about the German DevCon in Frankfurt (8-Nov-2007 to 10-Nov-2007) and Software Developer Network in the Netherlands (12-Nov-2007).

Rainer Becker is working on his 14th German DevCon. Having done one-third of the work to put on one conference I personally would like to nominate Rainer for “Visual FoxPro Sainthood” {g}. I know it is one of the finest FoxPro conferences put on planet Earth. Rainer has a fantastic set of sessions lined up again, at a great conference center, and the food… none better anywhere at any conference. If you have even a remote chance to get to this conference you owe it to yourself to get there. You can read any of the many blog posts I have done live during the German DevCons by hitting the index on this page for November 2006 and November 2005. I will be presenting the following sessions:

• Fishing with a Projecthook
• VFPX Tools and Components – Live
• Creating Help – Made Easy!
• SQL Server Toolkit for the VFP Developer

Many of the same sessions heard at Southwest Fox will be presented in Germany, so if you read the buzz on Southwest Fox and wished you had not missed it, you have a chance to hear some great sessions plus some more great content presented in German and English from some of the finest presenters around. You can register here.

Quick on the heals of German DevCon is a train ride to the Netherlands for SDN and the one-day Visual FoxPro track the Monday after Frankfurt. I have heard from other speakers how fun this one-day event is and feel blessed to be asked to present three sessions:

• VFPX Tools and Components – Live
• Creating Help – Made Easy!
• SQL Server Toolkit for the VFP Developer

Doug Hennig is presenting the other VFP sessions:

• Best Practices for Vertical Application Development
• Developing Visual FoxPro Applications for Windows Vista

I can recommend both of Doug’s sessions. I have listened in on his vertical market session almost a half dozen times, and learned or re-learned something each time. His Vista session is a must for every VFP developer, and is a session I think will be popular for years to come.

More details about SDN can be found here.

One thing I learned at Southwest Fox (more blogs to come, promise) is the number of people who have not heard about VFPX. I am really looking forward to showing off the VFPX tools and components and hope to get the European VFP developers excited like what happened in Mesa a couple weeks ago.

After SDN I am headed up to Amsterdam for a day of touring and then back to work. The trip will go by fast and I am sure by the time I get to Amsterdam I will be fully adjusted to the new time zone just in time to head back to Michigan. That is the tough part of these short trips a quarter of the way around the world. Fortunately I am energized by the crowd and by the FoxPro enthusiasm. I look forward to seeing everyone at these two conferences and making some new friends.

I am happy to announce I will be returning to Germany again this November to present at the 14th Microsoft Visual FoxPro Developer Conference 2007. This is a fantastic conference put on by Rainer Becker and his team. Rainer has an excellent collection of presenters presenting 60 VFP sessions:

English speaking: Marcia Akins, Craig Berntson, Steven Black, Jim Booth, Alan Griver, Doug Hennig, Venelina Jordanova, Andy Kramek, and Rick Schummer.

German speaking: Marcus Alt, Rainer Becker, Joachim Durr, Sebastian Flucke, Uwe Habermann, Jochim Hilgers, Kirsten Hinrichs, Armin Neudert, Michael Niethammer, Patrick Scharer, Markus Winhard, Christof Wollenhaupt, and Jurgen “wOOdy” Wondzinski.

I will be presenting four sessions:

• SQL Server Toolkit for the VFP Developer
• Fishing with a ProjectHook
• VFPX Tools and Components – Live
• Creating Help – Made Easy!

The conference is held at a terrific conference center that serves the best food you could ask for. There are lots of opportunities to network and vendors to visit as well. If you want to learn more about this popular conference you can read some of my blog entries in November 2006 and 2005 (see the index on my blog). I really recommend this conference!

Last week Rainer Becker contacted me to let me know the German DevCon 2007 preparations are under way. This will be the 14th time this conference is put on by Rainer and his team. The conference will be November 8-10, 2007. In fact, Rainer announced the next eight German DevCons at the end of the conference last year. This schedule (through the year 2014) is posted on the Fox Wiki’s Upcoming Events page.

Speakers and sessions will be announced at a later date. I have attended the last two and you can read my thoughts on the conference by looking at the numerous blog posts I made during the conferences (see posts in November 2005 and November 2006 in the links to the right on my blog page). Top gun conference, top gun facility, and over the top food make this one of the best conferences around.