Leaving for Phoenix

Early (6:00 a.m.) Tuesday, I leave for Phoenix and Southwest Fox 2007. It doesn't start until Thursday, but organizers Rick Schummer, Tamar Granor, and I, plus our "staff" of Rick's wife Therese and Tamar's husband Marshal, have several days of last-minute details to finish, such as assembling the conference binders and bags, coordinating meals and rooms with the hotel, and so on.

I'm really excited about Southwest Fox: the lineup of speakers and sessions is fantastic, there are some cool products to see in the trade show, and there are about double the number of attendees we were expecting, including a great mix of new folks, people I haven't see at a conference in a while, and the usual but always appreciated gang. I'm also glad the conference is almost here; it was a lot of work! Some days, emails from Rick and Tamar were 75% of my total inbox (and no, that doesn't mean I got three from them ; my normal load is about 50 - 60 legitimate messages a day). I have a new appreciation for the work Whil Hentzen (Great Lakes Great Database Workshop), Igor Vit (DevCon Praha), Rainer Becker (German DevCon), Craig Bailey (OzFox), Kevin Cully (Fox Forward), Bob Kocher (Southwest Fox until this year), and others have done over the years.

See you next week!