One last quick reminder: you can save $50 by registering with the early-bird registration discount. The deadline is this Saturday, August 31st. Every registered attendee gets admission and white papers to all regular conference sessions. www.swfox.net.
Thanks to the support of both the Visual FoxPro and Xbase++ communities, Southwest Fox and Southwest Xbase++ will proceed as planned October 17-20 in Gilbert, AZ. As we said two weeks ago, Southwest Fox is one of the highlights of the year for us, despite (or maybe because of) the hundreds of hours that go into planning and running it. We are delighted that the Visual FoxPro community feels as we do, and voted with their wallets to keep it going.
If you haven’t yet registered, there’s still room for you. Register before September 1 for a $50 early-bird discount. Please continue to spread the word to your colleagues, clients, user group and anywhere else Visual FoxPro or Xbase++ is spoken.
See you in Gilbert in October.
Thanks to those of you who responded promptly to our message about the future of Southwest Fox. Registration has picked up, but we still need to hear from more of you before the Super-saver deadline.
June 30th is less than a week away and we thought we would pass along a reminder just in case you forgot to type it into your task list, or put a yellow sticky note on your monitor. We still need people to register to make the conferences happen.
The conference takes place October 17-20, 2013 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 session. The pre-conference sessions are quite popular this year.
Head over to the registration Web site today: http://geekgatherings.com/Registration. As promised, we are not cashing checks or processing credit cards for new registrations until the middle of July.
Already registered? Thanks. Can you help us remind your fellow developers who have been procrastinating about the looming deadline?
Putting on a conference is a risky endeavor. Conference centers require a guaranteed minimum income to block the dates of a conference; for a conference like Southwest Fox and Southwest Xbase++, that minimum is in the tens of thousands of dollars.
As of today, we have 14 people registered for Southwest Fox and Southwest Xbase++ 2013. That’s about half the number of people who were registered at this time last year, and last year’s number took a big leap of faith on our part to carry on. See, our breakeven point is about 75 people, and according to our contract with the hotel, we have until July 2 to cancel or we’re on the hook for our guaranteed minimum whether there’s a conference or not.
Southwest Fox is one of the highlights of the year for Rick, Tamar and me. A ton of planning and work goes into organizing it, but we are happy to do it because we feel it’s an important way to keep our community going. We’re realistic enough to know that it won’t go on forever and each year could be the last. So, was 2012 the last year? You can help us make that decision. If you were thinking about going this year, vote to continue the conference by registering now. If you know others thinking of attending, share this message with them.
If we do end up cancelling, everyone who registered will get their money back in full, so you can’t lose out. (Just don’t make your flight reservation right way.)
The FoxShow #77 features an interview with Rick, Tamar, and I discussing this and other SWFox-related issues, so be sure to check it out. Andrew MacNeill also has a blog post about this.
Geek Gatherings is pleased to announce that the 2013 Ceil Silver Ambassador is Luis Maria Guayan. Luis is a well-known member of the Spanish FoxPro community, is one of the founders of PortalFox, is the project manager of the FoxBarcode VFPX project, and was a long-time MVP.
The Ceil Silver Ambassador Fund raises money from the VFP community to bring 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 Fund is named in memory of Ceil Silver, a long-time member of the Visual FoxPro community, who passed away in January, 2009. Ceil served as Editor of FoxPro Advisor's Tips and Tricks column for many years and was the founder of the Westchester County FoxPro chapter of PADD, the Professional Association of Database Developers. She was also a contributing author to Special Edition Using Visual FoxPro 6. Ceil understood the value of attending professional conferences, and continued to attend them until her failing health prevented it.
The FoxPro Lifetime Achievement Award honors those individuals who have contributed a great deal to the FoxPro community over the years. See http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~FoxProCommunityLifetimeAchievementAward~VFP for previous award recipients. These recipients wish to continue the award and have created a committee to select a recipient for 2013. The committee consists of all 14 living previous recipients, Alan Griver (yag), and Sergey Berezniker representing the FoxPro community. To submit your nominations for the 2013 recipients, please email me (dhennig@stonefield.com) by July 31, 2013.
The Ceil Silver Ambassador Fund raises money from the VFP community to bring 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.
We are looking for nominations from the VFP community for the 2013 recipient. 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.
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 http://www.swfox.net/ambassador.aspx 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.
Geek Gatherings LLC has officially opened registration for Southwest Fox 2013! The developer conference will be held October 17-20, 2013 at the SanTan Elegante Conference and Reception Center, the same great location as last year. Last year was a huge success.
Super-Saver Registration, which saves you $125, is available only through June 30th, so don't wait. Head over to the registration Web site today: http://geekgatherings.com/Registration
Registration fees are the same as last year! More details are available on the conference's registration page.
Speakers and sessions for Southwest Fox 2013 have been announced. Like we try to do every year, we have a couple of new speakers this year: Hank Fay and David Giard.
You may notice that rather than having separate speaker pages for Southwest Fox and Southwest Xbase++ (a conference held concurrently with Southwest Fox), we’ve combined them into one. The reason for that is some sessions apply to both conferences, such as Tamar Granor’s Office 365: An IT Department for Small Businesses session and David Giard’s How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love jQuery session.
Some of the sessions I’m personally looking forward to are:
I’m very excited by this year’s lineup and think you will be too. Registration opens in a couple of weeks. See you in October!
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.
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.
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 http://www.swfox.net/ambassador.aspx 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.
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