Visual FoxPro DevCon 1993
The alarm clock is ringing. It's 7:30 am, Monday, October 10, 1993. Another beautiful day is starting in the land of Disneyworld, Orlando, Florida. I have about half an hour to get up and get ready to leave. The weather man on radio is announcing a 30 degree windless sunny day, the 4th in a row. I still have my big Microsoft FoxPro bag on the chair in the corner of my hotel room. I personally call it the "DevCon Survival Kit". Everything you need is in it: information about the sessions schedules, speakers, trade show, activities, etc. Most important, I must not forget the big binder filled with session notes. This year Microsoft gave us another smaller than the previous one, so we can put notes related to the sessions we will follow during the day and not have to bring the big one. Also, we didn't receive any sun glasses since we were given ones in Phoenix '92 and Toledo '91 for past DevCons.
I'm now walking to the front office of the hotel. This is where we have to wait for shuttles to bring us to the Dolphin Hotel, the place where everything will be held. The other years, Microsoft was offering free shuttle service from hotel to hotel. This year, since it is Disneyworld, the shuttles come from Disney. Each day, every 15 minutes, there is a shuttle passing at the shuttle stop for each hotel. The bus is coming. I will be at the Dolphin in 10 minutes. A lot of people in the shuttle are from the Fox community. They are wearing FoxPro T-shirts, FoxPro sun glasses, Fox buttons, Fox hats, etc. You cannot miss them.
We are now entering the parking lot of the Dolphin hotel. The Fox people leave the bus to go in for the continental breakfast from 8h00 to 9h00 am. This is the first day, so a lot of people are looking for Microsoft people. They are easy to see and there are many. If you want more information, all you have to do is to look for a red Microsoft T-shirt which all the staff people wear. They are welcoming you whenever you need something.
A big room is waiting for all the people for breakfast. There are stands of food all around the room so that we don't have to wait in line. I'm wondering why there are some red balloons in the corner of the room beside some tables. I recognize a lot of people there. "Come in Michel, these are reserved tables for the Foxforum people". This is good, we meet the people we were talking with on the forum all year long. While eating, a lot of Devconers are looking in their binders to make final checks on today's agenda. Microsoft let us to choose from a variety of 8 to 10 topics available for each session time-slot.
People are now leaving for the opening session in the main room. Everyone is waiting for the famous opening speech by Dr. Fulton. This year, he talked about the history of FoxPro, the situation right now and what we can expect in the future. He also did a recap since the merge between Fox Software and Microsoft took place in March 1992. Some people were wondering what will happen concerning FoxPro versus other Microsoft products like Access, Visual Basic and SQL server. Dr. Fulton explained that FoxPro is here to stay. However, he mentioned that a package like Visual Basic could be included in a future release of FoxPro to be called Visual FoxPro 3.0 or something like that. He also mentioned that this DevCon was the most important database conference to ever take place with more than 3000 attendees.
Now, it's time for a little break and to go to the first session of the day. The speakers are usually well known people from the database market. They offer good presentations with good projection equipment. After each session, we have to fill out some evaluation forms to get the best year after year from these DevCons.
Before going for dinner, I stop at the trade show. Most of the third party companies are there. It's a chance to see and talk with the people who are building those powerful FoxPro tools. You find tools from different aspects like the application builder, screen and report utilities, network and database recovery tools, etc. You can also find the best FoxPro books from around the world. There is also the give away place where you can have good things for free, like books or softwares, if you find yourself at the right place at the right time. I'm going now for the dinner and believe me, the food is very good.
Two more sessions and it's time to get back to the hotel and change before the famous "Microsoft Goes MGM" activity. About 75 bus will take us to the world known Disney's MGM Studios. Who are these people and why are they shouting? Well, these people are paid to be fans and guess who are the famous actors? After a few autographs, we are in. Before going for the food on the Manhattan street, we have to stop for our first attraction of the night at the Indiana Jones stunt show. For our closing attraction of the night, we have a beautiful fireworks show.
It's now time to get back to the hotel. It is about midnight and guess what? People are still hanging around in the hotel lobby writing some DevCon diary messages on the notebooks to be put on the Foxforum before getting some sleep for another extraordinary DevCon day. See you next year!  |  |
|   | | Michel Fournier is the owner of Level Extreme, designer of the renowned Universal Thread. He specializes by providing high end professional consulting to its clients, by offering professional content for the developers community as well as offering social Web sites. He specializes in providing IT solutions in the .NET world as well as for the SQL Server platform. His expertise is applicable at various levels such as the architecture, data modeling, feasibility study, prototyping, analysis, development, training, mentoring, standardization and testing phases. His consulting services have been given to clients in Montreal, Toronto, Quebec, Bathurst, Moncton and the United States. He has given various training and consulting for user groups and companies while having published various articles for different sources. You will find the biggest Internet product achievement he has done by accessing the Universal Thread. He has been a Microsoft MVP in 1997, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. |
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