Southwest Fox 2011 was a great success. Now we’re trying to figure out what form next year’s event will take. You can help us by answering a few questions about your preferences. Please take the survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VCCKNDG, so we can include your input.
In case you are unaware, there are a lot of FoxPro user groups and regional conferences hosting Southwest Fox Rehearsals, you might want to check out a relatively new page on the Southwest Fox Web site: Session Rehearsals Rehearsals are important for a couple of reasons:
A couple of years ago I was able to see half the sessions before I even arrived in Arizona. I cannot tell you how much value that brought to me except to tell you it was a lot. This year I have seen several sessions and have a couple more to see before I arrive in Arizona. Even if you are not able to attend the conference it is an opportunity for you to learn from the presenters and provide them feedback so their sessions rock at Southwest Fox. I was particularly moved this morning because of an email sent to me by Mike Potjer of the Grand Rapids Area Fox User Group. Mike is a long time supporter of Southwest Fox and is attending this year. This past weekend he attended one of the many rehearsals Jim Nelson is doing for his two sessions on VFPX’s Thor. Mike wrote:
I hope this is already on your agenda, but I would really like to see a big plug for Thor during the Welcome/Keynote session of SW Fox. I think Thor is the most universally useful productivity enhancement for VFP developers since IntelliSense. I have created IntelliSense enhancements, and looked at creating builders, but adding functionality to Thor is much simpler than either of those, and really hardly requires any documentation. And Thor blows away IntelliSense and the builder architecture in terms of making it easy to share what you’ve created. …. I really think Jim deserves accolades for this (not to mention all the PEMEditor development that laid the groundwork for Thor). I told Jim that I honestly believe that if Thor had been available when VFP 9 was released, that it should have been included with the product.
Wow, talk about a session having an impact, and the conference has not even started. Hopefully you will get a chance to attend one of the remaining rehearsals held in the next two weeks before the conference gets rolling.
We’ve posted the session schedule for Southwest Fox 2011. Expect the Kokopelli application to help you plan your personal schedule soon; Dave Aring is working on this year’s version.
We are thrilled to announce that Steven Black is speaking at Southwest Fox this year. Steve Black is one of the truly outstanding speakers in our community. His sessions are lively, thought-provoking, and entertaining, a killer combination. Steve hasn’t been to SWFox since 2005 due to other commitments, so he’s been sorely missed.
Steve’s sessions are Looking Back: Techniques I’m Glad We Used and Niche Marketing for VFP Developers, Revisited. Both are going to be great sessions, but the Niche Marketing session is particularly timely given the state of VFP development today. Of course, this just makes the problem of deciding which sessions to attend, since we can’t possibly see them all, all the harder.
Anyone who is registered for Southwest Fox 2011 before midnight EDT on September 15th (including those who are already registered) is eligible for one of two drawings for a Visual Extend license (which sells for $1070) and a Stonefield Query SDK license (which sells for $6000). Thanks to Visual Extend and Stonefield Query for their ongoing support of Southwest Fox!
There are two different kinds of scholarships available to offset the costs of Southwest Fox. White Light Computing (Rick’s company) offers two $150 scholarships to early registrants. Tomorrow’s Solutions, LLC (my company) offers one $150 scholarship to early registrants who have never previously attended Southwest Fox.
The White Light Computing Scholarship winners for this year are two long-time Southwest Fox attendees: Joel Leach from Memorial Business Systems and Stacey Violett of Black Mountain Software.
The Tomorrow’s Solutions, LLC Scholarship winner for this year is Jon Love of Profile Systems Design Group, Inc. Jon noted that he’d been hoping to attend for several years and is excited to be coming to the conference this year.
Anyone who is registered for Southwest Fox 2011 before midnight EDT on September 1st (including those who are already registered) is eligible for one of three drawings for a DBi Technologies Studio Controls for COM license (which sells for $749). Thanks to DBi for their ongoing support of Southwest Fox!
In addition, we’re trying to get a better handle both on how many people to expect and the factors in people’s decision to attend or not. Please help us by taking a brief anonymous survey.
Just a reminder that anyone registering for Southwest Fox by Monday, July 25 is eligible for the SuperSaver discount rate of $645. Registration includes entrance to all regular conference sessions, two lunches, one dinner, access to white papers for all regular conference sessions, and much more.
Check out the list of speakers and sessions at http://www.swfox.net/speakers.aspx. Full registration information and access to our registration application is at http://www.swfox.net/register.aspx.
We tried something new for pricing Southwest Fox this year. Instead of using calendar deadlines, we divided the number of attendees we expect into a set of “buckets,” with an increased price for each bucket. We even put the number of seats left in each bucket on the conference home page.
The reason for the change was to get people to register sooner, which helps us in many different areas of planning. We put 20 seats in the first bucket and they all sold in the first few days after we opened registration. We were thrilled.
After that, we blew it. We put 60 seats into the second bucket, which failed to create any kind of urgency; as we write this, only 21 of those seats have sold. Even the July 1 deadline for getting a pre-conference session for free didn’t light a fire under many people. The result is that registrations are running considerably behind last year’s; we’re pretty sure it’s the pricing mechanism causing the slow registrations, not a lack of interest.
Since we really do need to know how many people are coming, we’re going to adjust the bucket sizes. But before we do, we want to give everyone a chance to get in on the current price of $645 (a discount of $125 off the regular price).
After Monday, July 25, we’re going to reduce the size of the second bucket to a total of 30 seats (or the number of people who’ve already received the Super Saver price by that date, if that’s more than 30), and add a new bucket called just “Saver,” with a price of $690, which is still $80 less than full price, for the other 30. However, anyone who registers on or before July 25 will get the Super Saver price, even if that means we have more than 60 Super Savers.
So, if you’ve been waiting for the Super Saver bucket to get close to empty before registering, that time is now.
Thanks for understanding our need to tweak this new approach. We look forward to seeing you in Gilbert in October.
Just a quick reminder that the July 1 deadline for getting a free pre-conference session with your registration is just around the corner. After that, each precon you attend is $99, as is a second precon when you get the first one free.
We have a great line-up of half-day pre-conference sessions this year. The choices are:
There are still plenty of SuperSaver registrations left, at $645 for the conference itself, so for that price, you can get the whole conference and one of the precons, if you register by July 1.
Registration information
Complete list of topics and speakers
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