Sunday, March 10, 2024

Virtual Fox Fest 2024: Speakers, Sessions, and Registration

Virtual Fox Fest 2024 is a one-day event on Wednesday, May 8, 2024. We have some great speakers delivering great sessions, live chatting during presentations, and getting to hang out virtually with new and old friends. This event will feature classic sessions (from previous conferences), updated for 2024, along with at least one brand new session. More details here: https://virtualfoxfest.com/

Registration is open! Details, deadlines and cost are available on our Web site. You register for the conference here: https://geekgatherings.com/Registration. Don't procrastinate, get this done today!

In case you missed it, we’ve already announced Southwest Fox 2024 in Arizona, September 26-29, 2024. More details for this hybrid conference coming in May. The in-person event will be held at the Hampton Inn & Suites Phoenix-Scottsdale and the virtual side on the Hopin platform via the Internet.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Southwest Fox 2024: Call for Speakers

We're excited to offer you Southwest Fox 2024, a hybrid conference; you decide whether to come in-person or watch online! The in-person event will be held at the Hampton Inn & Suites Phoenix-Scottsdale. The virtual event will use the Hopin platform (the same platform we use for Virtual Fox Fest). You can get more information on the Southwest Fox Conference Web page.

The conference will take place September 26-29, 2024. 

Call for Speakers

We've issued the Call for Speakers for Southwest Fox. If you are interested in presenting, please read the document referenced on that page to learn about submitting sessions.

Saturday, December 30, 2023

Introducing FoxGet Package Manager

If you've worked with Visual Studio, you've likely used NuGet, which is a package manager for .NET. The idea is that you can search for libraries you'd like to add to your application, download and install them, and then have them managed (automatically download again if files are missing, update to a new version, etc.).

FoxGet is a new tool that's the VFP equivalent of NuGet. You run FoxGet when you want to add a library to an application. You search for a library you're interested in and if one is found, you can download, install, and add it to your project with a single mouse click. Of course, you'll have to do the coding part such as calling the library yourself.


FoxGet is available now at https://github.com/DougHennig/FoxGet. In a little while, it'll be available via Thor Check for Updates. All you need is FoxGet.app. There are currently installers for 24 popular VFP open source libraries.

To use FoxGet, open the project for the application you want to add a library to and DO path\FoxGet.app, where path is the folder where you placed FoxGet.app. If you installed it using Thor Check for Updates, you can choose FoxGet Package Manager from the Thor Tools, Applications menu. Select a library (also known as a package) and click Install. FoxGet downloads just the necessary files (no samples or documentation), puts them into a subdirectory of a new Packages subdirectory of your application folder, and adds the necessary files to your project. Uninstalling is just as easy: select the package and click Uninstall.

I look forward to any feedback you have: create issues or discussions in the GitHiub repository.

Friday, December 22, 2023

Geek Gatherings 2024: Save the Dates!

We have locked in our dates for our 2024 conferences and hope you will save the dates to attend.

Our one-day Virtual Fox Fest 2024 will be Wednesday, May 8, 2024. It still has the same great features everyone loves about VFF: great speakers delivering great sessions, live chatting during presentations, and getting to hang out virtually with new and old friends. This event will feature classic sessions from previous conferences, updated for 2024.

We’re excited to offer you Southwest Fox 2024, a hybrid conference, September 26-29, 2024. You decide whether to come in person or watch online! The in-person event will be held at the Hampton Inn & Suites Phoenix-Scottsdale in Scottsdale, Arizona. The virtual event will use the Ring Central Hopin platform (the same platform we use for Virtual Fox Fest).

Web sites will be updated in the new year. Call for speakers will be announced later in February so get your ideas prepared.

Saturday, December 16, 2023

Formatting Strings

In the category of building on the shoulders of giants, I adapted the idea Eric Selje presented in String.Format for Visual FoxPro and added support for string interpolation. This makes it much easier to code and read statements that combine expressions into a string.

For example, rather than writing (and later trying to understand):

lcMessage = 'The balance for ' + lcUser + ' on ' + transform(datetime()) + ;
    ' is ' + transform(lnBalance)
use this:
lcMessage = Format('The balance for {lcUser} on {datetime()} is {lnBalance}')

You can get Format.prg from my GitHub repository.

Wednesday, September 06, 2023

Southwest Fox is ON!

We have good news to share today. Thanks to the support of the Visual FoxPro community and our many sponsors, Southwest Fox 2023 will proceed as planned October 19-22, 2023 in Scottsdale, AZ and online via Hopin (now owned by RingCentral).

We really appreciate all the support people have shown for the conference with registrations! That said, the decision comes with a calculated risk because we are still many registrations short of covering all the conference expenses. Please continue to spread the word to your colleagues, clients, user groups and anywhere else Visual FoxPro is spoken.

If you haven't yet registered, there's still room for you: https://geekgatherings.com/Registration.

If you've already registered for the in-person conference, you'll receive a confirmation email soon that includes a link for our discounted hotel rate. 

We are pleased to announce Geekwear by Geek Gatherings. Order your Southwest Fox gear from https://geekgatherings.logosoftwear.com/. Choose from the options shown or create your own unique SWFox-wear.

Contact Us: If you want to be a sponsor: vendors@geekgatherings.com If you have suggestions or ideas: info@geekgatherings.com If you have a friend who wants to be on our mailing list, please ask them to sign up on the conference home page to get future mailings. Call: 586.254.2530

Monday, August 28, 2023

Southwest Fox 2023: URGENT - Now or never, register today

The fate of Southwest Fox is being decided Wednesday, August 30th. Help us make the decision to keep this conference going easy. We won’t charge your credit card until September. There is no more time for you to procrastinate. It simply is now or never. If you are going to Southwest Fox this year (in-person or virtually), please head over to the registration Web site, right now, before you forget: https://geekgatherings.com/Registration

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Southwest Fox 2023: URGENT Early-Bird registration deadline looms!

SET URGENT ON

WILL SOUTHWEST FOX 2023 TAKE PLACE? THAT DEPENDS ON YOU.

We have to decide by August 31 whether to hold Southwest Fox 2023 or not. So far, registration for both the in-person and virtual conferences has been slow. We have three options: a hybrid conference as planned, a virtual conference only, or no conference. If you want us to decide to hold the conference, register (for either the in-person or virtual event) before August 30. Credit cards will not be charged until September. If you are registering for the in-person conference, DO NOT book travel until you hear our decision.

Please head over to the registration Web site today: https://geekgatherings.com/Registration

Don't miss this chance to learn from the best and mix with your peers.

XSharp Free Post-Conference Session 
The XSharp Team is planning a Sunday afternoon (10/22) vendor session called "Migrating Your VFP App to .NET with X#."   Check out our Workshops page for all the up-to-date details.

If you've already registered for the conference and want to attend this session, email register@geekgatherings.com and we'll add you to the post-conference list. 

Only 65 days until we hope to gather in Scottsdale!

Saturday, July 29, 2023

Southwest Fox 2023: Super-saver Deadline Approaches

Hear that sound? Tick, tick, tick, tick…

That’s the countdown clock here at Geek Gatherings getting closer to the Super-saver deadline for Southwest Fox!  July 31st is next Monday and we thought we would pass along one more reminder just in case you forgot to add it your reminder list or put a yellow sticky note on your monitor. We still need people to register to make the in-person side of the conference happen.

Urgent: do not make plane reservations until we announce the decision for the in-person conference, which we expect to make in the coming weeks.

The conference takes place October 19-22, 2023 in Scottsdale, Arizona and we really hope you can be there. We would hate to see you lose out on the $100 discount and for those who really want to attend in-person, miss out on a spot in the first 50 registrations (the room limit we have for the conference space).

Head over to the registration Web site today: https://geekgatherings.com/Registration

If you’ve already registered, we thank you. Can you help us remind fellow developers who have been procrastinating about the looming deadline by sharing this email, sharing about it on social media, or posting on a forum how great a previous Southwest Fox or Virtual Fox Fest conference was for you? You can also spread the word by telling others you’re going on our Facebook event.

Nitty-Gritty Details
Check out our list of amazing speakers and dig into our sessions. Follow the news about the conference and our blog.

Contact Us:

Please beat the rush so we still have some fingernails left when August begins!

We appreciate all the support people have shown for the in-person conference with early registrations. We look forward to getting many more this week as we need them to make the “in-person go” decision; otherwise, we will be all virtual. If you’re planning to attend the virtual conference, please register now as it helps in our decision-making process.

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Time to Register for Southwest Fox Fest

Speakers and sessions for Southwest Fox 2023 have been announced, and registration is open! As I discussed earlier, we have a limit on the number of people who can attend in-person, and in less than 24 hours since registration opened, 1/3 of the spots have already been taken. So, if you're considering attending in-person, register today or you'll likely miss out! Also, Super-Saver Registration, which saves you $100, is available only through July 31st, so don't wait. When registering, be sure to select the proper conference on the registration site: choose either the in-person event or the virtual event.