Phew… today we got done with 3 days of the West Wind User Conference and Training. And what a few days it’s been. The conference has been a huge success with awesome turnout and an audience that was a pleasure to have a around. Small conferences like this are always a lot of work to prepare for and set up even with the help of some of the people at EPS (thanks Tammy and Cleo!). But after a few days of giving presentations and getting the feedback we got from attendees all the time and effort seems well worth it.

The conference was run with one day of Intro training for Web Connection plus two days of general, session style training by a number of speakers from the Web Connection community. The speakers included Randy Pearson, Lauren Clarke, Steve Black, Michael Hogan and Darrell Gardner, all of whom presented really excellent sessions which covered a broad range of topics on Web Development with Visual FoxPro and Web Connection. All of the speakers were top class and were in full line with the style of presenting that I encourage, which is open and very interactive based with audience participation and user interaction. The whole conference had a very light feeling – none of the stuffiness of most bigger conferences. In between sessions everybody was buzzing around talking to the speakers and networking with other attendees – not a dull moment to be had.

The feedback also was quite amazing – I don’t think in all the years I’ve done training or even speaking at other conferences have I seen so much and so vehement of comments that the attendees were really stoked about the content. I’m glad to hear that and I have to thank the rest of the speakers to help make this event such a raving success.

The Conference was also the first time I had a chance to show of Web Connection 5.0 to an audience. The conference was not to be about this new version so the topic was left for last on the last day, but I think this demo went over really well. Although Web Connection 5.0 borrows heavily from the ASP.NET mindset, it’s a new concept for many Fox developers, but one that brought lots of Ooohhs and Ahhs for the ability to use a declarative model to define your user interface and continue to use FoxPro code for handling Web based events. I’m really glad I finally had a chance to show this stuff because I’ve been quite excited about it and what it promises to Web Connection development. Attendees got to walk off with a pre-beta copy of WWWC 5.0 to play with and check out the framework and tools.

For those that showed up – thanks for being involved and going along with our antics – ask Randy sometime about VGA ports - and also for the speakers for investing the time to make this such a fun event for everybody involved.

At this rate, there will be more to come… so stay tuned...

Three more days to go at SwFox now...