Costas,

I took the liberty to post your posting about the Internet Conference
onto the Foxshare List. Robert Green, Microsoft's VFP Product Manager
responded, as follows :

==================================================================

From: Robert Green
To: "'foxshare@mail.schedulestar.com'"
Subject: RE: [fs] VFP All - From the Universal Thread (Costas Menico)
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 09:23:55 -0700

Costas,

Developer Tools had 3 booths at Internet World. VB and VC shared a booth. VI and VJ shared a booth. And VFP and Visual Studio shared a booth. In the other booths each team was there for half a day. So, for instance, VB in the morning and VC in the afternoon. In the VFP/VS booth Mike Stewart (Fox support in North Carolina) was there all day Wednesday. Mike and I were both there Thursday morning. And I was there Friday morning. (So in fact, VFP had more booth time than any of the other individual tools). I'm sorry if I was out stretching my legs when you came by. The guy who was in the booth was a local MS guy from New York, who knows VB and VI pretty well.

As for the theater, you're right, there was no VFP presentation. That's because it is our experience that people do not come to trade shows to learn about Visual FoxPro. In the 15 hours we were there (8 on Wed, 4 on Thu, 3 on Fri) we spoke to maybe a dozen people who were interested in VFP. In the meantime, there were 4-5 people at a time at the other tools booths, all intently interested. We decided not to have a VFP theater demonstration based on the sheer lack of numbers, nothing else.

Robert Green
Product Manager
Developer Tools Group
Microsoft
http://msdn.microsoft.com/developer
http://mdsn.microsoft.com/vfoxpro


-----Original Message-----
From: Le Software Man (UK) Ltd. [mailto:Le_Software_Man@compuserve.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 10, 1998 5:24 AM
To: FoxShare2
Subject: [fs] VFP All - From the Universal Thread (Costas Menico)



This one is for Robert Green
==============================

I wanted to report (from a VFP point of view) about the MS Booth at
Internet Expo this week in the Jacob Javits Center NYC .

They had a tiny corner for VFP which was manned by someone demoing ...VB6. When I asked for a demo, he said the rep who knew it well was not there (he was at lunch at 1130am, ...yeah, right..).

I did talk to him for a little about this problem of MS's lack of
marketing of the product. He said that MS recognizes and is committed to VFP for the long haul. However they are doing it to keep us
guys happy and not for any new programmers. I asked him why is that. He said that all new programmers are asking for is VB.

In their presentation theater at the booth, MS was demoing Visual Studio on huge monitors. The big banner on top mentioned everything on the VS except... VFP. I asked him about that. He said that MS did not think anyone would show up!

He did admit that they are doing a bad marketing job and that several people did ask for VFP (But since the booth was manned by a VB expert, they could not demo it).

He also said that when they go into the big corporate sites they don't
push for any language in particular. The clients seem to choose VB though (Now,,, why is that? Could it be that they don't demo it in their big theater presentations?)

Of course the above info comes from one guy (me), at a particular show,from a particular MS rep. So.. it may be no big deal. Maybe at other shows they do present VFP as part of studio.

The MS rep said he was sympathetic to our problem and MS's lack of
marketing.

Before I left he politely asked me if I wanted a demo of their new VB6. I said: No thanks.. and walked away looking for a corner to lick my wounds.

Costas
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