I hit 15 this Month also. I remember the first time I sat in one of your sessions in a Conference and left there thinking you needed to switch to caffeine free. :-)

Have not done any Fox in a Long Long time, but keep coming back to check in.


>I noticed that this past Monday, Sept 19th was my 15 year mark of being a member here on the UT. I think to this day, the UniversalThread is the best web based UI for any tech discussion forum I've ever seen or used. The message profile with photos and flags make it seem like I really get to know the people I read or exchanges message with here.
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>Most of you may not know this, but I was asked by the MVP team (as a kind of community expert) to speak at the MVP Summit in late 2001 on the topic of using community forums online as well as using XML Web services for forums. There were over 700 people in the audience, the entire MVP summit for that year (about half of all MVPs worldwide at the time, which includes dozens of Microsoft products and technologies). I recall it was a morning session, and it was fun to have a thread exchange online as part of the demo of the UT. This was when most people used Outlook Express via NNTP newsgroups for message forums, which included lots of spam, and threading/search limitations. I recall it being important that I finished my MVP summit presentation on time because as I walked off the stage, Bill Gates came out immediately after me to do the summit keynote presentation.
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>When Microsoft started the planning around building their own online forums, they talked to me about the possibility of Microsoft actually purchasing the UT. The fact that it was built using VFP, and the fact some people wanted to build something from scratch internally, they didn't move forward with that option. Even today for me personally, I'd much rather use the UT here than a forum like the MSDN or other web site.
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>The VFP Wish List here on the UT for VFP 8.0 and 9.0 really helped the Fox team make those versions better, and was a key part in the FoxPro community being an actual extension of the FoxPro team.
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>That 10 year anniversary celebration in 2002 with the comments from well over 1000 people on the UT printed out and sent to key Fox team people as well as Steve Ballmer. Ballmer actually sent the 10 year FoxPro anniversary hat he received over to my office, maybe it didn't fit his big head. :) Hundreds of people all around the Microsoft campus in Redmond saw that plane fly over at one day at lunch with the sign "Thanks Microsoft - 10 Years of FoxPro", and it was a very warm day with lots of people outside. I had the story about it written up in the MicroNews newspaper (at the time, it was placed in the mailbox of everyone at Microsoft), so most employees company wide ended up reading about it.
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>While I miss the era when many more messages and people here each day, it's very cool that the UT is still online with many great people still active - with the same great UI and features that sustained well over a decade. The fact that it's "powered by Visual FoxPro" makes it that much cooler. :)
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>I don't think Michel Fournier has ever received the credit and thanks as he deserves for creating the UT. So part of my message here is to say thanks to Michel, as well as everyone here on the UT for making it the great sub community forums that it has and continues to be.