>Rick, you're looking the gift horse in the mouth.

What has been done with prior SWFox shows has helped many people. It's likely helped many people who could not attend as well because the people who did attend were so inspired, so moved, that they were better able to teach others, or they remained active in the VFP community because of the bond they had there to other VFP developers and enthusiasts.

There is still more possible beyond that. It just requires a rethinking of what's important, and an application through endeavor of the same. And to be blunt, growing up all those people around you to become better educated, better loved through investments of time and focus on them, and the resonance wave which reciprocates back to yourself as a result, all of these yield a far, far better return on investment than does any degree of hoarding for any reason.

People are what matter. They are the focus. Individually one on one, as well as collectively. All of our endeavors should focus on helping the less-advantaged, the needy, giving those with the same potential as anyone else the opportunity to succeed.

Investing time, effort, resources into growing up that community yields a community grown up together, tight, communicative, concerned for one another as a family, willing to help, guide, invest back in appreciation for that which they received.

Helping people helps both them, and you. And this new digital age, with hard drives now in the Terabytes, and memory in the 10s of Gigabytes, being affordable, multiple cores, the Internet, software enabling us to share and grow ... it's time for us to recognize what this means to those previously unattainable through other means without expense beyond most people's ability to invest. With the digital world this is now cheap. So easy to do. And it puts us in the position of being able to grow those remote people, people literally everywhere, and without restriction (except for those we artificially impose for personal motives).

It's a new era. A new age. It's time for us to grow out of our infancy, to step outside of ourself and our focus on self, and reach out with both hands and steady ourselves by holding on to the masses of people who, through love and sharing and time and effort to grow them up, will be holding back on us as well. It's time to move with the tide, adjust our course, trim our sails, and with a renewed focus, pursue each other.