>>>In this case Tamar is one of the owners of the event.
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>1) She and two others stepped in when the last VFP conference was about to go under. She's shown more than once that she makes no $ from SWFox and it's common knowledge that running the conference is a community service.
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>I'm hardly her fanboi but in fairness, it seems to me that Tamar's answer was in good faith, to somebody who at face value could benefit a lot by going to SWFox. I think it's mean spirited to assert otherwise, especially if your own answer to somebody wanting to master VFP is that it will be easier to use NET.

Call Ripley. And call him again. We agree. I think Tamar's post was pretty innocent and I think Craig overacted.

Some food for thought. Microsoft (and most vendors) generally don't view commercial paid conferences as direct community services - certainly not in the same light as running a SQL Saturday or Saturday Code Camp event. Even with Tamar not profiting, MS distinguishes between non-paid and paid events in their metrics

Also, many SQL Saturday and Code Camp events top the VFP Conference in head count. (That's not a judgment, just statement of fact. )

Having said that, Microsoft acknowledges that sharing technology skills occurs through many channels...that sometimes, in order to scale up, it needs to be commercialized in order to be cost-justifiable. I've actually had these conversations with them.

There is no magic formula for winning an MVP award - but certainly a person who does 5 conference talks a year and 15 free sessions will likely have a better resume in terms of community service than someone who does 15 conference talks and 5 free sessions. In Tamar's case, she runs a monthly user group - and as someone who has been a user group leader for four months now, it definitely takes up time.