Johanna:

>I have been a quiet observer of Universal Thread for the past few months, and recently I have been attending Craig Berntson's foxpro user group in Salt Lake, which by the way has been a great experience. Following Craig's advice, I am planning on attending GLGDW next week. This is my first conference, and I was wondering if anyone has any rookie advise/tips for me?

View the conference as an introduction to new technology, programming techniques, etc., and not as a training session. My goal, when attending a session, is to determine whether the topic discussed is worth incorporating into some of my applications. If I think the answer is yes, I research the topic/technology as soon as I get home. Don't try to research more than 2 or 3 topics/technologies at any one time because your progress will be too slow and you will get discouraged.

Don't expect the conference samples to contain production-quality code. I have attended over 25 conferences (3 on VFP) and have rarely, if ever, seen production-quality code presented in a session. Remember that the samples are given to illustrate a point, not to be used in a production environment.

Trust your judgment. It's ok to disagree with an expert if his or her opinion does not fit into your definition of good software practices. Be warned that you shouldn't do this until you have reached a certain level of competence.

Hope it helps