Malcolm --

Sounds like a plan!

Jay


>Ken,
>
>I like your idea of having an evening application showcase. However, I think the effort and politics of picking the 'lucky 8' applications will be tedious and frustrating and in the end not much different than the pain associated with the VFP Excellence Awards. In fact, I believe that being picked as a demonstratable application will, in itself, be an 'award' (or form of recognition) of sorts. So, in the end, all you've done is removed the ranking system - not the associated hassles.
>
>I'm also concerned about people's ability to sit through yet another set of 'formal' (speaker led) sessions, in a dimmly lit room, for a 4 hour period at the end of a long day of exhausting sessions. I know we're a motivated community, but IMHO that's asking a lot!<g>
>
>I would like to throw out the idea that the evening application showcase be open to all that want to participate - in the same spirit of a giant street fair or flea market. This gives everyone in the community who wants to participate more actively in Devcon like gatherings (including Whilfest type events) an opportunity to participate to the best of their ability. And every participant in such an event increases your share of stakeholders (vs. passive participants) in such events. Not a bad thing in my opinion.
>
>My strawman concept would be a bunch of tables and chairs spread through a very large room, i.e. the size of the room used for the conference keynote presentation or if smaller room(s) are used - allowing for the 'fair' to extend into the hallways if necessary. Volunteer demonstrators (signed up on a first come, first served basis) would get their own table on which to place a battery run laptop (eliminating the hassles, safety issues and expense of trying to provide hundreds of extension cords). Tables would be scattered randomly throughout the demo room(s) with enough space for visitors to comfortably wander or gather at particular tables and with enough space so that individual demos don't interfere with neigboring demos.
>
>Visitors to the 'demo fair' would be given a printed multipage 'map' document with descriptions of each demo. Unlike a structured presentation, the audience (visitors) could wander, at their leisure between demos, picking and choosing the demos they wanted to see and study. Unlike a structured presentation, visitors (and demonstrators) could sit down and play with the demos, ask questions, make suggestions, and talk amongst themselves - dynamically discussing the merits and drawbacks of various designs in 'real time'.
>
>I would see the 'map' I mentioned above as a multi-page printed document showing the physical location of each demo as well as a brief summary of what is significant about each demonstration and/or demonstrator, i.e. user interface, performance techiques, data volumes, simultaneous users, core technologies (MSDE, internet, WSH, ActiveX, MS Agent, etc.). In addition to including application summaries in the map document, I would also suggest that demonstrators be given the opportunity to solict specific types of feedback regarding their application, i.e. need advice/feedback on how intuitive this interface or workflow is or what are your thoughts on my architecture for handling different backends, etc. The feedback soliction information would allow visitors with specific expertise (or similar questions themselves) an ability to efficiently map out which demonstrations they wished to visit.
>
>The other advantage of producing a 'map' document is that it would give the organizers a way to cluster similar demos near one another, i.e. all demos focusing on user interface in one area/room, all demos focusing on internet solutions or reporting techniques in another area/room, all demos requesting a similar type of feedback, etc. IMHO, I think that there would be significant value to proactively clustering similar demos together in the same area.
>
>Since many application demos will be demonstrating a variety of techniques, technologies and optionally solicting specific advice (i.e. an internet demo may also feature cool reporting and user interface techniques), I would see map documents offering an index that cross-referenced demo attributes/feedback requests (based on a limited set of pre-defined descriptors) so that a person interested in specific topics could identify the appropriate demos to visit regardless of a demo's primary classification or physical location. (A bonus would be pre-conference access to the downloadable table(s) containing the information used to generate the map document so that visitors could use this information for planning their itineraries).
>
>To cover the cost of the room and the printing of the multi-page 'demo map and summary' document, demonstrators would be charged for the priviledge of demonstrating with premium fees being charged for access to the very limited supply of AC outlets for demonstrators that wanted to use a large screen monitor and/or printer. Vendors could also be given an opportunity to sponsor specific rooms (i.e. a reporting room, a SQL Server room, etc.) and/or purchase advertisements inserted into the multi-page 'demo map and summary' document. Another idea might be to run this effort on a cost plus basis with the additional funds being used to help promote VFP at the college and international level.
>
>Other ideas:
>
>- Have the demo fair open every evening - including the night before the conference opens and the last night of the conference (don't make this a one day affair?)
>
>- Keep the room open as late as possible - 11pm seems way too early to close down
>
>- Have cash bars available(!)
>
>In summary: Devcon gatherings are great. But I believe they can be improved by offering more *participatory* events vs. the standard sit-on-your ass for hours type of formal/passive presentations. In general, the formal presentations are great. But, by their very nature, these formal presentations are one-way affairs filled with theory vs. hands on practice.
>
>*** Key point: How many people (besides myself) have longed to see and feel(!) the actual applications the presenters talk about. The ability to see and feel(!) the applications created by the leaders/masters in our field ... (in no particular order) Tamor, Strahl, Markus, Black, Kamerek, Hennig, Hentzen, Leafe, Flash/GoAmerica), etc. as well the dozens of VFP MVP's ... wow, this in and of itself would be worth the price of a Devcon!!!!!!!!
>
>One of the great success stories behind VFP is the VFP community itself. The UT, Wiki, Profox, Foxshare, etc. are wonderful examples of the exciting, dynamic community we've become. Having a ton of VPF users together in the same place, sitting passively on their ass for the majority of Devcon like events, seems almost criminal. An organized demo fair that offers people an opportunity to actively participate, observe and learn and share experiences and feedback in a somewhat structured environment (without the noise, smoke and general chaos of a conventional bar) seems like a natural form of evolution for Devcon events and the VFP community in general.
>
>Regards,
>Malcolm
>
>PS: You're doing a great job. Thank you!
>
>
>- Optionally charge a reasonable fee for table rental with the collected funds going to support the promotion of VFP at colleges and abroad (books, software, etc.). An extension of this idea would be to charge a more hefty fee for demonstrators that want the luxery of a very limited set of AC outlets for their laptop and/or a large screen monitor.
>
>
>
>>>Personally, I think many people might benefit just as much from attending a full day of well prepared demos (where one could walk around and sample the goods) as they would from attending a full day's worth of formal sessions. Perhaps this is a concept that some of the VFP user groups might want to pilot??? (I'm going to suggest such a 'demo day' to the newly launched Central NJ MS Developers group)
>>
>>How about the idea of having a bonus session evening at DevCon next September in Flordia where the entire evening is "show cases" of developer/company case studies using VFP? Rather than an execllence awards, have a "VFP application showcase" bonus session, maybe from 7pm-11pm, having a developer or team showing a great application/solution using VFP 7.0 for 25 minutes (5 minute break, time limit strickly enforced to be sure all apps can be shown). This would allow 8 show case demos, and then we could write about each and post it online also, then get some news going about it summarizing the event. This is something I'm thinking about seriously already, this thread seems to validate it.