I wasn't there this year due to lack of training funds. However, I share your views based upon your description of events (past and present).

Tracy

>At my first DevCon i was greatly surprised to see all the great new things available in VFP 8. I was about to leave has a happy man, i only had one session left to attend: The DevCon Q & A Session.
>
>It started real good, with a very productive video :), but suddenly people started to shoot at the fox team with what i consider almost insults. Blaming the fox team for not marketing FoxPro.
>
>One guy even pushed the limit to say he lost a customer because his customer was told FoxPro could not handle 50k record... Common !!! The person who said that should not be in the software development business.
>
>Well Wait a minute..
>
>While FoxPro has a new version in Beta, Microsoft kill VB. I believe Ken Levy and his team did a extremely good marketing job on his bosses. He convinced them (so far) not to kill the Fox.
>
>Yes you got me right!, They kill VB... The new VB.Net only have the name left, they should of called it NewLanguageWithSomeVBSyntax.Net.
>
>So MS killed VB, while VFP is still alive and kicking, Is this good internal marketing from Ken or not?
>
>What if they kill the Fox as they did with VB ? Well the world will still be flat, and MS will not come to you asking to give them back your copy of VFP 8, 9 or 10. You can still use it, like VB'ers still use VB6 while they learn the new language.
>
>Don't get me wrong here, it would be a shame if they kill it and i will be greatly affected by it. I have been programming the fox since FoxBase+ And VFP is still the language i use every day. The language not the database.
>
>Can the fox teem market VFP ? NO.. And any business oriented person can understand this. MS is currently struggling with the whole .NET marketing. Do they need competition from one of there own division? Well dah! how much common sense does it take to understand this ?
>
>What should the marketing say: VFP 8.0 The most serious alternative to .NET !!!
>
>Hopefully i will assist to other DevCon, but maybe i'll skip the Q & A session.
>
>Thank to Ken Levy and all of the Fox Teem and all the speakers to great DevCon.