Evan;

I see Steve's points from his statements in a different light:

"For years I've argued with people about the rate at which VFP is dying (or not). Some delusionary pronouncements I've read say, in effect, that a sign that VFP is dying is the notable decrease in conference attendance. Ignoring for a moment that the aggregate yearly VFP conference attendance isn't down much (see VFPConferenceAttendance), lets look at the biggest apparent loser, Advisor Devcons, and how it stacks against the tech industry conference barometer: Fall Comdex, held in Las Vegas each November."


Yes, Steve states, "I've said many times that the sinking of the tech industry as a whole is not to be confused with the sinking of FoxPro, that a rising or falling tide affects all boats, and that I see no evidence whatsoever that, in spite of Microsoft's insipid attitude towards VFP, that VFP is faring any worse than the industry as a whole".

So we have several topics.
1. "the rate at which VFP is dying (or not)"
2. "a sign that VFP is dying is the notable decrease in conference attendance"
3. "yearly VFP conference attendance isn't down much"
4. "the sinking of the tech industry as a whole"
5. "I see no evidence whatsoever that, in spite of Microsoft's insipid attitude towards VFP, that VFP is faring any worse than the industry as a whole"

He then goes on to "prove his points" by comparing Devcon and Comdex. Several of us have suggested in this thread that such a comparison does not appear to be valid as it is a snapshot of time rather than a trend. To obtain a trend going back to January 1995 would be a good ruler. Why? Devcon – VFP 3.0 Beta – and San Diego come to mind. Why use Comdex as a comparison point?

Even Ross Perot had better presentations to establish his viewpoints. The points above are from an emotional point of view and do not take facts that can be weighed into account. Facts are dismissed and distorted to allow Steve to “prove his points”. If the method to obtain the “proof” was valid then the “solution” would be correct. Trying to plead your case with emotion does not gain acceptance with everyone.

Had Steve stated, "I feel that..." rather then giving this comparison as the soultion then I could accept his statement as being his own and not the "answer".

Tom




>I think Steve's point is that spending in IT in general is down. Not to dismiss your point at all.
>
>>hummph. Interesting analysis. Wonderful thing about statistics is that you can make them say whatever you want (glass is half full, or half empty, or the glass is simply twice as big as needs to be, etc)....anyway perhaps a more practical approach to this would be to compare the attendance of the VFP DevCon with that of VB or something...NOT a convention made primairly for hardware. So anyone have any stats on the VB DevCon attendence or perhaps a VC++ or Delphi one?
>>
>>
>>>Wikiwatch: VFP Conference Crash Myth
>>>http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~VFPConferenceCrashMyth
>>>
>>>Thanks to Tom for bringing up Steve's analysis of Advisor's attendance figures.