Hi All,

Although your concerns regarding spam are legitimate to a point I think some of you may be a bit too sensitive to your own eMail space.

I have never met Russ in person, however we have talked on the phone numerous times on other matters. But I can tell you straight up that Russ is a high quality individual and a great benefactor of the Visual FoxPro programming language and community.

His devotion to the language runs deeper than most of you will ever know or achieve.

As you may know, FoxPro is a struggling language. The rumors of its demise are pervasive. Negativity about its future is rampant. Even in these hallowed halls. If you are a devoted Visual FoxPro programmer like me, you'd probably like to see FoxPro around in the future. To make that a reality we (as a community) need to welcome and support anything that supports FoxPro (which Russ's developer conference certainly does).

You may not know this, but throwing a wing ding like a dev conference is a high-risk endeavor. Russ will likely spend tens of thousands of dollars and may lose money or just break even for years to build a conference like his. He's not doing it for the big bucks I can assure you. If he breaks even it will be a miracle. Russ is doing the conference because he cares about Visual FoxPro. The language and the community.

Russ needs your support so that he can do what he can to expand the acceptance and knowledge about Visual FoxPro. I recommend that when you get one of his eMails, forward it to a friend or acquaintance in the IT community who may not know about Visual FoxPro and the great things that are going on with it.

I believe Russ's eMails are not the problem. They are the solution!

Thanks for letting me share my thoughts with you.

Sincerely,

Hugh Winters