>I won't be attending Devcon. If anyone else isn't, I would like to hear your reasons and perhaps I can be consoled a bit. :-)
>
>My Reason:
>There is no budget at our hospital for education. We can spend $100,000 on computer technology, but not a single dollar on education.


My company suffers from schizophrenia. Outwardly, they want to work with FoxPro, but the little voices are telling them "FoxPro is dead. Don't waste your money. Let him learn VB instead. The clients want VB." Ahem. Excuse me, but I thought WE were the developers, and WE make the decisions about what programming environment will work best for a given situation. The best way to promote the viability of FoxPro is to show that companies have a commitment to developing in FoxPro. The best way to do THAT is to allow developers to meet with other like-minded individuals, exchange ideas, and even take a shot at the Monolithsoft people to let our commitment to Fox be known.

On top of things, Microsoft insists on choosing these resort towns to hold a developers conference. You wanna try explaining to your boss "I want you to spend a few thousand dollars (cost of conference, airfare and hotel, plus my regular salary) to send me to Orlando, land of Mickey Mouse, so I can see the same people that I discuss issues with on the Internet. Oh, and I promise that despite the great weather, I will spend all of my time indoors, in meetings or training sessions."

Yaright. Just try telling him it's not a geek's dream vacation. As long as these conferences are setup as the Foxpro Florida Frolics, it's gonna be a real hard sell. I'm not saying we should return to Toledo, but maybe someplace like Charlotte, St. Louis, one of a dozen cities in Texas, or my hometown of Indianapolis would be easier to sell to the training department that this is a BUSINESS trip.

(Don't mean to imply these cities aren't fun; I just have an aversion to a Fox with mouse ears)