Speaking again

It has been a few years since I've had the pleasure of speaking at a Developers Conference. I'm excited to be on the schedule for this year's FoxForward in Atlanta, September 07 -09.

I'll be presenting Map Your Data: Using MapPoint and Visual FoxPro Together, an updated version of the MapPoint and Visual FoxPro session that I presented at the GLGDW and FoxEssentials conferences in 2002 and 2003.

I'm looking forward to speaking again and I'm looking forward to some of the other sessions - particulary Alan Stevens' session on Test Driven Development and Tod McKenna's session on Data Warehousing. Some other interesting topics include VFP and MySQL and Subversion and VFP.

There are a couple other sessions that I've already seen that could alone justify attending this conference inluding sessions by Bo Durban, Dave Bernard and Ed Leafe.

I didn't make it to last year's inaugural FoxForward conference and I'm looking forward to checking it out.

If you can't make Georgia in September, there is always Southwest Fox in Mesa, AZ in October. I've attended this conference since it started and 2007 looks to carry on a fine tradition.

Koyaanisqatsi - life out of balance

I just read about a 1982 film called Koyaanisqatsi which is a Hopi word meaning "life out of balance." The film sounds interesting enough - and the music is by Philip Glass, which is a plus for me.

I don't know what the Hopi word for synchronicity is, but the timing was perfect: I've been very earnestly planning on having a summer that is more about spending quality time with family and friends than it is about checking things off lists. In my case, very little gets checked off and suddenly the summer is gone without having enjoyed it enough or having accomplished the tasks that kept me from enjoying it.

Today, I checked out Guy Kawasaki's blog for the first time in a long time. On April 16th, his post mentioned a fascinating Washington Post article called "Pearls Before Breakfast" which was about Joshua Bell posing as a street musician in a busy Washington DC Metro station. It is a long article, but well worth the read.


I'm often moved by live performances and enjoy a good street performer as much as I do a formal production.

Some of my favorite vacation memories involve street performers on Mallory Square in Key West, on a side street in Old Town Alexandria and in the middle of Quincy Market - not to mention some great performances by Robert Bradley right here in our own Eastern Market.

Once in Alexandria, my wife and I stumbled across Jamey Turner playing a Glass Harp. This guy had played on The Tonight Show, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, etc - and here he was playing on the street! (I even found a clip of him on You Tube.)

This past weekend, I took my sons to see a grade-school production of Peter Pan. I had to keep reminding myself it was only grade-school because it was just that good. The young 8th-grader that played Peter was phenomenal.

Before going, I was thinking that I probably had "more important" things to do than attend this musical. My second-grader really wanted to go and we did indeed need a little balance in our lives - both of us. My 4 year-old didn't want to go at first. (Maybe he had more important things on his schedule, too.) Once we told him that the characters were really going to fly, he was sold. So the three of us went and saw an utterly amazing performance - by 4th - 8th graders.

The Washington Post article came my way at a good time. I hope I can keep enough balance in my life to notice when Joshua Bell is playing 10 feet away from me.

Joining the fray

At long last I've decided to start my own blog.

Long before the dawn of the Internet, I had this idea to "publish" all the random thoughts that ran through my mind. I envisioned a book of paragraphs and pages unrelated to each other except for that they came from my mind. I repeatedly convinced myself that there would be little to no interest in reading what I had to say.

Yet, today, I find myself reading just those random thoughts from friends, colleagues and complete strangers.

So, here I am, joining the fray - thinking that every once in a while I might have something to say that might be of interest to others. I guess we'll find out.