See the best of the FileMaker Design world, from your office chair, in the

FILEMAKER DESIGN CAUCUS

inaugural session Feb '06

hosted by SmallCo.net

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What is the FileMaker Design Caucus?

The Design Caucus is the successor to the 'Share Your Solution' sessions that SmallCo has offered at past FileMaker DevCons. But it is a bit more. The Caucus is a chance to share your best work with respected peers, and to discuss the emerging best practices in FileMaker design. Because the Design Caucus will be a recurring event, we will build a consensus on design issues over time.

We will meet in SmallCo's Breeze conference room, which offers screensharing, file sharing, audio and video chat. The conference room requires the free Flash Player. Audio and video chat require broadband access.

Who can join?

Admission is free, and registration is limited to 30 members to start. Caucus members must be experienced FileMaker developers doing current database and solution design in FileMaker Pro. Experience will be judged by ONE of the following:

Alumni status from the SmallCo Design Master Class

FileMaker Certification and one application screenshot

Three solution screenshots with a one-paragraph solution summary for each solution.

For the first caucus, admission will be at the sole discretion of SmallCo. Please send your applications to [email protected].

What will occur at the caucus?

The first caucus will show the work of six caucus members, selected by SmallCo staff. After the first caucus, the content will be determined by the consensus of the members. If you are interested in having your work discussed, please submit three screenshots of a SINGLE solution with a one-paragraph summary of the solution, and include your phone number as well.

We will discuss every aspect of FileMaker design, while always beginning from business cases and user experience. The first questions in each discussion are "Who are the people who will use this tool, and what do they hope to accomplish?"

When will the first caucus take place?

We propose to host the first Design Caucus in the first week of February. Given the possible time zones of attendees, choosing a time and day will be our first challenge!

Who is SmallCo?

SmallCo is a design consultancy with offices in Miami, Orlando and New York. SmallCo clients include Fidelity Investments, Harvard University, The New York Public Library, SFMOMA, Time Inc. and other small and large companies in North America and Europe. FileMaker Inc. selected SmallCo to design the starter databases that ship in the box with FileMaker Pro. SmallCo is one of the original FileMaker Partners.

SmallCo is a Design Partner with development teams worldwide, using FileMaker Pro as well as web solutions built with Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, ColdFusion, PHP, Flash and Flex.

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Albert Harum-Alvarez

Small Company

http://smallco.net

http://smallco.net/classes

http://pressfile.com

US & Canada: 877 66-Small (877 667-6255)

UK: +44 (0)20 7096 1325

International: +1 (305) 273-6096

:woohoo:

Sounds like fun :

I've heard from a number of people backchannel with questions about the Design Caucus, and I wanted to clarify a few things--as well as give you a status report.

* We have not yet begun going through the inbound posts, so if you sent an email to [email protected] you will not have heard back from us yet.

* The Caucus will be hosted on the web. The SmallCo Breeze conference room is a pleasant 'place'. Imagine WebEx if they had actually employed a designer on the development team!

* We have still not chosen a date. We will do that once we have the members, based upon their schedules. The emails we've received so far are from all around the world.

* We can't say what the chances are of 'getting in', since we haven't yet reviewed the emails. But I'd encourage you not to think of it as a competition, nor is it necessary to submit stunningly beautiful screenshots. Our limit is 30 for the first go-round simply because we don't know how the logistics of a larger group will work, while still supporting true dialog. We will select participants for the first round in the interests of finding a diverse collection of FileMaker work, from various locales, for various purposes.

* The session will NOT be group consulting. It WILL be a chance to talk about the best ways to design FileMaker tools that truly suit their purpose. It should be great fun, and edifying to boot!

Hope this muddies the water a bit... Can't wait to bring the gavel down on the first session!

Albert

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Albert Harum-Alvarez

Small Company

http://smallco.net

http://smallco.net/classes

http://pressfile.com

US & Canada: 877 66-Small (877 667-6255)

UK: +44 (0)20 7096 1325

International: +1 (305) 273-6096

FileMaker Design Caucus invitations sent

Thanks to all who responded to the FileMaker Design Caucus announcement. We have sent out acceptance letters to the first attendees. While we were not able to accept all who responded, we hope that the number of caucus members can be increased in the future.

The first Design Caucus will include the following FileMaker Partners and people you're sure to know (this is a partial list)

Chaim Bacon, productiveit.co.uk

Kirk Bowman, mightydata.com

Simms Brooks, FileMaker, Inc.

Dick Honig, ecxs.com

Barb Levine, microservllc.com

Peter Makin and Colleen Hammersley, Data-Waves.com

Chris Manton, babelfix.com

Matt Petrowsky, Scriptology.com

Susan Prosser, author of FileMaker Pro 8: The Missing Manual

Corn Walker, FileMaker Genius

The first caucus will be held the week of February 6th at a date and time still to be determined. We'll post more information here as the details unfold.

Looking forward to an interesting conversation at the Caucus!

Albert

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Albert Harum-Alvarez

Small Company

http://smallco.net

http://smallco.net/classes

http://pressfile.com

US & Canada: 877 66-Small (877 667-6255)

UK: +44 (0)20 7096 1325

International: +1 (305) 273-6

UPDATE: The FileMaker Design Caucus

The first Design Caucus was held yesterday, and it went better than most of us ever expected. The only problem was the upper limit on attendance. Our apologies to folks who tried to get into the conference room and couldn't. We're looking into that for next time.

Participants from North America, Europe and Australia spent 75 minutes together, sharing screens, discussing solutions, and planning for the next meeting. The audio conferencing was pretty darn good--unlike the dry run the day before--and we're set for another caucus on March 9th. We will attempt to record this next one, so that more people can benefit.

If you'd like to be placed on the mailing list for the next event, please send email to [email protected]. Please forgive us in advance for the lack of a personal response to these emails.

Thanks to all who joined us!

Albert

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Albert Harum-Alvarez

Small Company

http://smallco.net

http://smallco.net/classes

US & Canada: 877 66-Small (877 667-6255)

UK: +44 (0)20 7096 1325

International: +1 (305) 273-6096