DevCon 2007 - What did ya all think?

[Rich R]

Hats off to Filemaker and Advisor for all their hard work to produce a great devcon this year! This was only my second one but I felt it was extremely helpful not only education-wise but to meet so many other great people who live in our world. Thanks to the instructors who put a lot of time and effort into creating the content this year!

That being said...I was wondering what you all thought of this year's devcon 07?

Some thoughts I had on both the conference content and other aspects...

Class Content and Flow

- The class descriptions weren't always representative of the class content. I know with the late release of v.9 - some things would change but I found a lack of uniformity and suggested pre-requisites to be confusing when you're trying to select the best class for the time slot.

- Expanding on that - perhaps some basic pre-requisite knowledge in the binder for each class would help. For example - a class I took really required you to understand the separation model - which some of my classmates were not aware of, and it made it more difficult for them.

- Class Format... it would be helpful if instructors included their "rules" at the beginning of class like taking questions (hold till end, raise hand, use the mic, whatever - just state them at the start) and the best classes I thought included up front an "agenda" slide specifically stating what would be covered. I liked Bill Heizer's class, where he listed his agenda, was real clear and said if this isnt what you expect - it's cool if you want to leave and check out another class. About 15 people left which meant those 15 people probably found a class more in tune with their expectations.

- Registration... why couldn't we in the filemaker community write a simple great program to help those folks at the registration desk?! Seems kinda odd to do it manually when it slows the process down.

Workshops

- This was the weakest link of the whole convention imo and deserves it's own topic probably. This is nothing to do with the folks who gave the talks - but maybe the expectations were wrong. If space allows, why not just expand the rooms and treat these as additional classes? I've been to conferences where they have smaller breakout sessions or round tables - and it seems that these "workshops" were trying to fill a niche similar to that but were unable to. Not sure what to do about this.

Location

I've never been to Phoenix DevCon but thank god it's moving west from Orlando. I found for the most part the JW Marriott in Orlando to be a nice place and the food was good. But the location is really difficult on those folks who can't afford to eat at the restaurants/room service before or after the conference. The nearest convenience store is pretty far by foot in the humidity. I would like to see more organized activities for folks at night after the conference - but maybe that should be up to the attendees to help organize.

Anyway - sorry for long post but I wanted to get your opinions on some of these things!

Edited August 11, 2007 by Guest

[iMarcW]

Do we know when/where the next DevCon is? I haven't been to one yet but I hope to someday.

Our org does several national conventions a year with thousands of attendees, so I got a good laugh out of the fact that they were checking people in manually--at a FileMaker conference! We started using our FM databases for this about 3-4 years ago, and it probably shaves 30 seconds off the time we spend on each customer. Not that their solution would necessarily be FileMaker-based... they have Access, SQL, Oracle, etc. Advisor mags too.

[Rich R]

DevCon 2008 will be held in Phoenix AZ in mid july.

[Brian C]

I really liked Devcon this year It was a lot of fun and I learned quite a bit this time around. I think I learned more about PHP this year than I did last year. There was a lot of great stuff!

Many of us from FM Forums as well as FileMaker employees agreed on many of the shortcomings of this year's Devcon. I spent a lot of time talking with FileMaker employees, FM Forums members and other developers who attended the classes and Rich's points are shared by most. In the end, I think that as long as FM Advisor and FMI get a little more specific on their guidelines for course descriptions, it will help things a lot. It would also be helpful if they make sure that a standard structure is followed for Q&A by the instructors as Rich suggests. Lastly, instructors just need to make sure they practice their material prior to holding the class and they need to do it in front of other people who can point out some of their weak points and maybe make some suggestions as to what questions they may encounter. Most of the instructors really knew their stuff, but some were taken a little off guard by some of the questions that were asked.

This year was by far better than some of the past years. But there is always room for improvement. Just as we will never be perfect developers, neither will we always be perfect instructors. It just takes practice and experience.

All this aside, Devcon was worth every penny. If you have ever wondered if attending Devcon would be worth it, go. It is worth it. You will not regret going. There are so many knowledgeable people, and so many resources that you just cannot go wrong.

Mr Vodka, Ender, Rich and myself had a lot of fun this year and I look forward to seeing everyone at the next devcon in Arizona in July 2008.

[Ender]

Hey guys!

Ya, good stuff this year. The whole PHP thing was demystified for me, I got a good overview of Server 9, and I learned how some of the new features of FileMaker Pro 9 can be employed to do some really cool stuff. I also got the inspiration I was hoping for on how to make a more versatile reporting module. These are exactly what I was looking to get out of the workshops.

I also met up with several of you guys, and got reacquainted with developers from DevCons past. It's fun to see the faces behind the names, and even more fun after a few drinks.

Getting to meet such a variety of FileMaker developers from so many different environments is great too. The level of expertise people have is impressive.

As to thoughts for next year; I'm not worried. The Marriott and Advisor do a great job of coordinating events. If they pay attention to the evaluations, the workshops will continue to improve. My Big Idea on workshops would just be to have more simultaneous sessions. This would allow for more sessions focused to different skill levels, and more repeat sessions on hot topics.

[mr_vodka]

Welcome to FM Forums Rich. Nice to finally see you here. :(

[mr_vodka]

Definately a better description of the courses would have helped a lot of people. They really should set it up like college courses / recitations (workshops). Each course should be set up with a syllabus and a pre-requisite section if needed. I found that some novices/intermediate attendees were confused with certain sections and advanced developers were bored or felt slowed down by some of the questions from novices in other sections. Simply listing each course as fundmentals, intermidate, advanced, and expert was not as helpful. Perhaps a star rating system of difficulty could be used.

Chris Moyer had a very good description of his class. I think that all classes should has a similar consistency.

The thing is that by the time you realized that the section was not what you thought it would be, it was pretty much too late to go to another section. So, if they provided a thorough description / expectation for each course, I think that it would help with the overall process.

Other than that, thank you to all presenters, FMI staff, and Advisor.

[Ender]

Hey, I just noticed my conference backpack says "FileMaker Developer Conference 2006". How weird is that? Is Orlando a year behind Minneapolis, or is it just me?

[mr_vodka]

Haha. You wish it was in Minneapolis Mike. Tell Advisor to have it at Legoland at the Malls of Americas.

[Tori Mitchell]

My goodness... where to start on DevCon 2007.

FMI and Advisor did a bang up job with the whole, "Hey, there's a new version out a couple of weeks before FDC... I guess we should cover that!" aspect of the show. Florida in early august isn't really all that much fun but OTOH, I don't really remember many times that I was outside much during the run of the Conference.

Workshops were indeed a mixed bag and I thought that the 'levels' of the sessions were sometimes wildly out of sync with the overall level that's expected. I don't think that there were more than a couple of sessions that really lived up to the 'expert' level and the 'advanced' label was pretty abused.

The session content though, regardless of the level on the chart/door was generally *extremely* high quality. I enjoyed almost every session that I was in.

I also really liked the showcase because, seriously, is there anyone who attended FDC that wasn't awash in twitter over the FMDataGuard? Personally, I really liked the chance to discover new and interesting ways that I can short-cut my dev cycle on larger modules there.

A great-big off-forum *thank you* to FMPug for the Everything Reference. It's awesome and I think that I can honestly say that I like it better than the posters from 2006.

Food. Wow. That's all that I can say about that.

Phoenix is a great place from what I hear and at least we'll be hot and dry instead of hot and humid.

Lookforward to seeing everyone at 2008!

P.S. Vodka, Ender. You two rock. Seriously.

P.P.S - I suppose that I'll go ahead and break radio silence now.

Edited August 14, 2007 by Guest

[Rich R]

Oh - one thing I forgot to mention was the Sunday sessions which you paid extra to attend... Nearly everyone I spoke to who went to one of the sessions didn't feel that there was much more value added outside of a hand-out then the regular sessions.

I took the XML class on Sunday and I felt bad for our speaker who was from Down Under and suffering from jet lag - but I had a really hard time finding the justification for the added cost for the class.

EDIT: my bag says the right year - must be a Minnesota thing Ender :B

Edited August 14, 2007 by Guest

[Tori Mitchell]

As for the Sunday Sessions:

Took the Kirk Bowman PHP class and the John Mark Osborne.

Bowman's class was good but given the highly technical issues of setting up FMS 9 in loopback prior to the class and whatnot, I felt that it was a bit off kilter from the get go. There really should have been a little more content for those who came with a pre-understanding of the PHP language as was stated on the conference announcement.

JMO - Well, John's class was great if repetitive. But that was the point. Took us through a ton of techniques for scripting problem solving which shook some of my deepest pre-wired responses. I'm a little hazy on the complete details of the class though because a bunch of it was lost in the bits for me. I'll have to review the handouts and look at the slides and whatnot.

Another thing to mention was the Project Management seminar offered on Friday. I come from a strong project management background and , (Vodka, don't kill me for this), this class taught me stuff that I didn't even know that I didn't know. It was superb for some of the models that it gave and the two presenters were top-notch. It was a little heavy in theory and some of the techniques seemed like they could have has some more explanation but overall, terrific!

[Rich R]

That's good to hear about the project management class. I've always wanted to take that but combined with the conference fee and additional classes on Sunday - it would be cost prohibitive to me.

For any additional sessions that require additional fees, I think there should be a lot more detail provided and detailed prerequisites.

[mr_vodka]

I thought that the PM post class was great. Sure it was in Siberia, but overall it was pretty good. I just thought it needed a few more quick breaks.

[Tori Mitchell]

Bah!

If we'd had all those breaks we'd never have gotten through it all. Heck, I'm *still* wading through all that class put in my head.

[Ocean West]

wouldn't it be cool if you could purchase the sessions via download or on DVD? :

[Steven Cappiello]

I don't think Phoenix will be any better in terms of accessibility to cheap food.

[fmlawl]

I feel that this years DevCon was a bit lacking in the expert and advanced categories. I think it was more geared towards the newbies to FileMaker, and found the PHP sessions exceptionally lacking in content.

I don't think Phoenix will be any better in terms of accessibility to cheap food.

Actually the Phoenix Marriott has a better location, there are a good bit of social places just across the street! :

EDIT: By the way, the best highlights of DevCon was FM PUG and FMForums booth with the pwnage reference guides! Thanks a lot guys!!! <3

Edited August 27, 2007 by Guest

[nick_jp]

Just curiously, is there anything like this internationally?

[Rich R]

I heard mention of some sort of FM dev con type events in Europe - but can't remember where I heard it. Maybe some of our overseas friends can chime in here (well overseas to us lol)

[Søren Dyhr]

I heard mention of some sort of FM dev con type events in Europe - but can't remember where I heard it. Maybe some of our overseas friends can chime in here (well overseas to us lol)

http://www.fmpro.org/news/282748263523/conference-2007-3rd-french-speaking-filemaker-conference.html

and

http://www.devconscandinavia.dk/danmark/index.html

--sd

[bkamlin]

Yes! DevCon 2008 is earlier in the summer and its in Phoenix again. I was at DevCon in Phoenix in 2005 and had a great time. The resort there is amazing. I'll be there.