2009 FileMaker DevCon Recap – Video

Here’s the DevCon Recap video stream.  It’s close to 80 minutes long, so you may want to have it running in the background while you work.  Jason Mundok, Alan Deffenderfer, David Hollander and Bryant Minard present.  We had about 20 people in person and 7 watching the live stream.  You can blame the shaky cam late in the video on me trying to do smooth panning by holding my MacBook over my head and pointing iSight while watching the feed on another laptop.  Yes, lame.  But at least not a FAIL.

Enjoy!

Colin

more about “2009 FileMaker DevCon Recap – Video“, posted with vodpod

Join us TONIGHT; DevCon Recap and Roundtable Discussion – we’ll be streaming to web too.

As posted here, we’ll be meeting tonight at 6 PM.  Jason Mundok, David Hollander and Alan Deffenderfer will be discussing what they learned at DevCon, in a roundtable discussion format.  Not a meeting to miss if you didn’t make it to DevCon.

As with the July meeting, we’ll stream to uStream:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/philly-filemaker-user-group

We hope you can join us, in person or otherwise.

Join us August 25th: DevCon Recap

Highlights:
____________________________________________________________________
- 2009 FileMaker Developer Conference RECAP
—Jason Mundok moderates
- Stump the Chump experts
- About the Philadelphia FileMaker User Group
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Miscellaneous FileMaker DevCon links

FileMaker on FaceBook
FileMaker’s FB DevCon page here
Opening video from The Branding Agency here, click on HD video tab

Tim Dietrich covers the DevCon PHP User Group meeting here

Jason Mundok of IT Solutions Inc interviews Tim Neudecker here

Jason Mundok of IT Solutions Inc interviews Adam Aronson here

Chris Kubica’s blogging the DevCon here, and posted a pre-opening session video here

Rick Stringer’s blogging the DevCon: Early arrival here, precon and tweetup  here

#fmdevcon hashtag on Twitter

@phillyfilemaker on Twitter (will be tweeting links to blog entries)

Adatosol will be podcasting; you can subscribe to the podcasts in iTunes or look for them here.

FileMakerTalk (Matt Navarre & Matt Petrowsky) are posting podcast updates here

Five Minutes with Philly Filemaker: Jason Mundok interviews Adam Aronson

Jason’s at the 2009 FileMaker DevCon now, and over the next few days he’ll be interviewing people about their experiences at DevCon.  The miniseries is called “Five Minutes with Philly FileMaker”, and here’s the first installment, an interview with Adam Aronson of Full City Consulting, a Red Hook NY based firm that covers the NJ/NY/CT tristate area.  Full City Consulting also runs two of our neighbor user groups - the NJ FileMaker Pro User’s Group and the Upstate New York FileMaker Developer’s Group.

More to come…I’ll post an interview with Tim Neudecker when I get into the IT Solutions office, and Jason’s got a laundry list of folks to snag, so watch this space.

Enjoy!

PhillyFileMaker Blogging from DevCon

The FileMaker Developers Conference 2009 in San Francisco is fast approaching – PreCon sessions start Thursday August 13 at 8 AM, and the official opening session is 6:30 PM that night!

Since the release of FileMaker 10 in January this year, best practices for a number of techniques, practices and design patterns have changed drastically due to script triggers, the toolbar, and myriad other new features, and many of the scheduled sessions reflect this change in the FileMaker programming landscape.

So the 2009 DevCon promises to be an exciting time…and the Philly FileMaker User Group will be there.  Jason Mundok of IT Solutions will be on the spot and posting to this blog whenever he can pry himself away from a session.  We have some ideas in mind that are still in the works, so watch this space on Friday, Saturday and Sunday!

Other resources for following what’s going on at DevCon this year:

NEW: Chris Kubica’s blogging the DevCon here

NEW: Rick Stringer’s blogging the DevCon here

#fmdevcon hashtag on Twitter

@phillyfilemaker on Twitter (will be tweeting links to blog entries)

Adatosol will be podcasting; you can subscribe to the podcasts in iTunes or look for them here.

There’s no official word from FileMakerTalk (Matt Navarre & Matt Petrowsky) that I know of, but I’m expecting them to podcast as well.

If you’re lucky enough to be at DevCon, then FMPug’s DevCon Scheduler is indispensable and FREE; find it here.  You can not only view session schedules; you can see how many people plan to go to each session – know which ones are popular, and which ones you’re likely to find a good seat in.  As a bonus, it includes a Friend Locator and a Message Board!

Finally, FMPug is also offering sponsor discounts on a slew of products during DevCon, whether you’re at DevCon or not. All that’s required is that you be an FMPug member in good standing.  Go here.

- Colin

7/28 Design Critique Meeting Recap

Well, our first attempt to stream our meetings was a resounding success-slash-FAIL.  We had about 16 actual-real-life people in the room and a consistent remote viewership of about a dozen people (and about 20 all told over the course of the evening), with lots of chat feedback from the remote audience.  All of that was great.  But when I went to save the recording: FAIL.  Too embarrassing to go into detail (let’s just say I thought that CANCEL button meant, er, something else).  Better luck next time, I suppose, though I’m disappointed.

We’ll be trying a few things differently next go round. Aside from not breaking things, we’ll look into better views of the presentations themselves, rather than a shot of a darkened room with blobs moving around.  Options include picture-in-picture or two simultaneous streams, or dumping the “room view” altogether when the presentation is heavily projection-driven.

In any case:  the meeting itself was very informative and dynamic, with lots of participation from the in-person audience.

More on the PauseOnError FileMaker UnConference…

I mentioned earlier here that there’s something very interesting being organized up on NYC – a participant-driven, seat-of-the-pants UnConference on all things FileMaker, called PauseOnError.  It runs July 16-17 – which means it starts tomorrow.

Since Ernest Koe, John Sindelar and Andy Gaunt started glomming this together less than three weeks ago, it’s blossomed into a very real entity, with over 20 presentation sessions and now 60 RSVPs.  Some of the sessions may spill out to local coffee shops, or even to Madison Square Park, weather depending.

And now there’s talk of spawning the idea in Portland and London in 2010.

All in all it’s a testament to the power of social media (which until recently I reserved some skepticism for) and to community-driven efforts (which I’ve always believed in full-on).  I’ll be blogging/tweeting (@phillyfilemaker) to a certain extent on Thursday to provide some basic reporting of the event, and I’ll try to write a more comprehensive recap when I get back.

There are still plenty of open slots in the schedule for presenting (the schedule’s been broken into three session tracks), so if you have some crazy idea you want to toss out in front of your peers, now would be a good time to head up (or down, or across) to Manhattan.

Seriously – if you’ve got a light schedule tomorrow and/or Friday, get to the Ace Hotel now.

FileMaker 10.0v3 Released today

FileMaker 10.0v3 (mac/pc) is available for download as of today.  Also made available is a new Server rev (10.0v2) for Macs.

It is HIGHLY recommended you apply this update.

The v3 updater addresses a number of minor issues, as well as two issues with the recovery process to make the process more reliable.  One issue was a pretty esoteric bug that only surfaced when hosting a recovered file whose original file referenced custom functions in auto-enter calcs – if you’ve never hosted a recovered file, this one would have been invisible to you.  Of course, you know you SHOULDN’T host recovered files.  Right?

Also worth noting is that the .DBF import/export format has been added back in – it was removed with 10.0v1, along with a number of other formats that went way back to the early days of FileMaker (anyone EVER import an SYLK file?  DIF? Anyone?).  In the case of .DBF files, however, there were a number of people still integrating with other systems that used the .DBF file format; they asked to pretty please have this format back, and FileMaker apparently heard.

The complete changelog is here.

Mark Your Calendar for an Exclusive FREE FileMaker Seminar

Note to user group members: this is a FREE seminar that IT Solutions Consulting is presenting in early August.  It’s conveniently located next to 30th St. Station downtown, and covers some great topics for making your solution even more indispensable to your organization – through dashboards, document management, reporting and so on.

Sign up today, you won’t regret it. – Colin

Mark Your Calendar for an Exclusive FileMaker Seminar

August 6th, 9:30am at the Hub Cira Centre

At IT Solutions, we’ve been working on ways to help our clients make better use of their existing FileMaker systems for faster access to information, resulting in better data driven decisions. We’ve been helping clients utilize some of the exciting new features in FileMaker 10, but even if you’re using a previous version, there are still plenty of ways to maximize your data access efficiency. We’re eager to share this knowledge at an August 6th client seminar dedicated exclusively to working with FileMaker.

Better Data, Better Decisions with FileMaker will be an information-packed ½ day seminar at the new Hub Cira Centre, conveniently located right next to Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station. The keynote speaker for the August 6th session will be IT Solutions’ Certified FileMaker Developer/Trainer Jason Mundok and topics will include:

• Using FileMaker 10 including dynamic reports, saved finds and what it takes to upgrade
• File Server Integration that links FileMaker records to files and folders on your file server
• Dashboards that bring business intelligence functions and techniques to FileMaker
• Q&A time for all of your FileMaker inquiries 

Better Data, Better Decisions with FileMaker will be held from 9:30 am to noon, with registration starting at 9:00 am, followed immediately by a Starr Events-catered buffet lunch at the Hub. Jason and fellow ITS FileMaker developers will be available during this time to answer additional questions and provide more details on any and all FileMaker topics. Space for the complimentary seminar is very limited so sign up as soon as possible to reserve your seat. For more information or to register, contact Jim Higgins or 215-886-7166 x 113.

We look forward to seeing you in August!