Special Report: ConVic '99 Clarion Conference

by Simon Brewer

Published 1999-12-07    Printer-friendly version

The words of Chris Livingstone, head of the Victorian CUG, seem so distant now. When first he mentioned another "ConVic" Clarion conference to me around a year ago, and suggested a fairly out-of-the-way location, I must admit I didn't think it would get off the ground. However, just over three weeks ago, Clarion faithful from around Australia ascended Mt. Buffalo, Victoria for ConVic 99. For those who don't know, Mt. Buffalo is around 300 km (200 miles) north of Melbourne.

This was the second ConVic conference - well, more of a retreat than a conference. A couple of years ago, I first discussed the idea of a regional developers' conference with the guys in my neighbouring state of Victoria. I was pleased to find that they were very keen on staging an event with a technical focus, but unlike traditional Devcons, they were keen to have a "live-in" conference where everyone could really get involved. And so ConVic 98 was born.

ConVic 98 was a great conference. Small by world standards, but brimming with ample Clarion technical detail and buoyed by the presence of Dave Harms, it was a great success. We immediately decided on another and planning began. ConVic 99 was going to be "bigger than Ben Hur" - or so we thought.

You could say we had our fair share of hiccups getting this conference going. We secured and lost not one but two international presenters and that cost us very dearly in time. Many things conspired to make promotion of the conference very low key and we ended up with much less support than we were hoping for. The final figure was 34 attendees (plus several partners), or about 10% of Florida's attendance. In hindsight, I don't think that's too bad for this far-flung corner of the globe, and it was a better turnout per head of population than Florida!

At 1337 metres above sea level (that's around 4450 feet) in a historic wooden chalet, ConVic '99 kicked off mid-afternoon of Friday November 5th. Amongst those gathered were the national Clarion distributor and four of Australia's User Group leaders, one of whom is also a Team TopSpeed member.

The afternoon started well with the world's first public demonstration of Clarion 5.5 Beta by Ray Creighton. I threw in a collection of handy Clarion tips and then it was over to Des Cousens of Master Software to demonstrate his touch-screen Point-Of-Sale system. This system must be seen to be believed. Having taken up Clarion in early 1997, Des and his team have re-defined the term User Interface, the emphasis being fairly and squarely on the word "User." It's no wonder this remarkable system is winning supporters far and wide and Des was not backward in coming forward to tell his fellow Clarioneers how it all worked. Des proved to be somewhat more than an amateur magician during the conference, but there were definitely no smoke & mirrors in his applications!

Fresh back from Florida Devcon, David Blundell and Andrew McPherson were able to fill us in on all the latest Clarion gossip and happenings to round the day off. No matter how much you read, talking to people who were there to soak up the vibe of the event and chat with "the names" can provide a different perspective. It was a great session.

After an easy night of socialising, Saturday did not start with a bang. The fog and rain set in so hard that you literally couldn't see out of the windows, and that's pretty much how it remained for the rest of the day. Fortunately, the action inside was just hotting up and we started off with a great session on multi-dll programming thanks to Bruce Cowan. I threw in some more tips and then it was over to Yogi Loechner.

Yogi needs several paragraphs of his own. His shrink-wrapped package, Quicken QuickPayroll is probably the world's most successful Clarion-written package. Sold as an adjunct to Quicken's popular QuickBooks accounting suite, Yogi reckons he stopped counting "when sales got to 30,000 copies a couple of years ago." Simply put, there is seemingly nothing that Yogi cannot make Clarion do and his product is excellent. Complicated by the fact it must look and act exactly like the parent accounting system, it's a tribute to the incredible versatility of Clarion that it can be done - a real showpiece.

Controversially, Yogi is deliberately one generation of Clarion behind, so the product is actually written in Clarion 4 using legacy templates. That makes the smooth, fast, flicker-free results and the amazing level of features even more remarkable. Given that the product simply must not fail for any reason, his conservatism was understandable. He will soon be moving to Clarion 5 and ABC templates.

Before I leave Yogi, I must mention his end-user reporting tools. Move over TopSpeed and other purveyors of end-user reporting tools: this is simply the Rolls Royce. When asked who'd buy a copy of it if it were available, around 70% of attendees nearly caused themselves an injury thrusting a hand skywards. Now we've just got to convince Yogi to sell it! In fact, and quite seriously, TopSpeed should look at it carefully to replace or enhance Report Writer. It's that good.

Rain washed out the planned outdoor activities but proved a blessing in disguise as it allowed us to slot in some extra impromptu sessions for the afternoon. I kicked off (not again!) with a session on converting Legacy applications to ABC bit by bit. The methodology I demonstrated was very well received, so if I can ever find time, I'll try and get something together for Clarion Magazine. This was followed by various demonstrations of software and rounded off by Des Cousens showing more behind-the-scenes details of his POS applications (still no smoke & mirrors!).

Coming a close second to Australia winning the Rugby Union world cup, The Great ConVic Trivia Quiz was the highlight of the evening, with five teams vying for the major prize of a box of chocolates. Well, there were actually six teams, named for: Cowboy, Ferret, Barrington, Bayliss, Eggen and Rafalco, but Barrington symbolically stepped down before we got underway. A fantastic night was had by all, but I won't publish the final results lest they offend the personalities in question.

On Sunday morning we were greeted with a clear sky and panoramic views of the plains way below us. While the 250 metre (850 foot) waterfall thundered away close by, we thundered into more great Clarion presentations. Owen Brunker was first off the mark with an overview of the Internet, the history, the protocols, and how simple add-ons, such as Catalyst Socket Tools, could be utilised with Clarion to gain access. He demonstrated an NNTP-based application to read the TopSpeed newsgroups. His application contained an excellent abstraction on the implementation of ActiveX controls, particularly Catalyst, and he shared this abstraction with everyone.

Yogi chimed in for another show-stopping demonstration, this time on template writing. I didn't mention above that Yogi is as entertaining as his demonstrations are interesting. Needless to say, the crowd was riveted. After other shorter demonstration sessions, David Blundell presented a look at some of the best third-party add-ons available for Clarion. David is definitely Australia's third-party guru - possibly the world's. There is seemingly no product he doesn't know about, and he can just about tell you what each third party developer's kids have for breakfast each morning! The background information was as good as the demonstrations (except for the kids' breakfast stuff!).

Next, Andrew McPherson presented a look at Windows NT Terminal Server Edition and Citrix Metaframe. Needless to say, these are products gaining a huge amount of momentum and are providing another handy string in the bow of the average Clarion developer.

To wrap up the conference, we had a plenary session entitled "The Declining Art of Clarion Programming", the title being derived from a recent article in an Australian computing magazine. In the room were eight people (about a quarter of conference attendees) who had been using Clarion for less than 12 months which soon dispelled the notion of decline. We then looked to some of the success stories within, and newly-found ones (such as eData) which clearly wiped the idea. Coupled with the new directions of TopSpeed and the new products promised, we concluded that Clarion is definitely not in decline.

That hoary old chestnut of Clarion promotion was again brought up and the general agreement was that the TopSpeed marketing gurus still haven't got it right. No suggestions as to how to get it right exactly, but there was general agreement that getting Clarion mentioned in more magazine articles or seeing some advertising would be great. It was also agreed that flaunting success stories (such as Yogi's) would also reap benefits.

Overall, this was a superb conference. The support from local Clarion developers was fantastic and we once again proved that you don't need a cast of thousands to have a really beneficial event. Careful planning and attention to detail ensured the event was also a fiscal success.

It'd be remiss of me if I didn't mention the support we had from various sponsors. First Ecom generously donated a Clarion Internet hosting service including credit card processing facilities for e-commerce for one year valued at well over $2000. Capesoft, Nicetouch Solutions and Clarion Magazine also donated prizes to a total value in excess of $1000. Attendees were offered various discount schemes for purchases from these companies and a few others, including the Australian Clarion distributor Aeronaut Industries. Our sincere thanks go to those companies for supporting us so generously.

That's our conference in a nutshell - actually, a very long-winded nutshell. No apologies for wasting all those extra electrons on detail, but I wanted to be concise for four good reasons:

1. to inspire a few more of you out there to get together and do something similar. there is no substitute for an event like this and the benefits are very real
2. to remind you that you don't need hundreds of people to hold an event like this
3. to put in an unashamed mention of Yogi's reporting tools, and,
4. to get you interested in the next ConVic (look out for announcements next year)

See you at a future ConVic!

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Simon Brewer is Software Development Manager for First Ecom, an Internet development company using Clarion. Prior to that he spent 17 years at Email Major Appliances, major Clarion users and Australia's largest manufacturer of whitegoods. In his spare time he is also the President of the South Australian Clarion User Group and a co-organiser of the ConVic conferences.

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Clarion Magazine ISSN 1718-9942