DevCon Weekend Edition

by Dave Harms

Published 1999-09-26    Printer-friendly version

Clarion Magazine has landed in Fort Lauderdale!

Well actually it was me and I landed at Miami International late Saturday afternoon. Tom Hebenstreit, Clarion Magazine's reviews editor is here as well. The magazine is still on the server, where it always is.

I don't have much to report about the flight, other than it took place on an airplane. It did take almost as long to retrieve my luggage in Miami as it did to travel from Winnipeg. My fellow passengers and I gathered at the baggage claim, where for a rather long time we stood and watched two lonely, lost pieces of luggage appear at one end of the conveyer and disappear at the other end, over and over again. Then a teddy bear appeared on the conveyer, face down. Was this an omen? Had our luggage been hijacked? Was the teddy bear a message from a desperate band of renegade toy salespeople? Evidently not: fifteen anxious minutes later I had my suitcase in hand.

My luggage and I exited to the rental car shuttle area. I don't know exactly how many rental car companies there are in this country but I'm pretty sure that every one of them sent its shuttle roaring past me before the one I wanted showed up. The exhaust fumes in the enclosed roadway were beginning to get to me. I was thinking positive thoughts about Wizatrons.

Happily the shuttle was carrying a load of fresh air and I had a chance to clear my head. On the other hand, once I had my rental car a clear head didn't seem to help me grasp the directions to the hotel. I made a few wrong turns. The instructions said take Davie Blvd east to US1, but neglected to say what to do when I got to US1. I turned south. No, that must be wrong. I went north. That was definitely wrong, so I went south again, then left. Okay, another left turn before the Intracoastal Waterway, said the instructions. Well it looked a whole lot like an Intracoastal Waterway to me, so I turned, just in time to see the sign telling me I should have stayed in the right lane over the bridge to get to the Hyatt.

Back on the bridge, and a huge lineup for the Hyatt. Hey, Clarion's hit the big time! Well maybe not just yet - there was some major event besides ours at the hotel. Finally I reached the lobby, got checked in and settled in, and headed out to see who else made it.

Turns out the guys were all up at the lounge at the top of the tower (wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out).

Among those present, Andy Ireland, here shown on the bridge of his own personal starship.

The guy at the bottom right edge of the picture below with his back to the camera is Larry Teames. If he looks a bit put out it's probably because no one believed his fairly extensive treatise on the Fargo programming language. Hey, Larry, it's a town in North Dakota!

Also of interest in the above picture is the two guys  on the floor, Bruce Johnson and Tom Hebenstreit. You may think they're in earnest conversation, or maybe just a bit wobbly and having trouble standing up.

In fact, as this photograph shows, they're practising for their DevCon seminar on yogic flying for Clarion developers. If you look closely you can see they're about half an inch off the floor.

Now Tom's taken a rest while Bruce hovers four feet off the ground, greatly impressing Carl Barnes. Unfortunately our photographer was caught off guard and didn't get a picture of Bruce in flight.

Sunday Morning

Registration started Sunday morning, and developers were out in force. You just can't tell it from this picture. I mean, you have to register developers one at a time anyway, right? 

There were well over a hundred deveopers in the Sunday morning session, which was conducted by Russ Eggen (keep an eye out for the "I was Russ'd and survived" buttons).

At left, Gus Creces picks up his DevCon polo shirt and realizes he needs to put on some weight. This, ah, puts him in the minority.

The final word in this report goes to Topspeed's Richard Chapman, who in an unguarded moment spills the beans about Topspeed's future technology direction. 

MPEG Video (200k)

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David Harms is an independent software developer and the editor and publisher of Clarion Magazine. He is also co-author with Ross Santos of Developing Clarion for Windows Applications, published by SAMS (1995), and has written or co-written several Java books. David is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA).

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Clarion Magazine ISSN 1718-9942