ETC Starts Off In Style

by Dave Harms

Published 2000-05-24    Printer-friendly version

It's not over yet, and I don't want to jinx anything, but when Lee White puts on a conference, it's going to be done in style. So far, so good!

This year's East Tennessee Clarion Conference got underway yesterday afternoon with an excellent presentation by James Fortune on application help, and how to avoid writing it. It was a bit of a rough start for James as he'd come across the pond with everything on a zip disk, and it took longer than expected to get the supplied NT box up and running (little mixup with the password, I understand). With no time to get the audio working, James did an admirable job singing and dancing his way through the missing effects. Formerly more focused on writing documentation, he's now directed his efforts at good application design which obviates the need for most help. Look for more on James' presentation later in Clarion Magazine.

Following this presentation the attendees gathered for a reception, meaning a whole lotta Mexican food, appetizers (served after the meal so they wouldn't be mistaken for the meal this time) and the sweet strains of a string quartet accompanying the chinwagging (mpeg, 336K). Many of the usual suspects were in attendance, with plenty of new faces as well to put the total, including guests, at over 150. The number of developers in attendance is up over two years ago, not surprising given the good press the original etc garnered.

The weather was fairly good Tuesday afternoon, but it's thunderstorm season in this part of the country and by the time the reception wound down and the attendees headed to their rooms (or their beverage rooms) there'd been a slight turn for the worse. Around 4 a.m. the storm really ramped up, with thunder reverberating down the valley and lightning jagging though the clouds.

As in 1998, the conference is at Gatlinburg's Edgewater Hotel, which as its name suggests sits right alongside a pleasant mountain stream. Until the heavy rains hit, that is. Before the first Wednesday session the civil defense siren sounded, warning of flash flooding in low-lying areas. The water had risen as far as the bridge between the hotel and the road (a little higher than the pictures show), but hotel staff indicated that the water had been over that bridge many times before, so not to worry. The intermittent sirens ended before the first session.

Tuesday Afternoon

Wednesday Morning

   

Bob Zaunere, SoftVelocity's President and CEO, was at etc for the day and spent a half hour at the start of the session addressing the attendees and taking questions. I'll have the details of that session shortly. Bob had a receptive audience, and tipped his hand about some new Clarion features on the way. For a guy who's no doubt been run off his feet with new duties, he appeared relaxed and seemed to be truly enjoying his job, the conference, and meeting with developers.

After Bob's talk there was a short break, and then some guy from Clarion Magazine prattled endlessly about web site development, and thankfully only one attendee needed attention from paramedics. Rumor is there will be a report on that presentation sometime soon.

Fortified by lunch, we headed back into the lecture hall for Nik Johnson's wide-ranging presentation on Clarion development tips and tricks, with emphasis on classes and templates. Nik's probably forgotten more than most of us will ever know about what the Clarion development tools are really capable of, and how they can be used effectively. Details to follow.

After Nik wrapped things up Lee & Co. held the door prize raffle. With almost one giveaway for every two developers, there were a lot of happy campers, but the star attraction was (cue the reverb):

RAFFLEMAN 2000

Coming soon to a store near you (mpeg, 1080K). Lee's totally awesome Raffleman 2000 filled the screen, randomly selecting numbers to match those on attendees badges. Each winner had the choice of whatever prizes remained, and some of these prizes weren't exactly cheap.

For supper we were all supposed to pile into trolleys and head out to the park for a Cajun cookout. But when the cooking team got up early this morning (or were awakened by early morning lightning and thunder) it was pretty obvious that the weather wasn't going to cooperate. The feast has been postponed until Thursday night, at which time it will go ahead, no matter what the weather.

Aside from the Cajun cookout, Thursday's schedule includes Steve Parker on Web Builder in the morning, and Skip Williams explaining non-Web Edition internet development in the afternoon. On Friday Andy Stapleton will look at still other web development options, and Saturday Bruce Johnson is teaching a full day class on ABC and embed code. 

The etc format is a bit different from that of most other DevCons. There are no track sessions - instead, all attendees see the same presentation, and each speaker is given three hours, except for Andy, who sneers at fiddling short half-day sessions. This conference format makes for much more detailed information than is usually available, and removes the old problem of having to decide among your three favorite sessions, all of which are scheduled for exactly the same time.

More to come - stay tuned!

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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