Speakers

Tore Bleken

Tore Bleken is the owner of VFPHelp.com. He has developed applications since 1974, first in Basic, and later in dBase, FoxBase, and Visual FoxPro.

Most applications were written for internal use in Tore's company Bleken Elektronikk which sold electronic parts and equipment. The applications include modules for invoicing, stock management, accounting, payroll, and several other modules. When the Internet became popular, he built a website to enable the company's customers to see what it sold and to place orders.

Since the company was taken over by his sons, he worked for a period in Aruba and as a VFP consultant in Norway. He was a member of a small team who helped create VFP tools, which eventually released the tool now known as Thor. One of his contributions to Thor, apart from suggesting that it be named after him, is SuperBrowse.

Over the years Tore has attended close to thirty VFP conferences and events all around the world. He spends much of his time helping others with VFP related problems, and in 2017 he was awarded VFPx Administrators Outstanding Services Award.

Sessions:

Introducing SideKick

Rick Borup

Rick Borup is owner and president of Information Technology Associates, LLC, a professional software design, development, and information systems consulting firm he founded in 1993. Rick earned BS and MBA degrees from the University of Illinois and spent several years developing software applications for mainframe computers in the commercial banking industry before turning to PC database development tools in the late 1980s. He has worked full time in FoxPro and Visual FoxPro since 1993 and with SQL Server since 1998. Rick is a co-author of the books Deploying Visual FoxPro Solutions and Visual FoxPro Best Practices for The Next Ten Years. He has written articles for FoxTalk and FoxPro Advisor, and is a frequent speaker at Visual FoxPro conferences and user groups. Rick is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) and a Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) in Visual FoxPro.

Sessions:

The VFP Developer's Guide to Git and Sourcetree

Fabrice Foray

After a first encounter with personal computing and a Tandy TRS-80 in the early 80's, it was the use of Clipper 86 that led me to xBase languages. I've been teaching computer science in France to undergraduate students for more than 30 years, especially with C++, Java, and C# languages, and at the same time I continued the xBase adventure with CA-Visual Objects, Vulcan.Net, and finally XSharp as a DevTeam Member founder for ten years. Since then, I've worked on Visual Studio Integration, language services, and also our VFPXporter application and some tools to help the use of legacy data in new environments.

Sessions:

It's Time to RESTful With XSharp

Tamar E Granor

Tamar E. Granor, Ph.D., is the owner of Tomorrow's Solutions, LLC. She has developed and enhanced numerous applications for businesses and other organizations.

Tamar is author or co-author of more than a dozen books including the award-winning Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro and Microsoft Office Automation with Visual FoxPro. Her most recent books are VFPX: Open Source Treasure for the VFP Developer and Making Sense of Sedna and SP2.

Tamar served as Editor of FoxPro Advisor magazine from 1994 to 2000 and was Technical Editor from 2000 to 2008. She served as co-author of the popular Advisor Answers column from 1993 to 2008. She has also written for FoxTalk, CoDe, and FoxRockX.

Tamar is one of the organizers of the annual Southwest Fox conference and of Virtual FoxFest, as well as founder of the Philadelphia Visual FoxPro User Group. In 2007, she received the Visual FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award. She received Microsoft Support's Most Valuable Professional award annually from the program's inception in 1993 through 2010. Tamar speaks frequently about Visual FoxPro at conferences and user groups in North America and Europe.

You can reach her at tamar@tamargranor.com or through www.tomorrowssolutionsllc.com.

Sessions:

Lessons in Buffering and Transactions

Doug Hennig

Doug Hennig is a partner with Stonefield Software Inc. He is the author of the award-winning Stonefield Query; the award-winning Stonefield Database Toolkit (SDT); the MemberData Editor, Anchor Editor, and CursorAdapter and DataEnvironment builders that come with Microsoft Visual FoxPro; and the My namespace and updated Upsizing Wizard in Sedna.

Doug is co-author of VFPX: Open Source Treasure for the VFP Developer, Making Sense of Sedna and SP2, Visual FoxPro Best Practices For The Next Ten Years, the What's New in Visual FoxPro series, and The Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro 7.0. He was the technical editor of The Hacker's Guide to Visual FoxPro 6.0 and The Fundamentals. Doug wrote hundreds of articles in 20 years for FoxRockX, FoxTalk, FoxPro Advisor, Advisor Guide to Visual FoxPro, and CoDe magazines..

Doug spoke at every Microsoft FoxPro Developers Conference (DevCon) starting in 1997 and at user groups and developer conferences all over the world. He is one of the organizers of the annual Southwest Fox conference and of Virtual Fox Fest. He is one of the administrators for the VFPX VFP community extensions Web site. He was a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) from 1996 through 2011. Doug was awarded the 2006 FoxPro Community Lifetime Achievement Award.

Sessions:

Document and Email Management in VFP Applications

Jody L. Meyer

Jody Meyer has been a software developer for more than 35 years and has been using Fox for all but three of them. Currently, Jody is a software developer for White Light Computing (WLC). At WLC, she works with all kinds of customers on various SQL Server/VFP applications. Previously, she was the chief architect of the WinMAGI framework, which is a world-class manufacturing ERP system for small to mid-sized manufacturers.

After hours, Jody takes her passion for software development and applies it to some volunteer projects and user groups. She is a member and sometimes presenter with the Greater Lansing Area for SQL Server (GLASS) and SQL People in Detroit (SPID) groups. She has attended a number of SQL Saturday, GroupBy and EightKB conferences as well. When she isn't a taxi driver for her son, David to Mr. Cooke's softball games and to church, Jody loves teaching karate, learning to play the guitar, speaking at church conferences, playing beach volleyball and bicycling with her husband Jeff, and walking with her dogs Behr and Indy. You can contact Jody at: Email: JLMeyer@WhiteLightComputing.com White Light Computing, Inc website at www.whitelightcomputing.com

Sessions:

SQL Server Mash-Up

Kevin Ragsdale

Kevin Ragsdale is an independent software developer/consultant, creating commercial Visual FoxPro applications since 2007 (full-time since 2009). He has worked with FoxPro since 1993 (starting with FoxPro 2.6 for Windows and continuing through Visual FoxPro 9.0). He is the author and project manager for the Desktop Alerts project on VFPX. Kevin focuses mainly on web development these days, with a focus on West-Wind Web Connection, and frequently posts insightful, some may say life-changing, thoughts and hilarious memes about a multitude of subjects on Facebook.

Sessions:

"J, J, J... SON, SON, SON..." - Using SQL Server's Killer Built-in JSON Functionality

John Ryan

Dr John Ryan was specializing in orthopedic surgery when he stepped aside from practice in 1992 for a year (!) to develop artificial intelligence services for surgeons. One year turned into quarter of a century including two patents for artificial intelligence that reads medical records for research and peer review audit. More recently Dr Ryan was the first commercial user of VFPA and VFP Compiler, which are third party projects to enhance/remedy faults in Microsoft's discontinued Visual FoxPro product.

Sessions:

VFP C++ Compiler: Options and Settings for Modern, Secure Applications

Tuvia Vinitsky

Tuvia Vinitsky is a principal in Vinitsky Consulting. Vinitsky Consulting develops and markets major vertical applications for non-profit organizations, community centers (JCC, YMCA), and delivery management. They also provide custom database software and website development.

Tuvia's Fox experience dates back to the days of FoxBase and CompuServe. He has written for FoxTalk and has been a presenter numerous times at regional users' groups. Tuvia has always enjoyed expanding the capabilities of FoxPro, whether it was graphic printer drivers in the days of DOS or Web enabling the latest VFP 9 features.

Tuvia believes in having both breadth and depth of experience and has served as project leader for many large projects, including projects at companies like Avis-Rent-a-Car, Chicago Board of Trade, Marmon Group and Lotus.

Tuvia and his family are long time Chicago residents. He attended Northwestern University and Hebrew Theological College, and is an ordained Rabbi. Not only is he known for his popular presentations on software development, but he frequently is a guest speaker on Jewish philosophy and teachings.

Sessions:

Using Google Calendar in VFP

Christof Wollenhaupt

Christof Wollenhaupt is an owner of foxpert GmbH. foxpert is one of Germany's leading FoxPro companies. We offer FoxPro, .NET and web development and consulting services. More information at http://www.foxpert.com.

Christof founded foxpert in 1996. He's been a regular speaker at international conferences and user groups since 1997, an international author for half a dozen magazines, and was a contributing editor to FoxPro Advisor for a decade and a Microsoft MVP for 13 years.

Sessions:

Git Advanced Techniques