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Conference |
Well, you wouldn't believe it if we didn't tell you ourselves, and surely things like this only happen in California: in the Fairmont lobby after the DEVCON party, we were sitting down with a group of our fellow conferees when we noticed John Travolta and entourage sitting nearby, no kidding. We had heard that the well-jointed-one was in San Jose shooting a new movie; evidently he's staying at the Fairmont. Our star-stricken colleague Hope Venus respectfully approached and was rewarded with this picture. We have one last picture from the party: Walt Nelson, Hope Venus, Debbie Cook, and Kristen LeClair relax after a Hard Day at DEVCON. We have a bunch of party photos, and as well a picture of Asmae Benkirane, Dominique Hermsdorff, and Jean Laguerre. Closed curcuit for Mike Beatty: check out the party photos and judge for yourself. ;-) We hear the party starting up, so we'll soon have some (hopefully) amusing pictures to show. We have another picture of some of conference attendees we pestered to be on the web page: Daryl Love, Jeff Knight, Kristen LeClair, and Tony Chiang. ACI Sales Manager Bruce Finch's end-of-day address was a fairly interesting tactic. He introduced the ACI sales staff on stage and said that he was asked to address the two big questions left about version 6: when it would be available and how much it would cost. He didn't provide an answer to either question, though... C'est la vie. Bruce Finch also recognized Doris Bealieau for organizing and orchestrating the DEVCON. We do, too: Good job, Doris! Don Crabb gave an amusing and candid keynote speech. It was mostly about Apple, but it was very encouraging that he understood some of the issues around 4th Dimension databases. (Sorry for the long delay for this update; there was much to describe about 4D version 6. As well, we went through a bit of a crisis when the update page wouldn't display correctly. We have since learned that there is a limit to the amount of text in a single table data element in HTML. We will be breaking out the days in separate pages this evening since they are getting a bit big.) We have a picture of ACI International Training Manager Jean-Pierre Ribreau waxing eloquent to a standing-room-only crowd during one of the training sessions. Just before lunch, Dominique Hermsdorff introduced the nine members of the 4D development team, not including himself. This is very significant: in the past 4D has been famous for being the work of one man, at least in conventional wisdom. Seeing those members of the "4Dv6 Dream Team" on stage was very reassuring to us, and we suspect to everyone else who saw them. It was also significant to hear Laurent Ribardiere himself making a point to thank the testing team back at home. In our opinion, this is good evidence of a true glasnost at ACI. We hope this trend continues. Mike Beatty asks:
We managed to absorb some of Chris Date's keynote address on his Third Manifesto. Essentially, he is attempting to adress the problems of handling new data types (such as pictures, movies, sounds, maps) correctly. His presentation was very scholarly, and those interested in what DBMS technology will become over the next 20 years would benefit from looking up his work. (We don't have a source on this right now, but we will find one and post it later.) It attempts to correctly resolve the good and the bad of object-oriented technology and relational database technology into a new, third technology. We have a summary of Dominique Hermsdorff's stunning demonstration of 4D Version 6. The web server was down breifly this morning but is now back up. We blame it on Monday. We are now sitting in the meeting room, watching Dominique Hermsdorff demonstrate the fantastic features in 4D version 6. We will have a full report later; suffice it to say for now that we are completely blown away. Due to some web site management issues, we arrived at the Fairmont this morning after MDD's keynote address. While waiting in line for some more of the famous Fairmont coffee at the morning break, we asked George Tiller of Tiller Systems for his observations of her speech. Here's our synopsis of what he said: Overall she was very open, frank, and honest about the recent and past problems at ACI; she seems very focused on improving relations between ACI and developers. As well she is very excited about version 6 of 4th Dimension. We can only hope that this is a new era of perestroika with ACI. | |||