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Last updated: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 11:15 EDT
Produced by Bryan Green. All content © 2001 Green Software Corp. All rights reserved.
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Woo hoo, it's Summit time! On Saturday afternoon, I packed the laptop, jumped in the van, and was whisked away to the San Jose international airport. The lovely Karen Green drove, which is to say we arrived very quickly! Sadly, she was unable to attend this year, so we kissed good-bye and off she went. I then faced the indignity of a full-body pat-down under the auspices of a machine-gun-toting national guardsman! To console myself, I took some pictures from the plane.
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| Leaving San Jose International... | Smoggy Silicon Valley -- remember, each pixel is a $500,000 shack! | Mono Lake viewed from the east. |
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| A pair of mesas somewhere in Utah. |
While standing in line waiting to board the plane in Dallas, I heard a shout of recognition from behind -- it was John Steele of Elucidata in Fort Worth! As John later said, the two hour flight felt like the shortest either of us had taken -- we spent the entire time plotting our mutual takeover of the 4D Universe. Or something like that.
On Sunday, I stayed in the hotel room all day working on web sites. (With all due respect to Jack, I decided to stay in a cheap hotel next door to the Marriot. Call me frugal.) After an enjoyable day in air-conditioned bliss, I braved the tropical humidity and walked the short distance to the Summit hotel to see who was making plans for dinner. (As I walked, I learned a new appreciation for those who live in humid tropical climates all the time.)
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| The Summit hotel -- the Airport Marriot. | Some developers stayed at the Sheraton next door. |
I found a group forming for dinner in the lobby of the Marriot, and after a brief period of coordinating with the hotel bus driver, we left. We decided to go to the famously American restaurant Tony Roma's. Mmmm... meat.
The whole bunch of us included me, Alexander Heintz, Michael Fergeson, Liz Delgado, John Steele, Dennis Carnine, Chris Cypert, and Dan LaSota. It was a lovely time, and we were especially entertained by Liz Delgado's stories of her glory days in law enforcement. (Her company is called "Smoking Gun Software" for a reason!)
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| It's a sign -- the Summit is here! | John Steele, Liz Delgado, Michael Fergeson, and Bryan Green try out the auto-timer on Bryan's camera. | Dennis Carnine, Chris Cypert, Alexander Heintz, and Dan LaSota enjoy the local cuisine that tastes the same everywhere in America. |
On Monday the Summit's pre-conference classes were held: Beginning 4D Plugins, Beginning 4D WebSTAR V Plugins, and Successfully Selling to Enterprise Companies. I attended the 4D plugins class and the selling to enterprise class.
The 4D plugins class was excellent! The instructor was Chris Cypert, the official 4D Plugin Evangelist. His content focused mostly on the Plugin Wizard, which is a tool written in 4D that makes it very easy and straightforward for a C programmer to generate the code necessary to build a 4D plugin.
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| Chris Cypert's plugin class was very well attended! |
Even though I've written many plugins, I learned from this class. Everyone else did, too, because there were many questions and the classroom was crowded! The Plugin Wizard is an excellent product. Here's how it works: you use a graphical interface to build a list of plugin commands. Then, for each command, you define parameters. Optionally, you can specify plugin constants. When all the commands, parameters, and constants are defined, you are ready to generate C code. To do so, you press a button and all the C source code is generated along with a project file for Metrowerks CodeWarrior and a project file for Microsoft Visual C++. You can see the source code from inside the Wizard, and fine-tune it by changing the definitions of the commands and parameters. All of the settings for a plugin may be stored in the Wizard's database, so you can change them later and regenerate the source code again.
The source code generated by the Wizard is a framework. It contains empty methods for each command in your plugin. You must add the functionality to each command, but it is very simple and straightforward. The Plugin Wizard is a very nice tool, and it lowers the entry threshold for new plugin developers.
In the afternoon, Rich Gay of All Bases Covered, Inc. taught his class on selling 4D to enterprise companies. Rich recruited two other well-known enterprise 4D developers to share their advice and expertise: John Beaulieu of Pacific Data Management, Inc., and John Andrews of Footprints, Inc.
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| Rich Gay admonishes the crowd to be professional. | Rich Gay and John Beaulieu debate whether fixed bid contracts are profitable. |
This class was extremely valuable. It was so crowded that all the seats were full and about 30 people lined the walls and sat on the floor.
[Ed.: in the interest of publishing the rest of the content in a timely manner, the notes from Rich Gay's session will be published later.]
On Monday evening, there was a "mixer" to welcome all the attendees. There was an open bar and food enough for all. I took many pictures.
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| The food line: the menu was vaguely Chinese and included cheeses, meatballs, egg rolls, pot stickers. | The 2001 edition of the annual Tim Hall (left) and Jordi Villa picture. | Dave Batton (left) and Tom Dillon. |
One of the more amusing episodes was trying to get a picture of Keith Goebel. John Macrae wrestled him into position, and he finally stood still for a picture of him just by himself and with Brendan Coveney.
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| John Macrae wrestles a camera-shy Keith Goebel into the view of the lens. | There he is: Keith Goebel, Summit Attendee of the Year (2000). | Keith Goebel (left) and Brendan Coveney . |
Here are some pictures from earlier in the day. (Notice the distinct lack of adult beverages.)
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| Thomas Maul (left), Mickerel Fuchs, and Achim Peschke from 4D Germany and Peter Bozek from Inforce Bratislava interrupt an impassioned technical discussion for a photo. | John Foster (left), Jody Bevans, and Peter Schumacher say "guten tag" to the camera. | Alex Heintz (left), Aparajita Fishman, Ernie Hilgers, and Tommy Brigman get a demo of Active4D 2.0. |
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| Mike Neyman (left) and Brandon Adams pause for the camera. | Simon Wright (left), David Pearson, and Scott Vanderbilt share a drink. |
And here are some pictures from the welcoming mixer.
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| Laurent Ribardière (left), Doris Beaulieu, John Beaulieu, and Rich Gay. Aren't they cute? | Why does everyone always insist that I am never in any pictures? | The Objective Systems LLC team: Joe Batts (left), Emily Williams, Bernadette McMahon, Edward Rozelle, and Charles Daneri. |
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| The Seattle Contingent: John Foster (left), Renee O'Brien, John Newhoff, Dean Tucker, and Ben Kershaw. | Formerly (and currently) from Foresight: John Steele (left), Rich Gay, and Dan Beckett. Isn't it nice to see Dan again? | Some very happy revelers: Lo Farnum (left), Tony Pollard, the formidable Lisa Pollard, Anthony Taylor, Jim Schachtner, Joan Schachtner, John Bernhoft, Marjee Kangas. |