Archive for the 'Conferences' Category

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From the City of Brotherly Love to the City of Unspeakably Nice Weather (or: how I stopped worrying and learned to love an ambient temperature of 71 degrees)

I stepped off the puddle jumper plane from LA to San Diego (en route from Philadelphia) and squinted into the bright light, scowling at the light breeze.  71 degrees?  Seriously?

I’m a firm believer that the West Coast was invented to mock East Coasters.  “See how happy you can be when you don’t need to sweat in 100 degree weather or shovel four feet of snow off your Subaru Forrester?  And oh, by the way, here we actually use our sunroofs.”  Uncomfortable pause.  “And, come on.  A Subaru Forrester?  Do you wear anoraks too?”

It wasn’t always this way with the FileMaker DevCon.  It used to be that you’d crawl out of your transportation device of choice into a humid steam bath and say to yourself, “yeah, okay, this sun thing is nice, but at least I don’t live 20 miles from downtown huddled in an air conditioning bubble”.

No longer.  FileMaker DevCon these days is now held in places that make me envious. Continue reading ‘From the City of Brotherly Love to the City of Unspeakably Nice Weather (or: how I stopped worrying and learned to love an ambient temperature of 71 degrees)’

 

5 Minutes with Philly FileMaker featuring Mike Lee

Mike Lee, Proof Group, joined me for a quick chat Sunday morning to discuss his FileMaker DevCon sessions called SQL to the Rescue about using SQL inside FileMaker solutions. Look for more video interviews and DevCon blog posts throughout the conference from all of the IT Solutions team attending this year’s conference.

 

5 Minutes with Philly FileMaker featuring John Sindelar

We’re at the FileMaker Developer Conference 2010 in San Diego, CA getting ready for an excellent week of networking and learning about all of things FileMaker. This afternoon I dusted off the video camera and started lining up a great list of FileMaker experts to spend a few minutes chatting with to see what they have coming up at DevCon and what mind blowing tips and tricks they’re seeing out in the community. I’m kicking off a new batch of 5 Minutes with Philly FileMaker interviews with our good buddy John Sindelar, SeedCode. John is doing his annual Year in Review session Monday morning, which I already know will be a DevCon highlight.

Chad Sager and Colin Keefe are also representing IT Solutions at DevCon. If you’re at the conference, be sure to say hi!

 

FileMaker DevCon!

As many of you know, the 2010 FileMaker DevCon is coming up soon – August 15-18, to be exact.  We’re going to be doing a recap meeting on Tuesday August 24.  I’ll have more on that in a few weeks,but I think we can safely assume that FileMaker Go will be on the agenda!

If you’re from eastern PA, please email me at colin.keefe@itsolutions-inc.com – we’re planning a get together for Philly FileMaker folks on Monday.  I’ll reply with the details.

Some tools to keep you connected to what’s going on: Continue reading ‘FileMaker DevCon!’

 

Meeting Recap: Don Levan on Exceptional Interface Design

Many thanks to Don Levan (Vanguard Custom Software) for coming out and presenting to the group!

Don presented to a packed house (28 people) on the impact of successful user interfaces, working within the constraints of human psychology and physiology – and optimizing workflows and tools for humans (as opposed to developers :) ).  Drawing liberally from Edward Tufte, Alan Cooper and Donald Norman for background material, Don laid out some excellent groundwork for building the right software tools for the job that are easy to learn and efficient to use.

This is a topic he’ll be presenting at the 2010 FileMaker DevCon (in San Diego in August),  so it was great to get a preview of the material.

Here are some photos from the meeting.  Tried out my new cell phone’s camera…it is what it is.

 

Join us April 27th – Don Levan – The Fundamentals of Exceptional Interface Design

Our next Philadelphia FileMaker User Group meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday evening, April 27th 2010 at 6:00 PM.
Please RSVP here if you are planning to attend this meeting:
We’re very pleased to have Don Levan presenting this month – he’s been an active participant and presenter at both Pause On Error events, and will be presenting at FileMaker DevCon 2010 this August.  This is a great opportunity to get a preview of the kind of content he’ll be presenting at DevCon.
THE FUNDAMENTALS OF EXCEPTIONAL INTERFACE DESIGN
Presenter:    Don Levan, Vanguard Custom Software, LLC
Successful user interfaces are those that are easy to learn and efficient to use. Meeting these goals requires that you understand the people who will use your software.  This presentation will provide current information about interface and interaction design best practices, our shared human psychology and abilities, and the ways to leverage FileMaker tools to create exceptional user experiences.
The meeting will be held at the IT Solutions Fort Washington Office:
+  414 Commerce Dr., Suite 150, Fort Washington, PA 19034
+  Google Map: http://tinyurl.com/37mhhh
As always, pizza and soft drinks will be provided.
About the Speaker:
Don Levan, Psy.D., is president of Vanguard Custom Software, LLC., a New York FileMaker consulting firm. Dr. Levan is a FileMaker Certified Developer and a Licensed Clinical Psychologist. He has been using FileMaker since the early 1990s and developing FileMaker applications professionally since 2002. He will be speaking at the 2010 FileMaker Developer’s Conference.
Vanguard’s mission is to “create simple applications which solve complex problems.” They incorporate software development best practices, interaction design, and cognitive psychology to create data-driven applications and websites that are efficient for business and easy for people.
About the Philadelphia FileMaker User Group:
The Philadelphia FileMaker User Group was founded in 2004 as an initiative by FileMaker Business Alliance Platinum member IT Solutions Consulting.  The group’s goal is to provide an open forum for FileMaker developers and those interested in FileMaker to meet, brainstorm and network.
We hold meetings the 4th Tuesday of every month at 6PM, in the office of IT Solutions Consulting, Inc., at 414 Commerce Drive, Suite 150, Fort Washington PA.
Meetings are open to all, regardless of background and there’s no charge to attend.
Please subscribe to our Mailing List to get announcements on upcoming meetings. The list is set to Announce only, so the volume is typically between one and 2 emails a month.
You can read our blog to get updates and meeting recaps:
We’re also an FMPug Chapter:  http://www.fmpug.com/ Consider membership today, especially if you purchase training, plugins, 3rd party products, or web/filemaker hosting – FMPug membership affords considerable discounts across a range of offerings.
Finally, The Philadelphia FileMaker User Group is hosted by:

IT Solutions Consulting, Inc.
Employee ownership – fueling our innovation, strengthening your business.
- Learn about our new FileMaker support offerings: FMAssist and FMAssure!
 

Pausing in Portland: a written recap

Check out the following blog post for a written recap from Pause On Error, the FileMaker unconference in Portland. This has a little more info about the back story and where the movement itself may be headed. This post is available on an IT blog that is hosted by IT Solutions: http://bit.ly/aIzZkx

 

Update from Jason Young on “What’s Faster?”

At last week’s meeting I presented some FileMaker performance analysis findings that were compiled by Jason Young, Mighty Data (Denver, CO). He had shared them during his session “What’s Faster?” at the recent PauseOnError unconference in Portland, OR a few weeks back. Jason sent a follow-up email about some of his findings and some tidbits he’s learned since Pause On Error, along with the slides from his presentation, which are attached here. If you weren’t at the meeting, check out the meeting video on an earlier post to gain some context for this update (fast forward to the 54:20 mark).

Continue reading ‘Update from Jason Young on “What’s Faster?”’

 

Jan 2010 Meeting recap: Pause On Error (video)

Jason Mundok gave a great overview of the Portland PauseOnError Unconference to about 20 folks.  We also hashed out some plans for the Member page of this blog.  Ustream recording below:

 

Five Minutes with Philly FileMaker: Pause On Error Portland

I was fortunate to attend day one of Pause on Error in Portland and had a chance to chat with John Sindelar (SeedCode) and Ernest Koe (Proof) about what it was like to organize Pause II. We debuted this interview at the Philadelphia FileMaker User Group meeting held at the IT Solutions office in Fort Washington.