Pause[x]London will be trying another new concept: speaking via Skype. Our good buddy, Mark Richman, from Skeleton Key in St. Louis will be leading a session on (what else?) WAN performance. Only he’ll be doing it in his fuzzy slippers from the comforts of his digs in St. Louis. We’ll be keeping our eye on this, as this brave new session style could mean great things for future Pause events AND user groups like the Philadelphia FileMaker User Group.

If you can make it to Pause[x]London, do yourself a favor and get there. The Pause On Error events are a great way to build community around FileMaker development and get access to some of the best minds in the business.

 

If you’re not familiar with it, Pause On Error is a (mostly) self-organized series of free gatherings held in a hotel with the purpose of bringing together FileMaker developers to share ideas about creating and deploying software with the various FileMaker products and related technologies. Why “mostly”? Because the steering committee (Molly Connolly,Thorsen Consulting, Andy Gaunt, FMPug, John Sindelar, SeedCode, and Ernest Koe,ProofGroup) spend a considerable amount of time and effort getting these events off the ground, such as researching and choosing locations, setting up the online portals for scheduling sessions, and fielding questions and managing expectations. The committee has done a remarkable job with POE!

To attend a POE gathering you simply register online, but you have to be quick about it because space is limited. The only expense is travel and accommodations, so if you’re local, you can simply show up. Attendees create the content and several “sponsors” rent suites in the host hotel where the main sessions are held, but sessions can spin up anywhere.

How popular is it?

The popularity of POE has grown with each gathering, and while the steering committee has never intended to limit the attendance, there is a capacity. POE3 reached its capacity of 120 attendees in about 48 hours after the initial announcement. Since the event is free and consists of people gathering in hotel rooms, it can’t technically sell out. Certain events, though, such as the kick-off breakfast need to be limited to registered attendees, and based on the physical constraints of the hotel, the experience will certainly suffer if too many people showed up. This speaks volumes about the popularity of POE, but leads to several very important questions about the future of these gatherings. If new locations are found where the capacity doubles or triples, how does that change the spirit of POE? Can the current model be sustained, or does POE just become another conference that requires a full event planning staff, and therefore, real sponsors and an admission fee, etc.? Time will tell.

What’s the draw?

It’s all about access — access to a forum to present your thoughts on a topic, regardless of how niche it is, and access to some of the best minds in the business. Most of the sessions that I attended at POE3 were 20% slides and 80% discussion while sitting around hotel rooms with very smart people. There were no stages or microphones, just open dialogue in a small group setting, like a super-duper developer group meeting that lasts for two days and includes two years’ worth of guest speakers. The range of topics was 50% business and 50% technical so there was something for everyone.

What did I take away from POE3?

While I found value in all of the conversations I had with other FileMaker developers at POE3, there were a few things that stood out for me. First, I facilitated a session on best practices for testing FileMaker solutions. While our current practices have served us well over the years, I had some ideas for improvement that I wanted to bounce off the group and the feedback was excellent. Some ideas were affirmed, others were dismissed, and new ones were introduced through the discussion.

I also attended a demonstration of Zulu, the new iCal server for FileMaker from SeedCode and 360Works. Zulu is one of the most impressive 3rd party tools I have ever seen in the FileMaker world. John Sindelar, SeedCode, and Jesse Barnum, 360Works, will be visiting our PhillyFileMaker meeting on April 26, 2011 to present Zulu to our community.

Among a few other sessions and great discussions, I also sat in on a very rich discussion with Marshall Micheals, Anvil Dataworks, and Heather Winkle, FileMaker, Inc. exploring ways to introduce FileMaker to a new audience. I came away from that discussion energized about new possibilities for FileMaker in the marketplace and filled with ideas about how IT Solutions can contribute.

If nothing else, POE3 proved once again that the FileMaker development community is active and committed to the future. It recognizes that a strong community where innovative ideas are cultivated and shared benefits everyone from independent consultants to in-house development teams. There has been no talk yet of POE4, but be sure keep your eyes and ears open so you don’t miss the next one!

If you have any questions or comments about this article, feel free to contact Jason Mundok at jason.mundok@itsolutions-inc.com.

 

Our next Philadelphia FileMaker Developer Group meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday evening, March 1st 2011 at 6:00 PM. The meeting will be held at the IT Solutions Fort Washington Office.

(NOTE: This is a date change from our usual schedule.)

414 Commerce Dr., Suite 150, Fort Washington, PA 19034
Google Map: http://tinyurl.com/37mhhh

Please RSVP here if you are planning to attend this meeting:
http://www.fmpug.com/rsvp.php?eventID=1167

PAUSE ON ERROR NY RECAP

Four members of PFUG trekked up to New York for Pause On Error this month to present, listen, discuss and debate. During this meeting we’ll share what we heard and learned, and share our thoughts.

Jason Mundok, Colin Keefe, Kevin Ayers and Dan Stein attended POE, and depending on who’s available we’ll see what we can glean from them.

We’ll also be giving away a door prize, courtesy of our User Group membership with PeachPit Press (it’s the one I forgot to give away last month).

Drupal 7: Visual QuickStart Guide
- Tom Geller, author

http://www.peachpit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321619218

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.

http://fmpug.com/mailman/listinfo/philly_fmpug.com/

You can read our blog to get updates and meeting recaps:

http://www.phillyfilemaker.org/

Twitter here:

http://twitter.com/phillyfilemaker

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.
http://www.itsolutions-inc.com/
Learn more about us on our new Videos/Blog Page!
http://www.itsolutions-inc.com/videos_blog/index.html

 

Also check out www.fmcraftworkshops.com for info on a special FileMaker design seminar in NYC in October.

 

After the presentation at PauseOnError, Jason received some great info from a few FileMaker engineers. Here are the results:

• Regarding loop speeds, freeze window trumps all and looping through a layout set to Form view is the fastest. Even when List and Table view are frozen, they still have to manage more records and are doing some “fetching-ahead” of records not currently being displayed.
• We had discussed that that “Setting Values Through a Portal” performs better than looping through actual records. The reason is that none of the child records are committed as you loop through them. Looping through a found set commits every record when it is exited. But, all portal rows close when the parent record is committed, which means all child records are locked until the process completes and if you revert the parent, you also revert all children records (similar to the Replace command).
• Jason also did some server testing and found that Replace and portal looping were identical. (Locally, replace beat portal looping while setting a single field). So, looping may be the way to go, given the two options, because you can error capture if any records fail.

We are looking forward to hearing more on future performance testing. Thank you Jason for sharing your findings with Philly FileMaker!

 

January 26th Meeting:
- Extended Stump the Chump: Bring in your code for troubleshooting!
- Pause On Error UnConference in Portland: Jason Mundok’s first hand report

- About the Philadelphia FileMaker User Group

Details:

Greetings FileMaker Enthusiasts,

Our next Philadelphia FileMaker User Group meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday evening, January 26 2010 at 6:00 PM.

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.

Please RSVP here if you are planning to attend this meeting:
http://www.fmpug.com/rsvp.php?eventID=961

Extended Stump the Chump / Roundtable

Going forward, “Stump the Chump” is the kickoff segment of every meeting! If you have a problem you’d like to discuss with the group, or want to get feedback on alternative ways to code a particular bit of programming, please bring your laptop or flash drive loaded with the files.

One other change: going forward, we are ALL chumps. It was pretty much that way anyway, since thankfully folks are not shy to put their two cents in, but we might as well make it official and get rid of the “designated chumps” idea. So this is really an opportunity for free-ranging roundtable discussion of code.

Since we have a pretty open schedule this meeting, MORE IS BETTER. If you don’t have specific code to discuss, bring in talking points or a topic to bounce around.

PauseOnError UnConference: Jason Mundok’s first hand report

PauseOnError is an UnConference whose content and organization is entirely participant driven. The first POE UnConference was held last summer in Manhattan; we reported on it here:

http://www.phillyfilemaker.org/?p=492

The second one is happening in Portland OR next week – over 100 top-tier developers are converging to discuss just about everything you could imagine, and our own Jason Mundok will be there. He’ll be doing some of his “5 Minutes with Philly FileMaker” interviews, and will give us a report of his experiences.

Pause On Error: http://www.pauseonerror.com/
Topic Schedule: http://pauseonerror.pbworks.com/PDX10Schedule

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.

http://fmpug.com/mailman/listinfo/philly_fmpug.com/

You can read our blog to get updates and meeting recaps:

http://www.phillyfilemaker.org/

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.
http://www.itsolutions-inc.com/
- Learn about our new FileMaker support offerings: FMAssist and FMAssure!
- www.itsolutions-inc.com/our_solutions/application_development/fm_assist.html