We’re happy to share that Matt has graciously provided his complete demo files and presentation slide deck for download!

Included are some pretty slick iPad geolocation demos, graphical seat assignment, canvas drawing and charting, web chat, and more!  All in all fun stuff.

Thanks Matt!

Edit 1/30/2012:

While this was probably clearer during the presentation, some of the code in Matt’s DevCon 2011 offering should be credited to Todd Geist of Geist Interactive who shared his expertise with Matt for this portion of demo.  Todd has coincidentally released – today – a packaged tool for performing canvas drawing in FileMaker Go, so if any of this has whetted your appetite for this kind of thing, you’re in luck.

It’s called GoDraw.  It looks pretty slick, the lite version is free, and the full version offers editing saved drawings, Save as PDF and more.

 

This was a great meeting – and at 2 hours and change, packed with stuff. Enjoy.

 

Give it some time to load, it’s over an hour in length.

All in all, a lively discussion!

February’s meeting ought to be a recap of PauseOnError, since a few of us are heading up there, and ought to have some interesting field reports to share.

 

It also reinforces my belief in the power of face-to-face interaction.  User groups have been around for decades upon decades now, and they might feel a little old-school to some  (maybe a little rebranding is in order: PhillyFilemakerMeetup?), but IMO there’s still no substitute for people talking together in the same room.

Italics below are mine.

Thanks so much for organizing the meeting and welcoming me into the Philly Filemaker PUGs last night.  I was saying to a friend this morning it’s so refreshing to be a part of a laid-back, leaning forward group that is making it in the tech world by keeping things simple for…uh…users!

It’s hard to express, but I was captured by what seemed like a serious, yet collegial spirit that allowed for so much professional repartee. […] Know that, one of us, seasoned through many renditions of business meltdowns, welcomes your maintenance of a fresh open software teaching environment as increasingly important to laypersons such as me.

I’m not sure where any sort of consulting will get me to down here in Delaware…but I’m still wedded to Filemaker Pro as a sort of mudra, or stance, for a person’s accessibility and friendship with their data.   What came across in the discussion about outreach was that FileMaker Pro maintains a place in the market that is alluring for the folks who have matured over the years using Excel.  Matured into intuitively knowing there is something more.  I think there are many people, not just data analysts, who would want to be turned on to ways of turning data into relationships.  And, I think the geek world (my term for folks smarter than me) could, in a healthy way, learn a lot from the banking, finance debacle we know about now:  keep things transparent, teach people how to make and evaluate their own decisions, and foster a spirit of collaborative improvement of the services we offer (over profit).  I’m not sure how you market that for […] Philly Filemaker Pro User Group.  There is a bent toward helping the users (good) as well as an invitation to redefine the users, as described above.  I’ve always marveled at how fascinated folks are with mystery.  Filemaker Pro cracks a code.

Anyway, thanks for the lovely evening…well worth the trip.

 

I’m going to save a real recap for next week.

In the meantime, I’ll just put the word out that our next meeting is going to feature Alan Deffenderfer, who’s been doing some amazing stuff integrating Amazon Web Services with a FileMaker Bookseller’s management product.  More on that to come.

- Colin

 

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.

 

David walked through some techniques we’ve seen applied elsewhere – extensive use of script triggers to drive the UI, modular programming, some real world examples of Set Field By Name.  There was one especially clever use of Custom Menus to create true modal dialog layouts that can’t be closed by clicking the X box.  I’ll ask David to share that one, maybe in an example file.

Video stream recording below.

 

Recap!

Two dozen FileMaker enthusiasts converged on the the IT Solutions office for the 5th Annual PFUG Year End Bonanza on December 15th.

We continued our annual tradition of vendor discussions and giveaways, of course – congratulations to Dan Stein, Todd Chronister, Walter Burns, Preston Cabe, Tim Lynott, Mike Ahern, Bryant Minard, Gale Raspen and Michael Reddy for winning bonanza prizes from our generous sponsors! And a big thanks to SolutionMakers, Ben Waldie, ProofGroup and Seed Code, Thorsen Consulting, 360Works and Real EVO for participating and contributing to our event.

Our 2008 predictions for 2009 were, as usual, mostly wrong, but I don’t think anyone can be faulted for not guessing all the twists and turns 2009 held in store for us.  We’ll have to wait until December 2010 before we can weigh in on the latest batch – though I somehow doubt “BJ and the Bear” will make it to the big screen this year (sorry, Jason).

We spent a good portion of the meeting discussing the long range focus and goals of the user group, a free-ranging roundtable conversation that included:

• How to increase monthly attendance
• How to tailor the meeting structure for better participation, away from the active presenter/passive audience model
• Better networking and support methods between members
• In general, how to make the group more useful for the members

All in all a great way to end the year – and a big thanks to Jason Fiske of FMI for providing the excellent buffet!

Goals!

Some of the takeaways that we’ll be acting on…

Meeting Structure

We’re going to move the “Stump the Chump” session from its current slot at the end of the presentation to the opening slot; e.g. after opening remarks we’ll jump right into it. Also…we are ALL Chumps.  Previously we picked folks to answer questions from members; now it’ll be a free-for-all (which it always devolved to anyway!).

Presenters will be asked to tailor their presentations for more interactivity, where possible: in other words, where it makes sense to “workshop” a topic, let’s encourage that.

2009 was heavy on “big names”: most of our presenters had a history of speaking at DevCons and other venues, had high level topics that may have had the “just getting started” developer feeling a little left in the dark.  In 2010 we’ll be mixing things up a bit – more roundtable discussions, more group critiques of member work, more member presentations.  We’re going to keep getting whatever superstars we can, but hopefully the mix will be more healthy.

Audience Building

Up until now, who shows up at meetings has been pretty much dependent on the size and quality of our mailing list, and exposure we get through various passive advertising venues – the FMPug site, syndication of this blog, and so on.  That’s all well and good, but in my opinion our reach is limited.  This is promotion, not networking.

Since it’s in the best interest of the members to have sizable attendance, fresh faces and all that comes from a growing audience – because of the networking opportunities, job prospects, and information sharing – we’re charging you, the members, with the responsibility of spreading the word about the group.  Tell your co-workers, your clients, your consultants, and your friends.

Bring someone who has never used FileMaker before.

Bring that IT guy across the room who hates FileMaker, so he can see what it’s all about.

In short, evangelize.

We’re averaging 18 people a meeting; it would be very nice to reach 25 this year.  And it can only benefit you to reach that number.

Networking

You may recall we discussed how to encourage member communication between the monthly meetings.  At the moment we have a single mailing list, announcement only, and some of you belong to the FMPUGTalk list, which encompasses all user groups.

We’re going to look into setting up a mailing list for members to provide a localized communication resource – you’ll be able to post questions, jobs, chat or whatever you like.  That’ll be forthcoming and I should have some news on it at the next meeting at month’s end.

We also discussed the idea of member profiles on the blog or of finding some way to provide a public face for the members – for each other and to raise the profile of the group by giving it a personalized identity.

We’re going to look into this as well, though I don’t expect any movement on it before the January meeting.

That’s it for now.  I’ll be announcing the next meeting (January 26) early next week.

Happy FileMaking!

- Colin

 

“Hello everyone.  I’m starting this blog in tandem with a push to move the Philly FileMaker Developer Group into a more participatory, public space.  Not really sure yet where that will take us.”

We’ve done our best since then to make our user group experience both public and participatory, especially in terms of sharing content with an audience that doesn’t necessarily walk through our physical doors.  In the past year we’ve:

• written product reviews
• posted FileMaker tips and tricks
• launched the “Five Minutes with Philly FileMaker” video interview series with FileMaker luminaries
• live streamed and recorded Philly FileMaker meeting sessions
• written comprehensive recaps of meetings
• reported from Pause On Error
• reported from DevCon

We also had tons of DevCon speakers present to the group this year, including Matt O’Dell (FileMaker Inc), Jesse Barnum (360Works), Ernest Koe (Proof Group), Jason Mundok (IT Solutions Consulting), and Tim Neudecker (Kyologic), as well as MacWorld Expo speaker, author and Applescript guru Ben Waldie (Automated Workflows) and Anthony Celini (CAB Inc).  Thank you!

And a thank you in advance to Molly Connolly (Thorsen Consulting) and Kirk Bowman (Mighty Data), who will present in February and March 2010 respectively.

As far as the blog itself, we’re still working out which of these efforts best serve our core group and the general public, so expect things to continue to change.

But I thought I’d take this opportunity to solicit suggestions from the group and from the public as to what you’d like to see in this space.  You can email me at colin.keee(at)itsolutions-inc.com with anything you’d like to share.

It’s been an exciting year, and we’re looking forward to the next one.  For those of you in the neighborhood, hope to see you in December!

Best,

Colin Keefe
PFUG Coordinator