Monday began with a bright sun. I gathered my things from hotel one and headed to the Cosmopolitan where I began the week of nothing-but-FileMaker.
It was a pretty low-key day. I registered for the conference, got my FileMaker swag and drink tickets, and waited for my room in the lobby. There I ran into a few people I’ve met before and introduced myself to new folk.
It is always my intention to seek out those people who are coming for the first time to FileMaker DevCon, so I kept my eye out for those “1st Time” ribbons we hang from our name card. I wished them well on their new adventure here.
Training Day
Sara Severson and Bob Bowers were presenting in the Day 1 training block, so I snuck a peek in there. Sara’s intermediate class had many people in there, and she was leading them in organizing the relational graph and the concept of basing layouts off all anchors or parent tables. Bob’s class was packed as well as people learned how to get more out of FileMaker in complex reports and charts. He has an amazing amount of knowledge in this area. I learned something in the few minutes I was in there.
For a time, I retired to my room. I needed to review the week ahead, and I was tired. On the first day. Introverts need their alone time to recharge, and recharge I did. For a time I walked the strip in the 105º weather, but mostly I hung out and read and slept.
Before the big kickoff, Soliant folk gathered and said hi to each other. We all work closely together but, since many of us work remotely, we see each other rarely. It is good to catch up and to see the faces of the people with which you work.
Keynote
The conference officially began with the Keynote address. Here, FileMaker Inc welcomes us to the conferences and promises a great week. As I took my seat, I met part of a Developer’s Challenge group, the International Highrollers. Each person is from a different country: Belgium, USA, Italy, and Japan. They’re working for the nonprofit group: http://nphy.org. For at least two of them, this DevCon is their first time. Wow. I wished them good luck on the project and gave them some pointers about the first time, based on this post I wrote a few days earlier.
The keynote began. I can’t talk about it specifically as it is confidential. Generally though, it is great to see a glimpse of FileMaker’s roadmap of the platform.
After the keynote came the reception. We all gathered in a large room to socialize and have some refreshments. I was disappointed in that I couldn’t find the cookies. I circled the room four times and missed the area in which they were located. Besides that it was comforting to be in the room and to say hi to friends and to make new ones. One of my clients is here, so I got to meet the FileMaker team on their end.
At the end of the long day, I retired to my room in preparation for the next big day of sessions and socializing and food and walking.
