I don't know about you, but for me, this has been a stressful year.  The economic situation has had some effect financially, but even more than that, I noticed our users are under more pressure than before.  In turn, they are more demanding of us, which equals more stress.  After a long day of work, the last thing I feel like doing is writing code.  My Fox tank is on empty and there hasn't been activity lately here or on the FoxTabs project.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to find out my boss is sending me to the Southwest Fox conference.  I didn't expect to go this year, and I'm really looking forward to it.  It gives me a boost every time, and this year looks to be no exception.  As usual, there are so many good sessions and speakers, I can't possibly see every session I want, but that's a good problem.

My first conference was the 2001 Advisor DevCon in San Diego.  One thing I liked about that conference were the many sessions on architectural subjects like OOP, n-Tier, Design Patterns, Refactoring, etc.  I had a lot of "aha" moments at that DevCon.  Since then, the focus turned to .NET, especially at the Advisor conferences, and I put "Need More OOP" on the conference eval ever year.  This year, not a problem.  There are sessions on refactoring, data-driven architecture, business objects, and advanced OOP design.  Let the noodle baking commence!

My Fox tank is refilling already. :)

www.swfox.net