BKeeney Briefs

I’ve been giving some thought about sponsoring a monthly Real Studio webinar (I hate that name, by the way).  Either making it part of the Subscription Video Series I have available on the BKeeney Website or just limiting it to the first 20 or 30 people who show up on any given day.

If you were interested in that sort of thing, would you prefer:

1. That we  (BKeeney Software) set the topic a week or so in advance and post it
2. Allow the potential audience to submit questions beforehand and we pick the ones we want to cover
3. Do an ad-hoc question and answer session the day of the seminar
4. Combination of 1, 2, 3
5. Something completely different

From my standpoint, #1 is the easiest for me.  #2 isn’t so bad and #3 has disaster written all over it due to the randomness involved.  I could see some wise-guy showing up and asking me to code something and then criticize me for a) being slow or b) doing it in a way they wouldn’t (meaning they knew how to code it to begin with).

I could see recording them and serving them up for later playback.  I could also see using these as opportunities to explore some of the 3rd party controls and libraries out there and inviting their developers on to talk about them.  Regardless, I think this is an area that could use some exploration.

So before I go down the proverbial rabbit hole on this, what say you?  What am I not thinking about?

 

If you missed THE Real Studio event in North America in March, you can still join in on the fun.  The Association of REALbasic Professionals (ARBP) posted the videos of the conference on their website at http://www.arbpmembers.org.  It is available to all paid memberships and to conference attendees.

It has been my honor and privilege to help birth ARBP and lead it these past two and a half years.  It is time for me to pass the baton to new leadership and see how the organization grows from here.  I’ve helped organize two conferences as well as get the organization going and I’m ready to relax for a while (though I’m sure you can’t get rid of me that easily).

I hope that you consider helping the organization out.  The more individuals we have helping spread the word, the better it becomes.  I’m sure I’ll post more details later.

Conferences are always nice because you make connections with people new to you and you get to renew connections with old friends and it was no different with the 2011 Real Studio Summit in Atlanta this past weekend.  Forty-three people from around the world (quite a few Europeans were there as well as Australians) joined us for the two day event.

Despite my initial misgivings about the location, most conference attendees gave it a big thumbs up for a convenient location.  Being 10 minutes from the airport made it easy for everyone to get there.

Geoff Perlman, CEO of Real Software, showed us some upcoming UI changes to the Real Studio IDE that I think everyone will like as it eliminates some mousing.  Of course I will have to reserve judgement on it until I actually use it 8 hours a day, but from the sneak peak he gave us it will be a nice change.

Real Software also presented some of their insights into Web Edition and Paul Lefebvre did a followup session showing a Web Edition application in action.

The sessions were interesting.  I always learn something in a session even if it’s in a topic that I think I know rather well.  My own session on Reporting tools for Real Studio seemed to be well received (at least no one threw anything at me) with the Roth Software folks showing me some upcoming features in their product, RSReport, that made me very excited.  Can anyone say ‘runtime interaction’ in your reports?

Also good news is that we found a new board of directors for ARBP and by the end of April my presidency of the organization will be over.  It’s been a long two and a half years and it’s time for others to lead.  Putting on the conference will be it for me.  The only thing I have left is to process the videos (close to 13 hours!) so it can eventually go on the website for ARBP members to view.

More, I’m sure, in the upcoming weeks and months as I get some sleep.

Quick update on the ARBP and REAL Software Atlanta Summit.  This is the last week to get the early adopter pricing.  Purchase seats before February 1 to get the reduced price of $350.  After that it’s the full price of $450.  ARBP paid memberships get a reduced rate (check the discounts pages for coupon codes).

As of this morning, we have confirmed attendees coming from Europe and Australia and, of course, from all over the United States.  This is an excellent opportunity to talk REALbasic with others that know REALbasic.  This is THE place to find REALbasic developers for your Macintosh, Linux, Windows and Web projects and also a good place, as a developer, to find some work.  Certainly this conference is a good way to network with the REALbasic community.

Geoff Perlmann and Thom McGrath from REAL Software are presenting several sessions which should be a lot of fun.  They’ll be presenting about the new Web Edition and upcoming features.  If I was a betting person I would bet that REAL Software will show off something very different at the conference (don’t ask because I don’t know what it is).

So there you go.  What are you waiting for?  Come join us for what promises to be a very fun time.  Get your geek-on!

More information on the conference can be found at http://arbpmembers.org/real-studio-summit-2011.  Complete session list is at http://arbpmembers.org/real-studio-summit-2011/sessionspeaker-listing.

If you had one thing to change about REAL Studio, what would it be?  I’ve been giving this some thought recently and I think the number one thing that I wish was better is the training material.  To me, training material includes tutorials and example projects.

Yes, there are examples, but I find them to be so simple they don’t scale very well into my own applications.  Often, when I’m learning something new in REAL Studio I find the examples to almost hinder me because they demonstrate the most basic way to use <insert control/class/technique here> and not how you’d use it in a real application.  Don’t get me wrong, I understand that you need those types of examples but I want/need something just a little more in-depth.  I could just as easily argue that a more complete project that demonstrates several things at once is better than the simple ones but, as they say, to each their own.

Along with examples, I find the lack of REALbasic training materials on the RS website to be…interesting.  If you look at their training webpage at http://www.realsoftware.com/support/training.php they are pointing to three 3rd party websites (one of which is mine, by the way).  I find it odd that a development tool that is meant for hobbyist developers doesn’t really have a nice and big tutorials and training section.  I’m not complaining (because it’s part of my income) – just pointing it out.

Don’t get me going on the lack of Web Edition apps on their website…

Friday afternoon grousing material for you.  What would you change?

This will probably be the last post of the year so I can spend some quality time with my family.  Have a very happy holiday season.  For those celebrating Christmas, have a very Merry Christmas.  Have a joyous and safe New Years as well.

One thing that’s come up recently (and more than once actually) is the need for training materials for REALbasic.  I’ve seriously been thinking about doing video training sessions and offering them through the BKeeney.com website as a subscription service and streaming video (physical DVD’s are a possibility but increases the initial startup expense and I want to avoid physical inventory that’s dated).

Any sort of video training will take a fair amount of time to complete.  Just covering the basics of REALbasic will take months to get something out the door.  Add in the Rapid Release Model and I will always be aiming at a moving target.  How many hours of video is needed to put the shingle out?  What’s a good price (keeping in mind that while doing the videos I’m not doing as much consulting work)?

My guess is that most RB developers reading my blog have been using RB for a while but I’d like to get your opinions on this as well:  How much of a beginner level versus intermediate and advanced material?  And even for beginner material do I even need to go so far as to explain what variables are?  In other words do I assume the student knows absolutely nothing about software development or has at least a little knowledge of some other language?

In that same light, would problem solving videos be better than a more traditional approach?  For example, I could do a video training on “How to Open files of a particular type” versus exploring the various things in the FolderItem.  Each approach has its merits and drawbacks.  What do you think?  I could argue both ways.

Regardless, the one thing I think that will happen is every video will be tagged with the RB objects used and perhaps even the object methods used.  So doing a search on FolderItem would result in a bunch of videos that use the folderitem.  If you did FolderItem.Item you’d might find videos that iterate through the items in a directory and so on.  The drawback to the tags is that any complete application examples will use a lot of different RB objects which then might make the tags worthless because a search will hit every video.

For what it’s worth, there is some existing REALbasic training.  They have 7 hours of RB training and a subscription gives you access to a LOT of other applications (which I could never offer).  I’ve watched all the free training and it seems to do an adequate job but it hasn’t been updated since 2007.  I plan on updating more often than every two years – especially if I can pay my bills from it!

I’ve also done a minor example application and recorded it.  With a little editing and speed up of typing sequences it’s at two and half hours and I don’t consider it done yet!  Add in an IDE walk-through, some Remote Debugging, and miscellaneous topics and I probably have 4 to 5 hours of relatively decent video footage.  I think I can do it, I just need some positive encouragement or negative feedback before I commit myself.

At this point, dear readers, I’d like your thoughts.  Good or bad idea?  What are the pitfalls that I haven’t thought of yet?  Will people actually pay for an on-going video series on REALbasic?  Should the emphasis be on beginner, intermediate, or advanced material?  Should I let the members determine the production order via an online poll?