Why is the next event called a retreat and not XDC? Because it’s a day shorter?
I can say what I expect knowing whats going on in Microsoft. Microsoft was pushing people towards UWP for some time… but now… they are abandoning it back towards the direction many legacy apps are still using! Win32 APIs. So what’s expected? WinUI 3 adoption. Side effects? Maybe Win 10 forward only. Let’s wait and see.
It’s called developer retreat because we are focusing more on collaboration and less on traditional sessions. It’s also shorter than a usual XDC, 2 days rather than 3, with only 1 day of sessions. I believe, and Dana can confirm when she is back, but it’s planned for less than 100 rather than ~150 people. So we aren’t kidding when we say space limited!
Edited to add details from Dana 
@Alyssa_Foley @Dana_Brown , what may be really useful to all of us is that the session list is updated with estimated runtime if that’s possible? I’m sure it would be much appreciated
and I expect a regular XDC for 2023.
So there is a smaller one put in-between.
Alyssa,
we have a list of sessions, but unfortunately we don’t know which day and time each of these will take place.
Is it possible to add that information please ? I want to add these to may agenda without having to watch during the day to get it.
Many thanks
HI Giles, Yes! You can see the schedule here: XDC Anywhere Sessions List
Great,
thanks a lot !
The main frustration with FileMaker is the ridiculous licensing scheme of course - the small time developer is priced out of the market when trying to sell solutions to small/medium businesses.
For me, Geoff’s speech is reassuring. I wrote my first computer program in 1965 in EDSAC II Autocode and have seen many computer languages come and go since then. So my major concern is stability. How long will XOJO stay in business? Geoff seems to be a firm, calm hand at the XOJO helm. No rash promises. No half-baked rushing into new projects with their risky financial downside. No incompatible new versions. Keep steering a steady course, Geoff. Thank you 
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Really?
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The past 5 years have given us the opposite of what you wrote. I have very little faith that the next 5 won’t be the same.
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I am sorry, and I don’t want to cause another s*storm, but I disagree so whole-heartedly I cannot else than answer.
5 years ago a “close” roadmap was announced. A roadmap containing much of the stuff you still find on that list. Interops, native plugins, a new IDE, Android, to name a few. Android beta was announced for end of 2017, AFTER many of the other points should be delivered. Many pros considered these targets over-ambitious and warned that Xojo clearly doesn’t have the man power for that many things. They were ignored with a firm, calm hand.
The lack of any new insights and the concentration on things that already exist in the sessions does not reassure me, it makes me fear the effects of undermanning are much bigger than I imagined.
I fully missed the promised vision for Xojo.
I also noticed there wasn’t any statistics on user base, forum activity and all that stuff we had in former times. Which says a lot.
Ehem … Web 2.0 is fully incompatible to 1.0 without any easy upgrade path (which had been promised). And still immature.
iOS was basically a toy for many years, and I don’t know about its current state because the changes from Xojo framework to API 2 were disheartening and such killed all my projects.
API 2.0 breaks a horrendous lot of old code just for the sake of new names. Of which some have been renamed once or twice again …
Not to mention the reduced xplatform compatibility because of missing basic superclasses. I mean DesktopButton and Webbutton are still buttons. Not so for Xojo anymore.
There is reason Xojo’s user base experienced an exodus of long-time pros over the last years. In my eyes, not because of a steady course. Maybe rather because they felt treated like “You can go now!” Which, I am sorry, did not feel as half as funny as probably intended.
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Here are my feelings:
- The Keynote lacked the substance that we should all be talking about now. No one is talking about the keynote since any one of us could have given it. I am hearing only crickets.
- I think Geoff missed his audience. This is a developer conference. We know the product features already, drunk the cool-aid.
- Geoff’s talk was more of a Sales keynote than developer keynote.
- I worked for two whole days on my keynote getting the idea, audio, pictures, message across to people who might have actual problems that I have solved, getting a friend to review it, exporting and uploading. It goes for ~30 minutes, cut down from 45 mins. Geoff’s looked like it took hours to prepare for the final 7 minutes.
What it should have contained:
- A State of the Nation in more details, not just bullet points. How are sales going in % terms. What % are we buying Lite vs Professional vs Enterprise vs Platform. How many sales are to new users vs existing users. Where are most sales by country. SME vs corporate sales. Was Covid good or bad for Xojo. Are you all recovering now. List the smiling staff and how they fit in. Do you have positions still open.
- Cameo’s of the staff talking about each of the main product bullet points in scant detail (Apple does this well), ending in “see my talk on XXXday for more details”.
- Cameo’s of the staff talking about their struggles and victories. What was hard and what was easy. What feature would you most proudly put your name on. What drives each of you to deliver a great products to please us.
- Try to anticipate some of the questions we will ask in the sessions and answer the easy ones up front. We will ask more.
- Talk about underlying technologies eg what tool is used for the new documentation system and why you discarded the others. What is the process for linking into the new Windows 11 UI and how it will revolutionise our apps. What is the goal for Mobile apps ie we have iOS vs Android, and what are the problems in merging them into one final product.
- How will the industry move to Apple Silicon, Windows on ARM, Raspberry Pi 64-bit, etc affect Xojo.
- Release all the videos asap and not based on the fakery of Central USA time — we’re on the internet after all. Use NZ time or midnight, then give us three days to talk about them.
- The keynote should be at least one hour long, even if some staff waffle, we can fast forward after all!
- Always have ‘One more thing…’
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What do you mean by this? They never had a common parent.
I mean that the chance was missed – or rather ignored – to do so. There were long discussions on the testers channel about the fact that we are now even more in the situation of long target pragmas than before when developing xplatform, where common control superclasses could have made things much easier. Like a button always has a caption and an Action event, no matter what kind of button.
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Its not missed chance it can still be done. With interfaces. Like they could make IButton interface and let WebButton and DesktopButton implement that IButton. Which would accomplish the same.
Edit: Maybe not fully since Xojo is not good with Properties in Interfaces 
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I have to add that the reason is to have a place in the forum to discuss about it and have basically everyone watch it at around the same time.
Oh. When I was with Xojo, Geoff really wanted that to happen. It’s not really possible though because Xojo doesn’t have multiple inheritance.
Interfaces are the closest we can get, but that doesn’t help with properties.
I 100% agree with @Björn_Eiríksson. Interfaces would solve this IF Xojo added properties to them. Which, by the way, is entirely conceivable and reasonable. In fact, one of the reason I don’t use interfaces much is because they lack properties. Yes I know you can fake them with methods but it’s not the same.
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