15 years ago, it was relatively easy to find developer communities – they existed pretty much in one place: CompuServe. Over the past 15 years however, they have spread out to wikis, newsgroups, independent sites (such as the UT or Foxite) as well as many who have gone into hiding. There are now tons of social networks out there and while some may dwell more on the social aspect, such as Facebook (which does have its own FoxPro group), others are more business related, such as LinkedIn.
When I first joined LinkedIn, I linked to a number of developer associates as either “past speaker at conferences” or other relationship concepts along those lines but since then LinkedIn made creating groups much easier. As soon as I created the FoxPro developers group, developers started to join.
The link is here:
LinkedIn: FoxPro Developers Group
What do you do with it? For starters, not much right off the bat. It’s a pretty easy way to find other FoxPro developers you know and add them into your LinkedIn network but recently, LinkedIn started adding Discussions as a way for groups to communication so now there’s a new tool as well. It’s not really intended as a replacement for any UT or Foxite or ProFox where regular discussions are held but it will become whatever it becomes.
If you aren’t using LinkedIn, it’s a good business resource – as opposed to a traditional social networking site – and it works really well for finding former co-workers or others in a similar area.
Check it out and join the group!
YFI: The European version of LinkedIn is XING. The FoxPro group there can be found at https://www.xing.com/net/foxpro/
Coincidentally I was on LinkedIn this morning and saw that there was some activity in the discussion group. The first thing that crossed my mind was “Jeez, how can anyone keep up on the myriad places where developers post questions nowadays?” It was definitely easier in the past when we were consolidated.
The second thing that crossed my mind was, “Wow, that MacNeill really contributes to a lot of different places.” Well done.