Rick Schummer is the president and lead geek at his company White Light Computing, which is headquartered in southeast Michigan, USA. He prides himself in guiding his customers' Information Technology investment toward success. He enjoys working with top-notch developers; has a passion for developing software using best practices, and for surpassing customer expectations, not just meeting them. After hours he writes developer tools that improve productivity and occasionally pens articles for Fox RockX, Fox Talk, Advisor Guide to Microsoft Visual FoxPro (formerly FoxPro Advisor), CoDe Magazine, and several user group newsletters.
Rick owns another company called Geek Gatherings, LLC focusing on training developers through the use of conferences and formal training sessions. The initial offering of Geek Gatherings, LLC is the Southwest Fox Conference. In 2012 we added the Southwest Xbase++ Conference for developers who use Alaska Software's Xbase++. These conference are currently held in Gilbert Arizona at the SanTan Elegante Conference & Reception Center/Legado Hotel. Advanced training sessions remain in the planning stages.
Previous to these endeavors Rick was a Partner at Geeks and Gurus, Inc. for three years, and served as Director of Development and as a Senior Application Developer for Kirtland Associates, Inc. for two and a half years. He not only wrote code, researched and evaluated technology, and managed customer projects for this organization, but also participated in the education of new and experienced Visual FoxPro developers. Prior to Kirtland, Rick worked for Electronic Data Systems (EDS) for nine years as an Advanced Systems Engineer. There Rick wrote a number of applications for General Motors (Fortune 7, although Fortune 1 when he was there {g}) and GMAC Financial Services. His applications still run in over 300 locations across North and South America. Each of these
experiences taught Rick what to do and not to do in his own company.
Awarded the FoxPro Lifetime Achievement Award at Southwest Fox 2010 Conference. This award starts with nominations from the Fox Community, and is determined by a committee of past recipients, Y. Alan Griver from Microsoft, and a representative from the Fox Community. Rick was literally speechless when his name was announced by Doug Hennig, and is very honored to be recognized by his peers in a community he loves being part of.
He is the architect and lead developer of the WLC Hack CX Professional tool available from White Light Computing and is not-so-hard at work on a Menu Designer replacement, expected to ship before the end of the century. You can find a smattering of free tools on his Web site as well.
In February 2002 Microsoft awarded Rick their Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). He was recognized again for the year 2002-2003, 2003-2004, 2004-2005, 2005-2006, 2006-2007, 2007-2008, 2008-2009, 2009-2010, and 2010-2011.
Looking for details on installing VFP 9 SP2 side-by-side with other versions of VFP 9? Check out this white paper with all the details:
http://www.whitelightcomputing.com/resources/VFP9AllVersionsOnOneComputer.pdf
http://rickschummer.com/blog2/2008/03/vfp-9-rtmsp1sp2-one-machine/
Writing Credentials:
Along with Doug Hennig, Jim Nelson, Eric Selje, and Tamar Granor, wrote numerous chapters, and tech edited several more in VFPX: Open Source Treasure for the VFP Developer, to be published in 2012 by German FoxPro User Group.
Along with Tamar Granor, Cathy Pountney, Doug Hennig, Toni Feltman, and Bo Durban, he wrote two chapters (6 and 8), assisted on two others (1 and Appendix A), and author reviewed a handful more in Making Sense of Sedna and SP2, published by German FoxPro User Group.
Along with several contributors, wrote a couple of chapters in the GLGDW 2006 proceedings called Visual FoxPro Best Practices for the Next Ten Years, published by Hentzenwerke Publishing.
Along with Tamar Granor, Doug Hennig, Toni Feltman, and Jim Slater, he wrote three chapters (1, 4, and 15) in What's New In Nine: Visual FoxPro's Latest Hits, published by Hentzenwerke Publishing.
Along with Rick Borup and Jacci Adams, he is the lead author of Deploying Visual FoxPro Solutions (Deploy Fox), published by Hentzenwerke Publishing.
Along with Andy Kramek and Marcia Akins, Rick wrote five chapters in Mega Fox: 1002 Things You Wanted to Know About Extending Visual FoxPro, published by Hentzenwerke Publishing.
Along with Andy Kramek and Marcia Akins, Rick wrote four chapters in 1001 Things You Wanted to Know About Visual FoxPro (Kilo Fox), published by Hentzenwerke Publishing.
He has used all DOS and Windows versions of Fox since FoxBase+ and started writing with dBASE III and Buttonware's PC-File way back in the mid 1980's.
Rick is a founding member and secretary of the Detroit Area Fox User Group (DAFUG) and past president and secretary of the Sterling Heights Computer Club. He is a regular presenter at the meetings of these organizations, presents at Fox user groups and conferences across North America, has presented for Microsoft at Dev Days, at the Great Lakes Great Database Workshop 2000-2003 and 2006, Essential Fox 2002-2004, Southwest Fox 2004-2013, VFE DevCon 2002 and 2005, German DevCon 2005-2013, Advisor DevCon 2006-2007, OzFox 2007, and DevLink 2010-2011.
Blog: Shedding Some Light found at http://www.rickschummer.com/blog2
Twitter: @rschummer
raschummer@whitelightcomputing.com, rick@rickschummer.com
http://www.whitelightcomputing.com, http://www.rickschummer.com, http://swfox.net