The 4D Community is one of the reason of the success of 4D. Brent Raymond, Senior Software Architect from the Art Institute of Chicago, presents at 4D Summit Portland 2016 the 4DMethod user group: its role, what topics are discussed, how meetings are held…
What is 4DMethod?
4DMethod is a global online user group for 4D & Wakanda users & developers. 4DMethod is leveraging a free video conferencing service based on YouTube. This makes it possible for people attending the meeting to interact the presenter, to share their own code or applications, and to discuss recent news about 4D and Wakanda. These meetings happens every 6 weeks or so.
What can you expect from a typical 4DMethod meeting?
4DMethod meetings are made up of several different segments: 4DMethod news, news from 4D San José, news about Wakanda, 4D iNug E-Digest (go through some of the discussion that happened on the iNug the past few weeks), a review of recent notable Knowledgebase articles, Hey 4D! (an opportunity to share ideas for new features), Questions & Answers and of course the feature presentation itself.
These meetings are an opportunity to see demos by guests from anywhere in the world! The topics can be about plugins, components, custom applications, and pretty much anything that will be of interest to the 4D Community.
Recently two 4D staff members participated to 4DMethod user group meetings:
- Roland Lannuzel (4D Product Team, Le Pecq, France) presented how to generate invoices by programming in 4D Write Pro, based on templates using bookmarks.
- Thomas Maul (VP of Strategy – 4D Product Line, Munich, Germany) demonstrated the new asynchronous messaging system available in 4D v16.
How does it work?
It’s pretty easy. You can simply observe and ask questions via chat or you can interact with the group in the live video conference. We really encourage everybody to do that as it is always great to see your face and to see what concerns you.
If unfortunately you cannot attend to a meeting, don’t worry because they are all accessible via the 4DMethod YouTube channel. The benefit of Google Hangout on Air is that the meetings are immediately recorded on YouTube unlike old-school user group meetings where you absolutely had to be there at the time of meeting.
Since a YouTube video of the meeting is available, you can go through the presentation and directly jump to the part that interests you…, the news, demo, discussion, whatever… without having to watch the whole session. You can watch it your way according to your schedule!
The upcoming topics can be found on the 4DMethod schedule available on 4DMethod’s web site.