I recently made a trip out to Seattle to visit with clients and coworkers. Being from Nebraska, I tend to jump on any opportunity to visit a non-landlocked area (Nebraska is the only triple landlocked state in the US), so I decided to come out early and spend a few days riding my bike on the Olympic peninsula. But more on that later.

I happened to coordinate my trip with this month’s Seattle FileMaker Pro User Group (FMPug) meeting, which also happened to be my first ever FMPug meeting. I’ve attended a number of Java meetups in Omaha, and with the number of large corporations based in Omaha, the Java users group has become quite large, which makes for some lengthy group discussions. I’ve had the idea of starting an FMPug meetup in Omaha for the past few years, so was glad to sit in on the Seattle FMPug meeting to get a better idea of how the group functioned and what kind of topics were covered. 

For this meeting, we discussed the corporate rebrand of Claris (formerly FileMaker Inc.), Claris Connect, and the future of FileMaker Cloud. Although this discussion was geared more toward public opinion, rather than a specific dev topic, it was rather refreshing to participate in a group discussion with other FileMaker devs and users. I learned that the majority of these members have been in this same group for a number of years, and that new faces are welcomed and encouraged to participate.

With that said, I’m more enthusiastic about starting an FMPug here in Nebraska. If you, or anyone you know, would be interested in joining, send us a message or leave a comment below.

As I mentioned earlier, I spent a few days riding the Olympic Discovery Trail, Olympic Adventure Route, and Spruce Trail on the Olympic peninsula. I happened to catch a (mostly) sunny few days, which made for some excellent riding conditions with some stunning views across the northern side of the peninsula. I’ve done a number of adventure-themed bicycle tours over the years, and this route is one of the easiest, but packs in some excellent scenery in a short amount of miles. I’d highly recommend it!

I also spent a few days riding to client meetings and visiting a number of bike shops, coffee shops, and parks all across town. Seattle is quite the city!