We’re thrilled to share some exciting news from the Claris community. Claris has launched the Claris MVP program, a new initiative recognizing the developers, mentors, and advocates who go above and beyond to help the community thrive. And we’re incredibly proud that our own Vincenzo (Vince) Menanno, Beezwax’s Chief Innovation Officer, has been named one of the first Claris MVPs.
As a Claris Platinum Partner, Beezwax has long believed that the strength of the Claris platform goes hand in hand with the strength of its community. The MVP program formalizes something many of us have felt for years — that there are people in this community whose generosity, expertise, and dedication make everyone around them better. Claris describes MVPs as “the innovators, mentors, and connectors who help our community thrive,” and we think that captures the spirit of this program perfectly.
We want to congratulate all members of the inaugural MVP class. These are people we admire and collaborate with — developers and leaders who answer tough questions, share what they know, organize events, create tools, and mentor the next generation. The Claris community is special because of people like them, and we’re glad to see their contributions recognized in this way.
For Vince specifically, this recognition carries a particular significance. In 2024, he received the Claris Excellence Award for Lifetime Achievement — an honor that celebrated the full arc of his 30-plus year career as a consultant, innovator, and community leader. The MVP designation says something different but equally important: that the work continues. Vince isn’t looking back — he’s still showing up at meetups and conferences around the world, still writing and presenting on the latest platform capabilities, still mentoring developers at every level, and still building tools like InspectorPro that make the entire community more effective.
We sat down with Vince to talk about what the MVP recognition means to him, how he thinks about community contribution, and where he sees the biggest opportunities ahead for Claris developers.
Congratulations, Vince, on being named a Claris MVP! For readers who may not be familiar with the program, can you tell us what the Claris MVP designation represents and what it means to you personally to be selected?
VINCE: Thank you! The Claris MVP program recognizes people in the community who are actively contributing — whether that’s mentoring developers, speaking at events, creating educational content, answering questions in forums, or leading user groups. Claris describes MVPs as “the innovators, mentors, and connectors who help our community thrive,” and I think that’s a beautiful way to put it. It’s not just about how much you know technically; it’s about what you do with that knowledge and how you share it with others.
What makes this recognition special to me is that it’s really about the present and the future. It says, “You’re still showing up. You’re still contributing. You’re still helping people.” After 30-plus years in this community, that matters to me more than almost anything. I never want to coast on what I’ve done in the past. I want to keep pushing, keep learning, keep finding ways to help developers do their best work. Being named an MVP feels like a confirmation that I’m still on that path.
And I should say — there are only 16 MVPs, and when I look at the others on that list, I’m humbled. These are people I deeply respect, and being counted among them is a real honor.
You’ve been part of the Claris / FileMaker community for over 30 years — and you’re one of only two people who’ve attended every single FileMaker DevCon and Claris Engage conference. What has kept you so deeply engaged with this community for three decades?
VINCE: Honestly, it’s the people. That’s always been the answer, and it’s still the answer. The Claris community is unlike any other technology community I’ve encountered. There’s a generosity of spirit here — people want to help each other succeed. When I first started out, experienced developers took time to share what they knew with me, and that left a lasting impression. I wanted to be that person for others.
The platform itself has also kept me engaged because it keeps evolving. Just when you think you’ve mastered everything, there’s something new to learn — script transactions, the Data API, AI integration. I’m someone who thrives on that kind of challenge. But the technology alone wouldn’t have kept me here for 30 years. It’s the relationships. Some of my closest friends in the world are people I met at FileMaker DevCon in the 1990s. We’ve watched each other’s careers grow, watched each other’s kids grow up. That’s not something you walk away from.
As for attending every single conference — I think at some point it just became part of who I am. It’s where I recharge. It’s where I get inspired. And now, it’s where I get to give back to the community that gave me so much.
In 2024, you received the Claris Excellence Award for Lifetime Achievement, and now you’ve been named a Claris MVP. How do these two recognitions relate to each other in your mind, and what do they reflect about different aspects of your contributions?
VINCE: They’re complementary, but they’re quite different. The Lifetime Achievement Award was incredibly meaningful — it was Claris looking at the full arc of my career and saying, “Your body of work has made a lasting impact.” It’s a retrospective honor, and I was deeply moved by it. It made me reflect on all the people who helped me along the way — my colleagues at Beezwax, our clients, the community members I’ve collaborated with over the years.
The MVP designation is different in an important way. It’s not about lifetime contribution — it’s about what you’re doing right now. Are you still actively helping the community? Are you still mentoring? Still creating content? Still showing up at events and meetups? Still advocating for the platform? The MVP recognition says yes, you are, and we see it, and it matters.
I think both awards together tell a story I’m proud of: that this isn’t a career I’m winding down from. If anything, I’m more energized now than I’ve ever been. The platform is in one of its most exciting periods, and there’s so much to share with the community. Receiving the MVP designation right after the Lifetime Achievement Award feels like the perfect message — the lifetime of work continues.
You’re well known as a frequent speaker at events around the world — Claris Engage, EngageU, dotFMP, CQDF, Rome FileMaker Week, and dozens of developer meetups — and you present in English, French, and Italian. What drives you to put so much energy into presenting and teaching, and what do you get back from those experiences?
VINCE: The short answer is that I love it. But let me unpack that a little.
When I present, I’m not just sharing information — I’m processing it. The act of preparing a talk forces me to think deeply about a topic, to organize my understanding, and to find ways to make complex ideas accessible. That process makes me a better developer and a better thinker. So there’s a selfish motivation — presenting makes me sharper.
But the bigger motivation is the impact. There’s nothing quite like the moment during a presentation when you see someone’s eyes light up because something clicked for them. Or when someone comes up to me afterward and says, “I’ve been struggling with this for months, and now I understand it.” That’s why I do it. That’s the payoff.
Growing up in Montreal in an Italian family, I grew up speaking French and Italian alongside English. Being able to present in all three languages has allowed me to connect with developers in Canada, across Europe, and beyond in a way that feels personal. When you speak to someone in their language, you reach them differently. I’ve presented at CQDF in Montreal, at conferences in France and Italy, at dotFMP in Berlin, at EngageU across Europe — and each community has its own personality, its own energy. I love that variety.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how much the local meetups mean to me. The big conferences get the attention, but the developer meetups — FM-DiSC in Southern California, DIGFM, FMburgh, the Bay Area group — that’s where some of the most meaningful connections happen. Those smaller, more intimate settings are where you really get to know people and hear about the challenges they’re facing.
InspectorPro has become an essential tool for many FileMaker developers. How has building and evolving that product over the years shaped your own understanding of the platform, and how does it connect to your broader mission of helping the developer community?
VINCE: InspectorPro has been one of the most rewarding projects of my career, and it has absolutely shaped how I think about FileMaker. When you build a tool that analyzes other people’s solutions — looking at their scripts, their schema, their relationships, their performance characteristics — you develop a perspective on the platform that you simply can’t get any other way. I’ve seen thousands of solutions through InspectorPro, and every one of them teaches me something.
That perspective has made me a better consultant, a better teacher, and a better advocate for best practices. When I present on topics like performance optimization or code refactoring, a lot of that insight comes directly from patterns I’ve observed through InspectorPro.
But beyond my own learning, InspectorPro is fundamentally a community tool. I built it because I saw developers struggling with problems that shouldn’t have been so hard — finding where a deleted field is still referenced, understanding how a complex solution is structured, identifying performance bottlenecks. My goal has always been to give developers the visibility they need to do their best work. When someone tells me that InspectorPro helped them solve a problem that was keeping them up at night, that’s the highest compliment I can receive. That’s the connection to the MVP mission — it’s about sharing knowledge and making the community stronger.
Andrew LeCates from Claris described you as someone with a “tireless curiosity who’s always framing new ideas and new technologies in a distinct FileMaker mental framework.” How do you approach staying on the cutting edge — for example, with AI integration in FileMaker — and how do you translate what you learn into something the community can use?
VINCE: That’s a very generous description from Andrew, and I think it captures something that’s central to how I work. When a new technology emerges — AI being the most obvious example right now — my first instinct isn’t just to learn how it works. It’s to ask, “How does this connect to what we already know? How can FileMaker developers use this today? What does this make possible that wasn’t possible before?”
With AI specifically, this has been an incredibly exciting area. At Beezwax, we’ve been exploring how AI and FileMaker can work together, and I’ve presented on this at multiple events, including Claris Community Live sessions and Reconnect in Australia. The key insight I keep coming back to is that FileMaker developers are actually in a fantastic position to leverage AI because they already have the data and the custom application framework. AI isn’t replacing what we do … it’s supercharging it.
My approach to staying current is pretty straightforward … I experiment constantly. I’m always building small prototypes, testing ideas, seeing what works and what doesn’t. And then I share what I learn, whether through blog posts on the Beezwax blog, presentations at meetups, or just conversations with other developers. I believe that innovation isn’t really innovation until it’s shared. An idea that stays in your head doesn’t help anyone. An idea that you put in front of the community … that’s when it starts to have impact.
Your colleague Jay Gonzales has said you have “an amazing ability to connect with people globally, in a way that supports and motivates them to be a bigger part of the Community, regardless of their current ability and role.” Can you talk about your philosophy when it comes to mentoring and making the community welcoming, especially for newer developers?
VINCE: Jay is a wonderful colleague and I appreciate his kind words. My philosophy on mentoring is pretty simple: everyone has something to contribute, and it’s our job as experienced developers to help people find their voice and their confidence.
I remember what it was like to be new. I remember feeling intimidated by how much I didn’t know. And I remember the people who took the time to make me feel like I belonged … who didn’t dismiss my questions, who treated me like a colleague even when I was clearly a beginner. Those people changed the course of my career. I try to be that person for others.
At Beezwax, mentoring is deeply embedded in our culture. We’ve had internship and apprenticeship programs, we do internal R&D and training, and we encourage our team members to get involved in the broader community. I co-organize a lot of these efforts because I believe that investing in people is the highest-return activity in our business.
When I meet a newer developer at a meetup or conference, I try to do two things. First, I listen. I want to understand what they’re working on, what they’re excited about, what they’re struggling with. Second, I try to connect them with the right resources and the right people. The Claris community is full of incredibly generous experts, and sometimes the most valuable thing I can do is make an introduction. That’s what a community is … it’s a network of people lifting each other up.
You’ve authored more than 30 technical articles for the Beezwax blog and peer-reviewed over 200 more. How do you think about knowledge-sharing through writing, and what role does the Beezwax blog play in your community contributions?
VINCE: Writing is a different kind of teaching than presenting, and I value both. A presentation is ephemeral in a way — it happens in a room, at a moment in time, and even if it’s recorded, there’s something about the live experience that’s hard to replicate. A blog post, on the other hand, lives on. It’s searchable. Someone can find it three years later when they’re facing the exact problem you wrote about, and it can save them hours of frustration.
The Beezwax blog has been a vehicle for knowledge-sharing for many years, and I’m proud of what we’ve built there. When I write, I try to go deep on topics that I know developers are grappling with — performance, Perform Script on Server, transactions, Tableau integration, AI capabilities. I want the posts to be practical and actionable, not just theoretical.
Peer-reviewing our team’s articles has also been incredibly rewarding. Beezwax has a talented group of developers, and helping them shape their writing for the blog is its own form of mentoring. When a colleague publishes their first blog post and it gets traction in the community, that’s a beautiful thing. You’re helping someone find their voice and share their expertise with the world.
I think the blog is also a reflection of Beezwax’s values as a company. We believe that sharing knowledge strengthens the entire ecosystem … our clients, our peers, the platform itself. When we publish openly about what we’re learning, everybody benefits.
The Claris platform is in an exciting period of evolution, with AI capabilities, Claris Studio, and Claris Connect all coming together. As someone with the title of Chief Innovation Officer, where do you see the biggest opportunities for the developer community right now, and what are you most excited to explore next?
VINCE: This is one of the most exciting times I can remember in the history of the platform, and I’ve been here for nearly all of it.
The AI integration in FileMaker 2025 is a game-changer. What excites me is that Claris has made it accessible. You don’t need to be a machine learning expert to start building AI-powered features into your FileMaker solutions. Semantic search, natural language queries, local LLM support with full data privacy … these are powerful capabilities that are within reach for everyday FileMaker developers. And that’s exactly in the spirit of what this platform has always been about: making advanced technology accessible to people who solve real business problems.
Beyond AI, the convergence of FileMaker, Claris Studio, and Claris Connect into a unified platform is opening up entirely new possibilities. You can now build solutions that span desktop, mobile, and web with data flowing seamlessly between all three products. The ability to display FileMaker data in Claris Studio, automate workflows through Claris Connect, and maintain the power and flexibility of FileMaker at the core — that’s a compelling story for both developers and the businesses they serve.
What I’m personally most excited to explore next is the intersection of all of these … AI capabilities layered on top of the unified platform. Imagine AI-driven workflows that span FileMaker and Claris Connect, with results surfaced through Claris Studio to web users. We’re just scratching the surface of what’s possible. At Beezwax, we’re actively experimenting with these combinations, and I plan to share what we learn through presentations and blog posts as we go.
For FileMaker developers who aspire to get more involved in the Claris community — whether that’s speaking at events, contributing tools, writing, or mentoring — what advice would you offer based on your own journey?
VINCE: Start now. That’s my number one piece of advice. Don’t wait until you feel like an expert. Don’t wait until you think you have something perfectly polished to share. The community doesn’t need perfection — it needs participation.
If you’ve solved an interesting problem at work, write about it. If you’ve developed a technique that saves you time, present it at your local meetup. If you see someone asking a question in the Claris Community forums that you know the answer to, answer it. Every one of those small contributions matters more than you think.
I’d also say: find your people. Attend a local developer meetup. Go to Claris Engage or one of the regional conferences like EngageU or Vienna Calling. Join online groups. The connections you make will sustain your career in ways you can’t predict. Some of the most important relationships in my professional life started with a simple conversation at a conference.
And don’t be afraid to reach out to experienced developers. In my experience, the Claris community is remarkably generous. Most of us are happy to answer questions, give feedback, or help you prepare a presentation. That’s the culture we’ve built, and it’s one of the things that makes this community special.
One more thing … and this is timely. Claris has announced that nominations for the next class of Claris MVPs will open in September 2026. If you start getting involved now — contributing, presenting, writing, mentoring … you could absolutely be on that list. The MVP program recognizes people who are actively making the community better. There’s no reason that can’t be you.