Silverlight Rumblings

Last spring Erik Mork and myself started talking about the difficulties I was facing with PDXUX.Net and what it's future should be.  The group had shrunk in size and was starting to average an attendance of 12-15 people.  I wasn't sure if the problem was location, or speakers, or the fact that the group had too broad of a focus.  Erik thought the group was just too ahead of its time.  I decided to stop having group meetings while I tried to figure out whether it should continue on.  The sad thing is, no one complained.

Shortly after the release of Silverlight 3, Erik suggested that PDXUX.Net should evolve into the Portland Silverlight User Group.  It's amazing how long we spent thinking up names until we settled on that one.  We thought this group could start in November where we would have a big-name speaker come to town to kick off our event.  The two problems with that idea were 1) I was already scheduled to speak on MVVM during the November PADNUG meeting, and 2) the speakers we were soliciting would be at PDC.  We knew my MVVM presentation would draw a lot of folks (80+) and didn't want to compete against that.  Instead we decided to use that as an opportunity to publicize our December kickoff.  Somehow Scott Stanfield heard we were starting this user group and wanted to get involved, and before I knew it we had our big-name speaker.

For our December meeting with Scott Stanfield presenting we had 80+ folks show up.  This was held clear out in Hillsboro at Corillian/CheckFree/Fiserv (map).

In January we had Mike Downey come and share his story of joining Microsoft and switching from Flash to Silverlight.  This time we held the meeting downtown at WebTrends (map) and had 70+ people show up.

At the end of January we organized a Silverlight Hackathon.  Kimberly Wallmark had suggested this on the Silverlight/PADNUG mailing list and the community response was overwhelmingly in favor of it.  The hackathon was held on Sunday, January 31st at Souk where we had 40+ people show up to code/learn between 1-6pm.

Our next meeting is on Friday, February 19th, again at WebTrends (map).  This will be Q&A session with Shawn Wildermuth.  Shawn's mind will be overflowing with top secret information he'll have just learned at MVP Summit.  If you're interested at all in Silverlight, then you'll definitely want to attend this meeting.

Overall I have to admit that the success of the Portland Silverlight User Group has exceeded my wildest expectations.  We have a lot of interest from other potential speakers who want to be a part of the magic that is happening here in the northwest.  Thanks for your attendance and support.  As you folks continue to attend and be a part of this user group, Erik and I are commited to making it our top priority to have premium speakers.  We want this to be the best Silverlight User Group in the world.  With your help we can be.