Silverlight Firestarter / Bus Trip - Recap
I’ll be the first to admit that this post is a little late coming, but honestly it’s taken a while for me to absorb everything and recover from that event. I think everything can be summed up in one word, WOW.
Mini-MIX Conference
I was joking beforehand that I thought the Silverlight Firestarter would be like a miniature MIX conference. If you ask me now, then I’ll tell you that’s exactly what this event turned out to be. The swag was almost identical to what you’d get at MIX. Meh. The people were a smaller subset, but all the core players were there (e.g. Rick Barazza and Mike Wolf weren’t there, but Dave Wolf did an awesome job representing for the rest of Cynergy). Scott Stanfield was there, as were a bunch of the folks out of Vertigo’s Portland office (they came up on the bus). I was a little surprised that Vertigo didn’t have a demo in the keynote, although to be fair, the keynote did seem to focus on line-of-business scenarios. As far as folks from Microsoft, everyone was there that you would have expected.
Keynote
Scott Guthrie hit it out of the park. Please watch the keynote now if you haven’t already. I absolutely loved that the first thing Scott did was address the “elephant in the room”. No, Silverlight is not dead. Not even close. Scott talked about three technology pillars that Microsoft is focusing on (HTML5, Silverlight, WPF). Every developer out there should take note that this is what they should be focusing on now as it will easily carry them for the next 5 years and most likely beyond.
There were lots of cool demos about what’s coming in Silverlight 5. You should note that this is only what Microsoft was ready to show right now. I’m expecting more announcements and demos at MIX about stuff they haven’t even hinted at yet. I’m also expecting to see a beta version of Silverlight 5 at MIX11. I think Scott Guthrie hinted at that when he announced the timeframe. I’m very comfortable with the fact that Microsoft won’t be releasing Silverlight 5 until late 2011, probably at PDC11. This is going to be a huge release for Silverlight. In order for us developers to be ready when it comes we need to first get cracking on Silverlight 4 right now. Seriously. Go buy Pete's book
Networking
This whole event felt very similar to MIX. I spent a lot of time catching up with folks and meeting new faces. The Silverlight community is fairly small and easy to be a part of. It’s a very welcoming community. In think the coolest part of it is just that, it’s a community. I don’t see there being groups within groups, i.e. a super-elite group that is hard to break into. Everyone is very approachable and happy to help you out. At PDC10 I got to talk to a lot of people. This time around I got to talk to even more.
Bus Trip
Ahhh, the bus trip. Each time I think of it I just shake my head and can’t believe it actually happened. I don’t know of any other company that would charter a bus for a user group to bring 40 of its members up for a full day of technology training. I’m still surprised that it actually happened. A huge thanks goes out to John Papa and Brian Goldfarb for having the vision and for being so kind. We had 45 people registered for the bus trip, of which 38 showed up at 4:30am. That’s completely unheard of, especially for a free event. Typically the drop off rate for a free event is like 30%, and we had less than 20%. Time after time, I am utterly amazed at the support and turnout we get from the Portland Silverlight community. Scott Stanfield mentioned to Erik Mork and I that we have something special and unique here. I agree. Hopefully I can capture and share whatever that is so this success can be experienced elsewhere.
Final Thoughts
Watch the keynote. Silverlight is not dead, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If there is any way you can attend MIX11 in person, then I recommend you take advantage of that opportunity. At the very least, be sure to watch the MIX11 keynote live as well as many of the sessions. The three technology pillars you should be focusing on now are Silverlight, WPF, and HTML5. Be open minded and start learning all three.
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