Silverlight Rumblings

Next Tuesday (8/10) the Portland Silverlight User Group will be meeting out at the Intel Ronler Acres Auditorium (RA1) to listen to Adam Kinney and Karl Shifflett show how to build toolable Silverlight applications that enable the developer/designer workflow.  If the topic and speakers aren't reason enough to attend, then consider the fact we have killer swag we'll be giving away.

• 1 MSDN Ultimate subscription valued at over $200,000
• Website Spark subscriptions valued at over $100,000

Look forward to seeing you there!

WHAT: Portland Silverlight User Group - August Meeting

WHEN: Tuesday 08/10/2010
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Vertigo)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. Afterwards at On The Border

WHERE: Intel Ronler Acres 1 (RA1) Auditorium (map)
2501 NW 229th Ave.
Hillsboro, OR 97124-5506

WHO: Adam Kinney & Karl Shifflet
Adam Kinney is a creative developer with a strong focus on UI technologies including HTML, CSS, Canvas, Processing, Flash, WPF and Silverlight. He enjoys working in the space between design and development teams enabling the best results from both sides. Having spent the last five years as an Evangelist for Microsoft, Adam also enjoys sharing his knowledge and helping others learn new UI technologies and tools. Recently leaving Microsoft, he is currently working on a variety of interesting projects and experiments with the crew at Pixel Lab and posting tutorials on his personal site: http://adamkinney.com.

Karl Shifflett is a Program Manager at Microsoft working on the WPF and Silverlight Designer since August of 2008. Before Microsoft, Karl was a software architect, former Microsoft MVP and Code Project MVP. He has been designing & developing business applications since 1989 and transitioned to .NET in March of 2003. In April of 2007 he joined the list of WPF fanatics & evangelists. He is a member of Team Mole that delivered the Mole Visualizer for Visual Studio to the world. He is the author of the very popular XAML Power Toys; loves WPF and Silverlight LOB and is developing a passion for Windows Phone 7 and ASP.NET MCV. You can read his blog at: http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/.

TOPIC: Building toolable Silverlight applications that enable the designer developer workflow
Warning: We won’t be 20 seconds into this session before mashing the gas pedal to the floor. After looking at the XAML tools Blend & Cider, we’ll dive deep into toolable application design. Toolable applications not only enhance the initial development experience but also provide benefits to long term application maintenance. An additional benefit is the enabling of the designer developer workflow. See the two roles played out in the presentation as they collaborate without clobbering each other.

Sponsors: While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

• Vertigo - http://www.vertigo.com
• Webtrends - http://www.webtrends.com
• Intel - http://www.intel.com

Next Tuesday (8/10) the Portland Silverlight User Group will be meeting out at the Intel Ronler Acres Auditorium (RA1) to listen to Adam Kinney and Karl Shifflett show how to build toolable Silverlight applications that enable the developer/designer workflow.  If the topic and speakers aren't reason enough to attend, then consider the fact we have killer swag we'll be giving away.

• 1 MSDN Ultimate subscription valued at over $200,000
• Website Spark subscriptions valued at over $100,000

Look forward to seeing you there!

WHAT: Portland Silverlight User Group - August Meeting

WHEN: Tuesday 08/10/2010
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Vertigo)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. Afterwards at On The Border

WHERE: Intel Ronler Acres 1 (RA1) Auditorium (map)
2501 NW 229th Ave.
Hillsboro, OR 97124-5506

WHO: Adam Kinney & Karl Shifflet
Adam Kinney is a creative developer with a strong focus on UI technologies including HTML, CSS, Canvas, Processing, Flash, WPF and Silverlight. He enjoys working in the space between design and development teams enabling the best results from both sides. Having spent the last five years as an Evangelist for Microsoft, Adam also enjoys sharing his knowledge and helping others learn new UI technologies and tools. Recently leaving Microsoft, he is currently working on a variety of interesting projects and experiments with the crew at Pixel Lab and posting tutorials on his personal site: http://adamkinney.com.

Karl Shifflett is a Program Manager at Microsoft working on the WPF and Silverlight Designer since August of 2008. Before Microsoft, Karl was a software architect, former Microsoft MVP and Code Project MVP. He has been designing & developing business applications since 1989 and transitioned to .NET in March of 2003. In April of 2007 he joined the list of WPF fanatics & evangelists. He is a member of Team Mole that delivered the Mole Visualizer for Visual Studio to the world. He is the author of the very popular XAML Power Toys; loves WPF and Silverlight LOB and is developing a passion for Windows Phone 7 and ASP.NET MCV. You can read his blog at: http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/.

TOPIC: Building toolable Silverlight applications that enable the designer developer workflow
Warning: We won’t be 20 seconds into this session before mashing the gas pedal to the floor. After looking at the XAML tools Blend & Cider, we’ll dive deep into toolable application design. Toolable applications not only enhance the initial development experience but also provide benefits to long term application maintenance. An additional benefit is the enabling of the designer developer workflow. See the two roles played out in the presentation as they collaborate without clobbering each other.

Sponsors: While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

• Vertigo - http://www.vertigo.com
• Webtrends - http://www.webtrends.com
• Intel - http://www.intel.com

Next Tuesday (8/10) the Portland Silverlight User Group will be meeting out at the Intel Ronler Acres Auditorium (RA1) to listen to Adam Kinney and Karl Shifflett show how to build toolable Silverlight applications that enable the developer/designer workflow.  If the topic and speakers aren't reason enough to attend, then consider the fact we have killer swag we'll be giving away.

• 1 MSDN Ultimate subscription valued at over $200,000
• Website Spark subscriptions valued at over $100,000

Look forward to seeing you there!

WHAT: Portland Silverlight User Group - August Meeting

WHEN: Tuesday 08/10/2010
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Vertigo)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. Afterwards at On The Border

WHERE: Intel Ronler Acres 1 (RA1) Auditorium (map)
2501 NW 229th Ave.
Hillsboro, OR 97124-5506

WHO: Adam Kinney & Karl Shifflet
Adam Kinney is a creative developer with a strong focus on UI technologies including HTML, CSS, Canvas, Processing, Flash, WPF and Silverlight. He enjoys working in the space between design and development teams enabling the best results from both sides. Having spent the last five years as an Evangelist for Microsoft, Adam also enjoys sharing his knowledge and helping others learn new UI technologies and tools. Recently leaving Microsoft, he is currently working on a variety of interesting projects and experiments with the crew at Pixel Lab and posting tutorials on his personal site: http://adamkinney.com.

Karl Shifflett is a Program Manager at Microsoft working on the WPF and Silverlight Designer since August of 2008. Before Microsoft, Karl was a software architect, former Microsoft MVP and Code Project MVP. He has been designing & developing business applications since 1989 and transitioned to .NET in March of 2003. In April of 2007 he joined the list of WPF fanatics & evangelists. He is a member of Team Mole that delivered the Mole Visualizer for Visual Studio to the world. He is the author of the very popular XAML Power Toys; loves WPF and Silverlight LOB and is developing a passion for Windows Phone 7 and ASP.NET MCV. You can read his blog at: http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/.

TOPIC: Building toolable Silverlight applications that enable the designer developer workflow
Warning: We won’t be 20 seconds into this session before mashing the gas pedal to the floor. After looking at the XAML tools Blend & Cider, we’ll dive deep into toolable application design. Toolable applications not only enhance the initial development experience but also provide benefits to long term application maintenance. An additional benefit is the enabling of the designer developer workflow. See the two roles played out in the presentation as they collaborate without clobbering each other.

Sponsors: While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

• Vertigo - http://www.vertigo.com
• Webtrends - http://www.webtrends.com
• Intel - http://www.intel.com

Hey guys, tomorrow the Portland Silverlight User Group (PDXSLUG) will be meeting at WebTrends.  Corrina Black, a UX Designer on the Microsoft Developer Division team will be talking about how to create great user experiences with Expression Blend.

We build software products with certain features, and our competitors come along and include those same features.  Eventually the only way we can distinguish ourselves from our competitors is by creating great user experiences.  This is how the iPhone leapfrogged both Windows Mobile and the BlackBerry, and how the Xbox became the dominant gaming console.

IMHO, this session is a must-attend, regardless of whether you are a designer or a developer.  And even if you don't use Microsoft tools, you can still benefit because creating a great UX is independent of platform (Adobe vs Microsoft vs Java vs Objective-C).

Hopefully I'll see you there.

WHAT: Portland Silverlight User Group - April Meeting

WHEN: Tuesday 04/13/2010
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Vertigo)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. Afterwards at TBD

WHERE: Webtrends (map)
851 SW 6th Ave.
Portland, OR 97204-1337

WHO: Corrina Black
Corrina Black grew up sketching pictures and cartoons, but didn’t turn to design until she discovered the Web and taught herself to design and code simple websites. She focused instinctively on user flow, interaction, and attractive solutions. Corrina is currently a UX Designer on the Microsoft Developer Division team. To broaden her impact, Corrina pursued a software engineering degree to combine with her passion for user experience design. For Corrina, user experience is what matters. A product that doesn’t solve a problem, is difficult to use, and doesn’t draw the user in, regardless of how amazing the technology, will fail.

TOPIC: Creating Great UX with Expression Blend
Corrina will do an intro to Blend and walkthrough the process of creating a great user experience; this will involve SketchFlow because detailing and iterating on user flow, layout, and animations and transitions prior to full-scale implementation is key to great UX design and this is done in tools like SketchFlow. She will also likely walkthrough the process of building a simple application in Blend to show the core functionality of Blend (maybe create a phone application).

Warmup - The Reactive Framework (Rx) in Silverlight
At the beginning of the meeting (6pm) our own Eric Sterling of Vertigo will be giving a short introduction to Rx. Have you had trouble writing asynchronous code (including unit testing code)? If so, Rx offers a compelling and syntactically attractive way of handling events.

Sponsors: While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

• Vertigo - http://www.vertigo.com
• Webtrends - http://www.webtrends.com

Two weeks ago I saw a tweet where the folks at Seesmic were offering free stickers.  Being a die-hard Seesmic fan myself, I decided to hit them up and see if they would kick in some stickers for the Portland Silverlight User Group.  Needless to say, Loic did not disappoint.  Here's the catch though, I only have 80+, and I'm only going to hand them out one at a time.  If you want one then you must show up to our next user group meeting.  We are meeting this Friday, 6pm at WebTrends (map).  Shawn Wildermuth will be here answering all your Silverlight questions.  The folks at Vertigo are providing the free pizza and soda.  I will be handing out Seesmic stickers.  Look forward to seeing you there.

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.

WHAT: Portland Silverlight User Group - February Meeting

WHEN: Friday 02/19/2010 - (Yes, Friday is Correct)
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Vertigo)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. Afterwards at TBD

WHERE: Webtrends (map)
851 SW 6th Ave.
Portland, OR 97204-1337

WHO: Shawn Wildermuth
Shawn Wildermuth is a Microsoft MVP (C#), member of the INETA Speaker's Bureau and an author of six books on .NET. Shawn is involved with Microsoft as a Silverlight Insider, Data Insider and Connected Technology Advisors (WCF/Oslo/WF). He has been seen speaking at a variety of international conferences including SDC Netherlands, VSLive, WinDev and DevReach. Shawn has written dozens of articles for a variety of magazines and websites including MSDN, DevSource, InformIT, CoDe Magazine, ServerSide.NET and MSDN Online. He has over twenty years in software development regularly blogs about a range of topics including Silverlight, Oslo, Databases, XML and web services on his blog (http://wildermuth.com).

TOPIC: Silverlight Conversation and QA w/ Shawn Wildermuth
Do you have questions about Silverlight? Shawn's the person to ask. He's full of Silverlight knowledge, and he's coming to Portland to have a conversation with us. Shawn is extremely well known and respected in the Silverlight community, and it's going to be a real treat to have him. If you want to have a complex and nuanced discussion about Silverlight, join us for this meeting.

Warmup - Operating System in Your Browser Window
At the beginning of the meeting (6pm), Marc Schulper will show us how to write Silverlight applications for a web based operating system.

Sponsors: While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

• Vertigo - http://www.vertigo.com
• Webtrends - http://www.webtrends.com

Thanks to everyone who showed up and particpated during my MVVM presentation at PADNUG on Tuesday night.  We had a large turnout (80+) and it was a bit intimidating.

The slides and examples are posted at http://kelly.whitepdx.com/mvvm/.

I can see there's a lot of interest in this topic.  Things are definitely picking up in the industry for work opportunities for using WPF and Silverlight (thanks Win7!).  If you want to learn more about this topic, please download the slide deck and check out the links to additional resources.  Just a word of caution, it's going to take some effort to learn MVVM, so be prepared to invest yourself in it.  Also, I was talking with Erik Mork and others about having a follow-up MVVM presentation as part of the new Portland Silverlight User Group.  Stay tuned for more information regarding that.