Silverlight Atlanta

After a year of waiting to find out Microsoft’s future vision for Silverlight, we are finally on the verge of figuring it out as the Microsoft BUILD conference has just finished.

The next Silverlight Meetup will gather a panel of members who went to BUILD and are very vested in the future of the Silverlight technology, whether it’s in blogging, training, or simply being an expert.

You can catch up on most of the sessions here: http://www.buildwindows.com, btw.

At 6:30 on Wednesday, September 28th at Five Seasons Brewing, Jim Wooley, Wells Caughey, Jason Rainwater, Sergey Barskiy and others will talk about what they learned about the new XAML-based platform being introduced in “Windows 8″, what the future of Silverlight 5 looks like, what Microsoft’s tablet strategy will be, what new tools will be offered for working with HTML5, what the future of .NET will look like, etc.

I’m making this up as I go along, but basically Microsoft appears to be planning a tectonic shift in strategy. We’ll try to get everyone up to date on what these changes are and how we can take advantage of them to be ahead of the curve in 2012.

I want to make it clear, though, that Silverlight is alive and well and going strong. Tout court, it continues to be supported on Win8 Desktop mode, and will be portable with a bit of work to the new WinRT stack for the Metro shell. Nothing has changed, and there’s no reason to panic.

That said, in the interest of meeting the broadest needs of our Silverlight developers, the Atlanta Silverlight group will be changing its focus in the next few months to be more inclusive of other XAML technologies such as WPF and WinRT XAML … we can even do some html/js for WinRT if there is interest.

We are fortunate to have Rob Eisenberg with us for the next Silverlight Atlanta Meetup on Thursday, June 2nd, 6:30 PM at 5 Seasons Brewing. As MVVM has become the standard architectural design pattern for XAML-based development over the past few years, two MVVM frameworks have dominated the field. If you needed an MVVM framework that was easy to learn, you typically went for Laurent Buignon’s MVVM Light. If you needed a more powerful MVVM framework, you would reach for Rob Eisenberg’s Caliburn.Micro framework.
The acknowledged power and flexibility of Rob’s Caliburn.Micro framework has tended to make developers concerned that it was also too complex and difficult to learn. At the next Silverlight Atlanta meeting, Rob will show that this is not true as he walks us through the features of Caliburn.Micro and demonstrates how to use it effectively in our applications.
Abstract:
In this session we will look at the Caliburn.Micro framework and discover how it simplifies Xaml application development. We’ll begin with a short discussion of the MVVM pattern, then move on to see how Caliburn.Micro implements it. We’ll look at several samples, each one demonstrating a different feature of the framework. As we go, you will see how the “opinions” the framework holds can save you work and bring simplicity to otherwise complex UI programming.
Twitter Handle: @EisenbergEffect
Bio:
Rob Eisenberg is the Chief Architect at Blue Spire, a software development firm specializing in UI architecture and engineering. He is coauthor of Sam’s Teach Yourself WPF in 24 Hours, the architect and lead developer of the Caliburn.Micro Framework for Xaml-based technologies and a Silverlight MVP. When not coding, Rob enjoys swing dancing, making artisan cheese and playing drums.

Tech Ed 2011 is bringing lots of top talent to Atlanta. We are fortunate to have one of the best, Pete Brown, with us to present A Lap Around Silverlight 5 on Wednesday, May 18th.

He has also agreed to do a Q&A afterwards on the future of Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone, a topic he is eminently qualified to talk about.

In case you don’t know, Pete used to be one of us — a Silverlight developer out of Maryland who amazed the Silverlight world with what he was doing in his free time including porting a C64 emulator to Silverlight using the WriteableBitmap.

He then joined Microsoft as a WPF evangelist and quickly rose through the ranks to become a Senior Community Program Manager overseeing Microsoft’s community efforts. In the meantime, he also managed to write the highly popular book Silverlight 4 in Action.

Last year when no one was sure what was happening with Silverlight, it was mainly Pete who politely asked around the halls of Redmond in order to give us all a better and more balanced picture of what was going on.

Please join us on May 18th, 6:30 PM at 5 Seasons for what is bound to be a very exciting session of the Silverlight Atlanta Meetup.

Here’s Pete’s official biography (I have no idea what a Netduino is — probably something smart people drink):

Pete Brown is a Senior Community Program Manager with Microsoft, leading the Developer Guidance developer community team, as well as the author of the recently released book “Silverlight 4 in Action”, published by Manning. Pete’s focus at Microsoft is the community around client application development (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone, Windows Forms, Native Windows API and more). In past lives, Pete was a Microsoft Silverlight MVP, INETA speaker, and RIA Architect. Oh, and Pete adores his C64 and digs his Netduino.

There is an update to the WP7 Dev Tools now available for download which includes the new copy/paste feature as well as a new emulator that allows you to use it.  Enjoy!

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=49b9d0c5-6597-4313-912a-f0cca9c7d277&displaylang=en

Don’t miss the Silverlight for Windows 7 Firestarter this Thursday. Register here: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032473646&Culture=en-US

Following the Firestarter, there will be an Ask the Silverlight Experts panel at Champps: http://www.meetup.com/The-Atlanta-Silverlight-Meetup-Group/events/16406615/

Registration for MIX11 has finally opened.  Along with it, the voting has begun for the Open Call — ten sessions will be selected from the several hundred that have been submitted.  You do not have to attend MIX11 in order to vote — the voting is open to anyone who is interested in influencing which sessions will be shown at MIX.

Several of our own from the Atlanta Silverlight community have submitted talks:

Virginia Cagwin would like to speak about Thriving as an Agile UX Designer of One using Sketchflow and Blend .

Shawn Wildermuth has submitted a talk on Optimizing Data Intensive Windows Phone 7 Applications as well as one on The Next Application Platform ?

Sean Gerety has submitted a fascinating talk called What Software Can Learn From the World of Magic .

Dennis Estanislao has a talk called Keepin’ It Real: What Designers and Developers Don’t Get About Each Other. If this is anything like the talk he delivered at ReMIX last year, we are in for a treat.

Bethany Jones Vananda, who has long been on the other side helping to fund and support events in the Atlanta area, has submitted Notes from the Chasm: Understanding the Designer & Developer Relationship from the Customer’s Perspective.

Steve Porter has offered a talk on HTML5: HTML5 from our Silverlight Perspective .

We have been trying to get Bill Reiss to come up to Atlanta to talk to the Silverlight User Group for quite a while.  Bill would like to talk about High Performance 2D Graphics in Silverlight .

This year, Microsoft, will bring the Atlanta technical community together not only in spirit, but in holiday fun as well. We invite you to join us for a holiday celebration at {three} Sheets on Wednesday, December 15 at 7pm.   Please register on Eventbrite.

This will be the perfect event for networking and seeing what’s going on with the different technologies in the community. When you’re not mingling, have some fun playing the new Xbox Kinect. Or enjoy some of the delicious appetizers provided by Microsoft.

Don’t forget, it’s the giving season! It’s not required, but please bring an new, unwrapped toy to give to Toys for Tots. We would like to do our part for this wonderful cause.

On Thursday, December 2nd, Scott Guthrie, Jesse Liberty, John Papa, Tim Heuer and more will be presenting the Silverlight 4 Firestarter in Redmond, Washington.

[The webcast for the firestarter -- in case you missed it or simply want to review -- is available at http://www.silverlight.net/news/events/firestarter/ .]

The Microsoft Office in Atlanta will be hosting a Viewing Party of the firestarter for the first 85 people who register.  Lunch and dinner will be provided.  Sign-up here.

This is a live viewing of the Silverlight Firestarter streaming online from Redmond. Watching live with peers gives you the opportunity to ask questions and chat with experts! Since this event starts at 8 AM Redmond time, we are filling the morning with self-paced labs, mini talks and other goodies. Lunch (sandwiches) and dinner (pizza) will be provided.

Local Silverlight Pros Jason Rainwater, Jonathan Marbutt and Jim Wooley will commence the firestarter with several short presentations.  They will be joined by James Ashley at 3:15 for an ask the experts panel during which we will go over the keynote announcements about Silverlight 5 and discuss the future of Silverlight.

9:00 am – Labs and mini-presentations
11:00 am – Lunch and networking
12:00 pm – Scott Guthrie, The Future of Silverlight
1:45 pm – Jesse Liberty, Data Binding Strategies with Silverlight and WP7
2:30 pm – Yavor Georgiev, Building Compelling Apps with WCF using REST and LINQ
3:15 pm – Break and Ask the Experts
4:00 pm – Dan Wahlin, Building Feature Rich Business Apps Today with RIA Services
4:45 pm – John Papa, MVVM: Why and How? Tips and Patterns using MVVM and Service Patterns with Silverlight and WP7
5:45 pm – Tim Heuer, Tips and Tricks for a Great Installation Experience
6:30 pm – Mike Cook & Jossef Goldberg, Tune Your Application: Profiling and Performance Tips
7:30 pm – Jaime Rodriguez, Performance Tips for Silverlight Windows Phone 7
8:15 pm – Wrapup and give-aways

On Wednesday, October 27th, Joel Johnson will be presenting on the past, present and future of Silverlight development on Windows Phone to the Silverlight Atlanta User Group. We will meet at 6:30 pm at 5 Seasons Brewing at the Prado.

Bio:

Joel Ivory Johnson is a Device Application Development MVP and is currently transitioning into the Windows Phone Development MVP program. He has extensive experience with Windows Mobile, Silverlight and XNA. He has also been the caretaker of one of the rare early Windows Phone devices for several months.
Abstract:

With Microsoft’s official WP7 launch with AT&T Monday, we should soon be seeing signs of the much anticipated Windows Phone marketing blitz. The Windows Phone marketplace is now open for early submissions and AT&T has announced three new phones which will become available in the US in early November.
Now that we are at the end of the year-long rush by Microsoft to get a phone out before Christmas, Joel will help us to take a moment to see how we got to this point. The Microsoft phone strategy was once guided by a desire for a feature rich device targeted at the enterprise. It is now a guided by a desire for a user-experience rich device targeted at consumers. Moreover, the old developer platform has not only been overhauled but completely replaced with a Silverlight + XNA development platform. Joel will show how these two technologies work together on the phone, demonstrating native XNA features as well as how we as Silverlight developers can tap into the XNA APIs to develop rich Silverlight applications for the Phone.

Jeremy Likness has posted his slides from the Meetup last night: http://csharperimage.jeremylikness.com/2010/09/intro-to-mvvm-slides-and-sample-code.html

We’d also like to thank AgiliTrain for sponsoring last night’s presentation.  AgiliTrain provides cutting edge training in Silverlight and Windows Phone development.

If you are planning a Silverlight project, take advantage of AgiliTrain’s expertise to get your development team quickly up to speed on the latest Silverlight techniques.  Sign up now for November workshops in Atlanta:  https://agilitrain.com/