Archive for November, 2009

The period between Thanksgiving and New Years Day tends to be slow for the Atlanta user group community. This year, however, there are several events lined up.

November 30: The Atlanta .NET User Group will be meeting at 6 to recap the Professional Developers Conference.

December 2: Rocky Lhotka will be coming to The Atlanta Leading Edge to discuss the current state and future of Microsoft Oslo. He is fresh from the PDC and will help us to understand the recent somewhat perplexing announcements about what is happening to Oslo as it switches teams. Please register here.

December 7: The technical user groups of Atlanta will be celebrating the holidays at the Microsoft Alpharetta office. This will be a great opportunity to meet people from the FoxPro, PHP, Javascript, Sharepoint and other User Groups you’ve probably not encountered before. Free food and drinks. You must R.S.V.P. here to attend as space is limited.

December 10: For those who missed it, the Greater Gwinnett Microsoft User Group (GGMUG) will also be doing a recap of the PDC at their meeting in December.

Following the morning release of a Silverlight 4 beta, Shawn Wildermuth switched gears and spoke for 70 minutes about the new Silverlight 4 features. He was originally scheduled to speak on Line of Business applications, but based on a show-of-hands decided to give this much more timely presentation. The cellar of 5 Seasons Brewery was packed for the event and there was standing room only in the back. Because of the NDA, we are fairly certain that the Atlanta Silverlight Meetup got to see the first full presentation on Silverlight 4 outside of Redmond and Los Angeles, thanks to Shawn.

Christmas has come early this year.

Gu announced at PDC that an early beta of Silverlight 4 is now available. Tim Heuer has posted the relevant links on his blog: http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/11/18/whats-new-in-silverlight-4-complete-guide-new-features.aspx .

Keep in mind that Blend 4 and Silverlight 4 are currently preview, so there is no go-live license as there currently is for .NET 4.

Several requests have come in recently through the Silverlight Meetup site about SL positions in Atlanta. As we discussed at the last meeting, the demand for good Silverlight (and WPF) developers is starting to outstrip supply in our market. Here are some of the positions we have been hearing about:

Matrix:

World class Healthcare organization is seeking a Senior Software Engineer with C# skills to rewrite a legacy application! You will join a fairly new team of 12 and growing! Our client is building a team to build an application that will run as a SaaS (Software as a Service) model. You will join our product team as a C# Software Engineer (with an Architect mindset), you will decompose the existing functionality to re-factor out the business rules into a .NET layer. You’ll need to be able to drill down into the application and understand the functionality, then extract the business rules to implement on a web-based user interface. They are looking at using Silverlight, C# and CSLA framework, and will be leveraging existing legacy middle tier written in C and VB6 for phase one with plans to replace the legacy layer in phase two. Strong C#.NET is a must, and anybody with Silverlight and CSLA will be interviewed first.

contact: Lauren_Small@MATRIXResources.com

Wintellect:

Wintellect, a Microsoft Gold Partner, is seeking strong Silverlight consultants who may be available immediately for a small project with a high visibility client. Work to be done remotely. Must have strong Silverlight, WPF skills to be considered.

Those who are interested please submit a resume to the following:
Barbara Keihm
Director, Human Resources
Wintellect
bkeihm@wintellect.com

Avanade:

Location: Atlanta
Skill Set: WPF, Silverlight, C# , and .NET
Client: ATT
Duration: 12 month contract
Hourly: Up to $45 W2 or $60 1099
Please send resume to michael.vo@avanade.com

Veredus:

Several positions for Silverlight, WPF and WCF.
Contact: tdavis@vereduscorp.com