Recap: Philly .NET Night of Silverlight

Thanks to everyone who attended last night's Philly .NET User Group meeting, "Night of Silverlight". The room was packed to capacity with over 100 people in attendance. Despite reports of Silverlight's demise, it's obvious there is still a very strong interest in Silverlight. I think we missed an opportunity for an "If Developers Ruled the World" poster, "Night of the Living Silverlight". Frank, if you're reading this, any chance you can get that done?

The new Microsoft Technology Center in Malvern is gorgeous. A very attractive and comfortable place to work; I especially like the chaise lounge on the sofas in the second floor common area. And of course, a single serve coffee machine is a nice touch.

I was the opening act, delivering Silverlight 101. The crowd was alive, we somehow incorporated Steelers, Penguins, Flyers, Eagles, Mike Vick, Ben Roethlisberger, Tiger Woods and a spinning rectangle demo into about an hour. I hope people were able to find a nugget of usefulness in the crazy.

Next up was Andy "Schwammy" Schwam, delivering an intro into Coded UI Testing, a new feature in VS 2010. This is a very promising technology, where you can automate regression and acceptance testing at the UI level. There is a learning curve to get started, but it becomes a great time saver when it comes to testing your application. Last night was the third birthday of Andy's son and my daughter, and in future years we need to be careful to check a calendar before committing to a presentation. Happy birthday you two little big kids!

The main event was John Baird (seen below), talking about Silverlight templating and styling and MVVM. The design potential in Silverlight is incredible, and most of us developers will barely scratch the surface of its capabilities. Over the last year, MVVM has exploded in popularity as a design pattern in Silverlight and WPF applications, almost to the point of being the "must use" pattern.

Congrats to Tony Verguldi and Miguel Zakharia, winners of their choice of a ComponentOne Studio.

Team ComponentOne was out promoting XAML-based technologies this night. While I was in Philly, speaker bureau member Mike Eaton was at GANG discussing Top 10 Tips for Moving from Win Forms to WPF. Interested in one of our speakers for your event? Email me at richd@componentone.com.