NYC Silverlight 2 Fire Starter Content and Links - JrzyShr Dev Guy - Site Home

Thanks to everyone who attended the Silverlight 2 Fire Starter event in New York City on September 13th. I had a great time helping organize the event and speaking with many of the attendees about Silverlight. There were over 150 folks who made it out to the Fire Starter in NYC that day. Special thanks goes out to the event’s speakers Shawn Wildermuth, Todd Snyder, and Jason Beres for helping assemble and deliver most of the day’s content!

Since the event took place, I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on it. The biggest request of course, has been to have access to the content presented at the event. That request has now been granted.

The content from the September 13th, 2008 Silverlight 2 Fire Starter has now been posted online. You can find the slides and some of the sample code at the links below.

Silverlight 2 Fire Starter Content

	Title	Speaker	Content Links
Session 1	Keynote: Intro to Silverlight 2	Shawn Wildermuth & Peter Laudati	Presentation: Code:
Session 2	XAML Basics	Jason Beres	Presentation:
Session 3	The Tools	Jason Beres	Code:
Session 4	Controls & Data Binding	Shawn Wildermuth	Presentation:
Session 5	Server Communication	Todd Snyder	Presentation: Code:

Silverlight 2 Fire Starter Photos

During the event, Bill Zack and I took a bunch of pictures. I’ve uploaded them to Photosynth. You can check them out here via the thumbnail in this post, or visit the synth directly here. (Note: Apologies to my Mac readers, while Silverlight IS a cross-platform technology, Photosynth (a different technology) currently is not. You'll need a Windows machine to see the cool 3D effects Photosynth applies to photos.)

Silverlight 2 Fire Starter “Live” Demos

Here are some of the demos shown off and mentioned during the keynote at the Fire Starter:

Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia - http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/
Home Shopping Network – http://www.hsn.tv
NBC Olympics – http://www.nbcolympics.com
Video Puzzle – http://demo.themsteam.com/videopuzzle
Woodgrove Financial Demo – http://www.cookingwithxaml.com/meals/financials/default.html
My Travel Management (Airline demo) – http://mtm.viatecla.pt
Silverlight Controls (see all the V2 controls in action) – http://silverlight.net/samples/2b2/SilverlightControls/run/Default.html
Silverlight Chess (see C# vs. JavaScript) - http://silverlight.net/samples/2b2/silverlightchess/run/Default.html

Silverlight 2 Fire Starter Link Love

Okay, so you learned a lot about Silverlight at the Fire Starter event, what’s next? Now it’s time for YOU to get started building Silverlight applications today!

Silverlight Websites

Silverlight Community - Start out by visiting the official Silverlight community website at http://silverlight.net. That’s your one-stop source for the most up to date information on Silverlight. From the Silverlight community website, there are the links to the tools/downloads you'll need to get your workstation ready building applications. On the community site you can connect with other Silverlight developers via the Forums. You’ll also find links to the Silverlight Showcase, showing off many of the great Silverlight applications that are “live” on the web right now!
Silverlight Developer Center – Next, check out the Silverlight Developer Center on MSDN. This is where you’ll find all of the documentation developers crave online. There are also links to prominent blogs, reference applications, and sample code.
Microsoft Silverlight – Finally, there is the “official” Microsoft Silverlight site. This site is for all of your non-techie friends (and managers) who want to know what Silverlight is all about, without all the techie details. Give your mom this link. It’s where she can go to get Silverlight installed on her machine!

Silverlight Blogs

silverlightlogo Silverlight is a cutting edge technology. The documentation for Silverlight is great. However, like most new technologies, the best information out there is spread across the Internet on the blogs of product team members and expert community users. Here is a list of some of the blogs YOU should be tracking if you want to keep up on Silverlight:

Want to keep up with Silverlight news, articles, and blog posts? Check out Silverlight Cream at: http://www.silverlightcream.com The folks at Silverlight Cream are hosting a moderated aggregation service. You can submit articles you find useful too.

If you’re on Twitter (and even if you’re not), you can follow the Silverlight Cream news feed here: http://twitter.com/silverlightnews

What’s Next For Silverlight?

As mentioned at the Fire Starter, the official final release of Silverlight 2 is due very soon. [Update 10-14-2008: It's out now! ] Beyond that, I’m sure there will be some more Silverlight news and information at PDC 2008 out in Los Angeles, and of course at Mix 09 in Las Vegas next March. Silverlight is an exciting platform that has the potential to enable some great new rich Internet applications! I can’t wait to see what all of you do with it.