Brian Goldfarb's Blog : Misc

New official Silverlight Blog

bgold — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:29:20 GMT

earlier this week, as part of MIX09, we launched an official Silverlight team blog. Subscribe now! We’ll push out new technical content, videos, and use it as a venue to respond to critical industry events that require our voice. You can use it as a direct conduit to us and the team with feedback (both good and bad!).

We’ll cover our entire UX platform including Expression Studio with a focus on Expression Blend (and the newly announced SkethFlow functionality which has had rave reviews), Silverlight, Visual Studio, and anything else we think is important.

Spread the news – http://team.silverlight.net/

I kicked us off with this post: http://team.silverlight.net/announcements/introducing-the-new-silverlight-blog/

Are you a Silverlight rockstar? Get a killer job.

bgold — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:31:00 GMT

A great agency in Seattle, ramp group is looking for a rockstar Silverilght developer -- see JD below. Good luck!

Silverlight 2 Developer

Ramp Group

Bellevue, WA

www.rampgroup.com

Key skills: .Net Framework, C#, Silverlight 2.0, XML

Are you interested in working on a project which will revolutionize the advertising industry, creating market efficiencies in terms of matching publisher page inventory to advertiser demand across multiple ad networks, standardizing advertising attributes, and lowering the barriers of entry to new classes of advertising businesses? If you are a developer with a creative spirit and often have ideas for enhancing the customer experience, this is a great opportunity for you.

Ramp Group is looking for .Net / Silverlight 2.0 developers to join our team of talented and motivated individuals in architecting cutting edge solutions for our clients’ dynamic and growing businesses. This is a unique opportunity to develop systems that have the intersection of machine learning, advanced economics / auction theory, and large scale systems engineering.

In this role you would be part of a Ramp development team helping our clients to build rich, multimedia-based applications across different OS platforms and browsers. We value and respect our associates and customers always striving to enable them to achieve the measurable results that support their success. Our employees thrive at working in a fast paced environment and enjoy interacting with clients and exceeding expectations.

Experience:

· Experience building high quality web applications.

· Experience working within a collaborative team environment.

· Experience building Silverlight 2.0 clients

· Experience working with WPF a big plus

· Experience with web services ASMX/WCF a big plus

Required Skills:

· Solid C# and .NET skills

· Silverlight 2.0 skills

· Solid web development

· XML and XPath

· Advanced problem solving, coding, and debugging skills.

· SQL

· WPF skills a big plus

· WCF skills a big plus

· LINQ skills a big plus

Ramp Group is a small consulting company with just under 100 employees located in Bellevue, WA. We specialize in project based full development life cycle services ranging from user requirements analysis, user interface design and product usability evaluation to technical design, development, test, and deployment. Our employees are highly skilled in developing solutions from large-scale enterprise-class database and Web-based applications to client-side consumer software.

To learn more about this position please contact us at: careers@rampgroup.com

Please include “Silverlight Developer” in the subject line to help facilitate your application and questions.

Please visit our website at:

www.rampgroup.com

Get the early skinny on Silverlight 2

bgold — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:34:00 GMT

ScottGu has been burning the midnight oil (literally!) to pull together an incredibly detailed tutorial that shows how powerful Silverlight 2 is going to be. Get an early scoop on the features in the soon to be released Beta1, get a feel for how Visual Studio and Expression Studio work together to enable developer/designer collaboration that is second to none, and see just a subset of the power that Silverlight 2 is going to bring to building amazing RIA applications.

Get the summary here and links to over 20 pages of details.

Hard to believe all of that power is packed into 4.3mb install that just takes 4-10 seconds on a typical machine without Silverlight.

Let us know what you think -- and remember this is just the beginning, there are a lot more features and details coming soon!

Help Vinay... It's easy

bgold — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 05:09:31 GMT

I'm not one to spread causes, but I comment on this one because for two reasons. (if you don't want to wait go to) http://www.helpvinay.org/dp/index.php

1) He is a friend of a very good friend of mine, good enough for me

2) This is a fascinating example of how the Web and the powerful network effects we are seeing through social networks and other new applications can

As a technologist, seeing how creative energy, individual passion, and the advancement of online communication can change the way we interact is exciting. I'm lucky to be at the forefront of the enabling technologies, but seldom am I involved in the amazing outcomes that these technologies enable. It's good to know that things like Facebook, Spaces, online media and more can be put to effective use.

I encourage you to spread the word, read more about Vinay and others story, and if applicable get registered.

http://www.helpvinay.org/dp/index.php

Off To Asia

bgold — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:20:43 GMT

Yes I've been pretty delinquent in posting to the blog lately -- I blame it on too much work... but that's a bad excuse. I'm going to try and be a bit better about it.

Anyway, I'm off to Asia tomorrow for REMIX's and a bunch of other meetings and some site seeing hopefully -- I'll be at REMIX in Seoul, Melbourne, and Singapore and also visiting KL and Tokyo -- Definitely say hello if you are at those events and read this :)

Me getting completely destroyed by the "Proop Dog"

bgold — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 22:08:00 GMT

At VSConnections in Vegas Eileen Rumwell had comedian Greg Proops interview some of us. It was off the cuff and fun. The conversation was about 10 minutes, but this 1 minute short is me getting completely railed. Amusing to say the least.

Oh and if that isn't enough -- i found this post by Eileen too -- transcribed below so you can laugh at us.

Do the Support People in India Know About the Helamonsters?

What's a helamonster? Sand, steam, water powered pcs, and how to motivate the damn things. Is that a reinstall or just a reboot? And Brian is in marketing ...

http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=7fe1d278-9301-42ca-8791-af6e0140bf27

Who was Maria Tall Chief Anyway? http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=a6c068de-a957-40cc-b02f-f1ed839e3aed

A new job for me, better products for you

bgold — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:40:58 GMT

And hopefully some more time to blog :) This week we re-organized our team so that we could better serve the needs of our internal and external partners and customers. I won't bore you with the details but it has a pretty major impact on what I do and the kinds of information I want; so I figured this was a great opportunity to share.

My new job is focused on Developer Division (which includes designers) Platform Strategy. My new team is 100% focused on making sure we build the best possible products for the market place. We get to understand the trends, the big picture, the little picture, customer needs, partner needs, and partner deeply with the engineering teams run by Scott Guthrie (NDP) and Eric Zocher (Designer) to help ensure that the products we build work great together and address the key needs of the market today, tomorrow, and way into the future.

Sounds like a huge daunting challenge, but gurantee it is going to be a lot of fun. To date, I've spent some of my time on this, but we've decided it is so critical that me and my team get to spend 100% of our time focused here. The results, well you'll be able to tell me as we lead up to MIX, PDC, and the next rev's of our products.

My team looks after the following technologies -- so take a look and lay it on, good, bad, ugly. What you want, what you don't want, what you don't even think you want, anything that you think will help us.

Tools

Expression Studio (Blend, Media, Web, Design) + futures
Visual Web Developer (the Web tooling inside Visual Studio)
"Cider" (the WPF tooling for VS) + futures

Platforms

ASP.NET
WPF
"WPF/E"
AJAX
Internet Explorer
Commerce Server

Plus the broader marketplace that encompasses these technologies (Web 2.0, UX, etc.)

I'll still be posting as much useful info as I can around the outbound work that we do, but my energy is going to be focused on building amazing products. Spread the word, we want your feedback.

Oh and joining me on the team are:

Brad Becker looking after Rich Client Platform and Tools

Sanjoy Sarkar looking after Web Platform

Pete LePage looking after IE, Web Tooling, Standards

Max Akbar looking after Commerce Server

and we are hiring a few positions

1) Expression Media and Media Workflow strategy

2) Rich Client Platform - Developer strategy

3) Rich Client Platform - Designer strategy

I'll associate JD's once we write them ;)

Scott Guthrie debuts in Red vs Blue

bgold — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:03:48 GMT

Words can't describe just how cool this is :) And a pretty hot looking "WFP/E" video player to boot -- tell your friends, spread the word! Definitely a great "non-traditional" type of activity.

http://channel9.msdn.com/playground/wpfe/rvbplayer/

Scott's own post about this

Microsoft employees meet their famous counterparts

bgold — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 21:21:37 GMT

Danielfe decided to put together a great post about how some of us look like famous people (not that we aren't famous in our own right :)) -- the similarities are shocking -- check it out, let us know what you think.

http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2007/02/26/microsoft-bloggers-the-movie.aspx

Which Superhero are you?

bgold — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 20:49:52 GMT

Found this cool quiz from Frank Shaw @ TheGlassHouse, I'm Spiderman, which super hero are you?

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		70%
Green Lantern		60%
The Flash		50%
Iron Man		45%
Superman		40%
Supergirl		40%
Catwoman		40%
Wonder Woman		35%
Robin		25%
Batman		20%
Hulk		10%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

Expression Web and MSDN, learn more

bgold — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 02:14:53 GMT

Robert McLaws started an interesting discussion on his blog about Expression Web and MSDN. I gave Robert some feedback that the Expression team provided and it has spurred a very interesting discussion.

Sometimes it is hard to truly understand how these decisions pan out without tons of context. However, Chris Treadaway, the business manager for the Expression team recently posted his thoughts and information that should be informative. We've seen some positive private comments from his blog, so I encourage you all to check it out. Of course, feel free to provide your candid feedback here, with Chris, or any of us directly. Rest assured, we hear you and are listening.

MIX is coming back to Vegas in 2007!

bgold — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 21:33:01 GMT

Ahh MIX! It was an amazing show last year and we are bringing it back again, same amazing venue, with cutting edge content and one of the best vibes of any show I've ever been to. So, save the date -- it's scheduled for April 30 - May 2, 2007 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas!

To give some context for those unaware of what MIX is it is:

Microsoft’s premiere conference for web developers, designers and business professionals. MIX will explore the next generation web technologies that Microsoft is delivering to help businesses unlock new revenue opportunities and lower development costs . The event will also provide opportunities for attendees to share ideas and information with the community regarding the future of the web. Microsoft has made significant investments in our web development platform and there will be many more exciting technology deliverables that will be announced at the event. MIX is about creating a forum to discuss ways to bring the technologies such as ASP.NET AJAX, WPF, "WPF/E," Media Center Edition, Internet Explorer 7, and the Expression suite together in a way that enables developers and designers to deliver rich web experiences that drive business results.

This is definitely the show you don't want to miss if you care about rich Web technologies and learning about how Microsoft is going to be taking AJAX and ASP.NET even further to delivery on a amazing end to end vision on enabling the richest experiences online. To me, it's about great developer technology working together with designer tools. It is about enabling new business models. Competitive differentiation. Ultimately, being able to achieve a vision online that we can only dream about today. Don't miss it, trust me, it is going to be HUGE (again).

Registration will open in early January. In the meantime, please visit http://www.visitmix.com, where you can subscribe to updates as we post them. The early bird price for MIX will be $995 USD (good until March 15 so be sure to register early – we sold out last year).

See you in Vegas at MIX!

Coding4Fun v2 (redesigned) is now live

bgold — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 07:04:06 GMT

DanielFe and team shipped a new design for Coding4Fun -- it ROCKS, definitley check it out

Get more info from Dan's blog

Seeking the best of the best: Job on the Web Platform and Tools Product Management team

bgold — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 02:23:00 GMT

I have an open head count on my team that I’m looking to fill with the best of the best. The job description below describes the job in detail, but this is the opportunity of a life time. If you or someone you know might be a good fit, let me know at bgold@microsoft.com – Knowledge of ASP.NET/VS2005 is a requirement and knowledge of other Web development technologies (Ruby/PHP/ColdFusion/Java) etc. or the ability to learn quickly is big bonus points. You don’t need to be a formal marketer to be successful in this role, but amazing soft skills are required.

If you are passionate about Web technologies and solving challenging marketing problems in a competitive market, then this is the opportunity for you. The Web Platforms and Tools Marketing team is looking for a technical product manager to help us launch the next generation Web application platform and tools with ASP.NET and Visual Web Developer while building increasing momentum Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0. This position will be responsible for marketing strategy and planning and execution of creative programs to grow market-share and adoption of the Web platform and tools, focusing on the mass shared hosting market, community building, and our starter kit/shared source initiatives. We need a passionate leader capable of driving cross-organizational efforts to evangelize and integrate their marketing plans with partners and internal teams.

As the Breadth Community and Hosting Product Manager you will be responsible for:

· Defining and articulating our value proposition across multiple audiences including Web developers, IT Pros, TDM’s, BDM’s, and hobbyists

· Working with the Communication Sector and WW Hosting Evangelists to drive value and economics into the hosting market

· Product planning for our broader application services story and workflow

· Overall community presence

· Driving day-to-day marketing execution including creation of competitive evidence, training material, case studies, web content, and presentations

· Executing marketing programs to build community, excitement, and grass roots support and adoption of ASP.NET and Visual Web Developer

· Integrating with Program Management teams to align product priorities, market needs and opportunities

· Gathering and driving quantitative and qualitative research to track performance and identify market opportunities

· Managing and building relationships with internal and external partners

· Competitive analysis and competitive marketing execution

· Defining the needs of the community and application gaps and driving programs to influence those

Additionally, you will be directly responsible for integrating into broader Server & Tools Marketing initiatives including product marketing efforts, Go-To-Market activities, field and partner programs, broad-reach advertising, PR/AR, events and broad developer and IT Pro audience communications and activities. This role will require you to regularly engage with a wide variety of Microsoft Business Groups, customers and influencers in order to drive and assess success. The right candidate will have the ability to speak effectively and professionally with customers as well as to sell your ideas to internal groups and executives.

Qualifications include a minimum of 3 years experience marketing commercial software to developers and IT Professionals. Additional qualifications include: strong knowledge of the Web marketplace; solid understanding of Web platform and tools technologies and competitive solutions – specifically ASP.NET, ASP, PHP, JSP, Dreamweaver, Flash, ColdFuson, Flex, Eclipse, MySQL, Linux; superb analytical and data driven decision-making skills; the ability to think strategically about business issues and develop marketing programs; strong facilitation, communication, and presentation skills; the ability to work across groups and across disciplines. Applicants need to have a flexible can-do attitude, be self-sufficient, and be able to create solid working relationships across other business and technical teams. Deep technical skill sets with ASP.NET and Visual Studio is a plus. Deep technical skill sets with other Web related technology a big plus. BA/BS degree required.

A very interesting article on the Seattle "social" scene or lack there of

bgold — Sun, 06 Mar 2005 23:47:00 GMT

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.html

I think this is the quintessential article on Seattle -- a good read for those who live here, and entertaining for those that don't.