I'm a PC and I'm a MVP -- 2009 MVP Summit WrapUp and Thanks!

I'M A PC
AND I'M A MVP

If you were in Seattle this week for #mvp09 (the 2009 Microsoft MVP Summit), then you either skipped the Wednesday Keynotes or you know what I'm talking about. For everyone else, we had to sign waivers because they filmed all of us yelling that. Then Steve Ballmer started his keynote by having us yell that as well!

But just like all other good things, #mvp09 is in my rear-view mirror. I took the badge off and climbed on the shuttle to the airport about 1:45pm on Wednesday, just a little sad, but also very tired.

So what is it we do?

The summit is the once-a-year golden opportunity for all the MVPs to meet with the product groups that build the stuff we use and interact with them. Some of the stuff we talk about is covered under our MVP NDA, and for good reason. I know this has been a big topic this year and if you followed us all on twitter I'm sure you're aware of what was going on.

I was going to take off on that, but it sounded very negative so I'll just say that IMHO if you don't like the NDA, sit in the hall when it's invoked :)

So we get to pass along information from users we are in contact with, and from our own experience, and in some regard help shape the products coming up. Our opinions are asked many times on ranking features, so make sure the local MVPs you know have all the information you want to send along to Redmond!

Along the way we meet up with folks we haven't seen in a year, and attach faces with names we've just learned.

I had an incredible time and am humbled by the company I'm allowed to keep when I'm there. Thanks so much to Microsoft for the opportunity and the support and all the effort that goes into every little thing. And thanks to all the rest of you guys for making this old hacker feel like one of you!

I met Zusanna Moran, my MVP lead, and had a small amount of time to speak with her during the week, a very tireless lady that seems to have an incredible amount of energy for her MVPs... thanks Suzanna!

Then new folks I met this year, in no order at all: Page Brooks, Chris Hay, Al Pascual, Inseok Gong, BrowniePoints, Corey Miller, KC, Andras Velvart, Chris Bennage, Peter Bromberg, Shawn Oster, David Silverlight, Toi, Tamir Khason, Andrew Duthie, Scott Barnes, and who knows who-all else I've forgotten!

I can't forget to thank my room-mate, Michael Washington for brainstorming and coding up changes for my website with me (to be announced later). My first choice would be no room-mate, but second choice worked out just great!

You never know from year to year if you'll able to be at the next Summit, but if it's a possibility, I'll be there, and am looking forward to it already!

Silverlight Cream for March 05, 2009 -- #533

In this issue: Al Pascual, Jobi Joy, Alexei Prokudin, Michael Washington, Mike Snow, Terence Tsang, Jason Cooke, Lee, and David Anson.

Shoutouts:

James Bacon has announced a "It is an open "no holds barred" style competition, meaning that people from around the world are free to participate and there are no theme limitations" game competition at Mashooo: Mashooo S Prize - Silverlight game competition , and along with that, Silverlight Girl announced that Mashooo accepts OpenID and layout improvement - it had to be done .

Shawn Wildermuth has his 2nd of 3 parts up on DSLS: Textual DSLs for Developers Part 2 is Live!

Matthias Shapiro reports that the Source Code For Presidential Candidate Tracker Visualization is now up and available.

Brad Abrams reports on Some Great New Mix09 Sessions Posted -- check out the links... good stuff!

Jeff Paries suggests if you're interested in Deep Zoom you should check out the app done for TechFest: TechFest DeepZoom.


From SilverlightCream.com, and this is only about half of what I've got in the pipe... missing a couple days to #mvp09 got me somewhat behind, but I'll catch up:
Silverlight 101: Make a GET request and a POST request.
Al Pascual details out HTTP GET and POST requests in Silverlight ... if you're not totally down on this, it might make a good bookmark ... thanks Al!
Sunny Orange - WPF Theme 1
Jobi Joy is going to be posting some themes for WPF and Silverlight. This "Sunny Orange" is the first. It is labeled WPF, but it's XAML, and I can't get to it from here, so you'll have to tell me if you got it going in Silverlight, if you get to it before me :)
Silverlight 2.0 Syntax Highlighting Textbox
Alexei Prokudin has a cool article up on CodeProject where he has added Syntax Highlighting to a Textbox. There's a lot of code involved, so woohoo... go grab it and have a ball :)
High on Coding Podcast interview about SilverlightDesktop
Michael Washington took gave up some time one evening at #mvp09 to be interviewed for "High on Coding" ... it's available on the site, and he's talking about his SilverlightDesktop ... give it a listen.
Silverlight Tip of the Day #97 – Creating Sprites from 3D Models - EnvyGames
Mike Snow's latest is up ... can you believe he's only got 3 more to hit 100? -- this one is showcasing a tool to generate Sprites. So for all you gamers that are reading the many game blogs, or wanting to enter a competition or two, here's how to do your sprites!
Flash vs Silverlight: Orbiting Text around an object
Terence Tsang is showing a great one today ... text orbiting around a stationary object ... you see the back of the text and then it disappears (of course -- it's behind) when it goes behind the object ... dang ... now to figure out where to use that :)
How to "template" the Silverlight Calendar to behave like the Vista system calendar
Kathy Kam turns her blog over to Jason Cooke for a moment so he can demonstrate how to template the Calendar control ... as if it didn't do enough already!
Interacting with Charts
Lee demonstrates some magic with the Chart control ... mark out a congested area, the chart redraws with that area spread out so you can see what's going on, and then put it back ... wow... cool stuff!
A rose by any other name... [LayoutTransformControl on track to ship in the Silverlight Toolkit under the name LayoutTransformer!]
For those of you that's been following David Anson's development of the LayoutTransformControl, you'll be happy to read this post! ... it is tentatively on track to be inserted into the Toolkit ... way to go, David, and good for all of us :)

Stay in the 'Light!

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