I'll be presenting my popular Silverlight 4 session at DotNetDevNet on the 5th July 2010

I've been to Guy's user group before, it's a great crowd, so i'm really looking forward to this session - I also love the write-up guy has given me...

Why: Because Silverlight has grown up and now it is difficult to choose between Silverlight and WPF even for desktop apps let alone between Silverlight and ASP.NET for web apps. Also because Richard is one half of the Chuckle Brothers (our insurance wouldn't cover us to have an appearance from Dave McMahon at the same time) - you may laugh, you may chuckle but you will surely learn cool stuff about Silverlight.

Details here
http://www.dotnetdevnet.com/Meetings/tabid/54/EntryID/46/Default.aspx

• Midlands - 28-30 July, 2010

Want to get ahead of the game on one of the hottest technologies around - Silverlight 4 - Here it is...

We are pleased to announce a discount of £50 off the course price for the Silverlight Masterclass to any, fully paid up, current NxtGenUG Member. When booking for the course please enter NXTGENUGMEMBER promotion code in the enquiry form text. All applications will be validated.

bbits has been delivering Silverlight training world-wide direct to companies since it's first release. They are now delighted to announce that they have been inspired by, and are partnering with, Shawn Wildermuth's successful stateside Silverlight Tour to bring you world-class Silverlight training around the UK.

Silverlight Masterclass in the UK, runs developer and designer 3 day intensive courses at the same venue, allowing for networking time. it also boasts 2 speakers per course,providing you with a more personal level of training, including NxtGenUG's very own Richard Costall. Current early bird prices are £995, with an additional £50 discount for NxtGenUG members - for 3 days training!

The following dates and broad locations have been confirmed.

• Midlands - 9-11 June, 2010
• London - 16-18 June, 2010
• Manchester - 28-30 June, 2010

My Popular Silverlight 3 session is on the road again, covering 3 more user group sessions. If you are in the area of any of these, drop in and say hi!

Abstract:
Released in July 2009, Silverlight 3 is packed full of features, helping RIA developers in Styling, Graphics, Animations and much more. In this session Richard will go through this latest release in a demo packed session sure to have a wow factor!

NxtGenUG Cambridge - 18th August 2009
http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=235

GL.NET - 14th October 2009
http://www.gl-net.org.uk/Events/october09.aspx

NxtGenUG Oxford - 2nd November 2009
http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=239

See you around the community...

The great news is Silverlight 3 is now released - To think it's only been around 8 months since Silverlight 2 launched is pretty amazing, espceially considering all the new goodness you are getting. Scott Guthrie has a great blog post which covers Silverlight 3, Blend 3 (RC), including Sketchflow here http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/07/10/silverlight-3-released.aspx

For those of you more upto date Tim Heuer has a post covering what's changed since the last public beta, including Zoom, ClearType and caching changes http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/07/10/silverlight-3-released-what-is-new-and-changed.aspx

Enjoy

One of the best things I ever did was to start NxtGenUG with Dave McMahon and John Price - To see how it's grown beyond Coventry and Birmingham is remarkable - We couldn't ask for any better coordinators running, Southampton, Cambridge and Oxford and growing the NxtGenUG brand. So it's with great pleasure we are announcing a 6th Region - Hereford headed up by Ryan O'Neill and Richard Wilde starting in March - Welcome aboard guys - good luck

Press Release Below... 

"NxtGenUG are well chuffed to announce the start of the sixth UK region this time in Hereford. The group is being run by local developers Ryan O'Neill and Richard Wilde.

The group will have it's first meeting on 17th March 2009 between 7.00pm and 9.00pm in the Shirehall, Union Street, Hereford HR1 2HX. The main speaker will be Guy Smith-Ferrier with a session on Visual Studio 2008 Tips 'n Tricks. There will be the usual NxtGenUG activities of eating Pizza and Swagging-out.

To book your place goto here where registration and meeting is free. Come along and enjoy yourself and get involved in the UK Community in the West of England!"

go on, pop in...

Silverlight Assault Course - Ireland Tour!!!

36 Sessions, 3 hotels,  2 train rides and return flights to Ireland. (plus Swaggily Fortunes). The Silverlight Assault Course is coming to Ireland on the 17th (Dublin) and 18th (Cork). Newly Minted MVP - Chris Hay and Myself  will be covering 16 session between us each day with Microsoft Ireland's DPE Martha Rotter providing some additional sessions. We'll be covering many aspects of Silverlight at all levels in our own unique fun and snappy way. We'll also be ending the day with the World Renowned Swaggily Fortunes Gameshow - Starring You! - There's more.. It's FREE to attend.

17th Dublin - Details to Follow - see Martha's Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/martharotter/
18th Cork - http://www.cork.mtug.ie/Events/EventInfo.aspx?ID=a607584a-2fa2-475b-ba8e-4ba9786d9814

Agenda

9:00-9:30	Registration
9:30	Welcome and Housekeeping Martha Rotter
9:40	Getting Started Richard Costall In this Session Richard Costall will get you up and running with Silverlight, explain the constituent parts, build a "hello world" application and even dive into Expression Blend for a bit of Designer stuff.
10:00	XAP File Explored Chris Hay So what is a Silverlight Application, What is a XAP file, how is our content deployed what is our best strategy?  In this nugget we dive deep into the XAP file, how a silverlight application is exposed in a web page and how we can dynamically load assemblies.  All in 20 minutes, surely not!
10:20	Layout Richard Costall Grid or Canvas? Richard takes  you on an introduction to basic layout, which to choose and how to configure them.
10:40	Silverlight Sockets (networking 1) Chris Hay In this nugget we will mess around with network communication via sockets or WCF duplex messages.  The supports for these features allow the ability to do chatty things in applications and we will dive straight into it.
11:00	WCF Communication (networking 2) Chris Hay Silverlight is all very nice and all but I'd like to talk back to the web server thank you very much.  In this nugget we will communicate with WCF and the most important stuff you need to know.  Communicating with a service, Generating a client, Asynchronous Calls, Cross Domain Calls.  Another packed nugget.
11:20	Break
11:30	Application Services Richard Costall Can Silverlight communicate with the ASP.NET Provider Model? – Of course it can – Join Richard on his journey of discovery to utilise, Authentication, Roles and Profile in a Silverlight Application.
11:50	Dynamic Languages Martha Rotter Want to use Silverlight but prefer coding in Ruby or Python to C# and VB.NET?  No problem.  Martha shows you how to write and debug Silverlight applications with the Dynamic Language Runtime so that you can use the development language skills you already have and integrate your existing web applications with Silverlight.
12:10	Syling/Templating Richard Costall From a simple font change to a redesign of the controls. Richard will show how you refactor styling information and build a control with any visual style you wish.
12:30	Images + Media Chris Hay In this nugget we look into Images and MediaElements.  At the end of this nugget you should be able to use images and media effectively in your apps. We will build a Media Player, build a media image map, it's going to be fun.  You should have a good idea of what's supported and what isn't also.
12:50-13:40	LUNCH
13:40	Brushes, Transforms + Animation Chris Hay At the heart of every good Silverlight application, is the ability to animate things, rotate things, and make things look funky with nice gradients.  This nugget is about doing rich stuff with XAML.
14:00	DataBinding Richard Costall Databinding is a first class citizen in WPF and Silverlight is no different. This session will introduce you to the basics of Databinding.
14:20	Using Isolated Stored (1) Chris Hay This nugget is all about understanding Isolated Storage and how you can interact with it.  Isolated Storage is the only place you can store data locally, it's probably one of the key features of Silverlight apps and this nugget is about showing you how to use it.
14:40	Using Isolated Stored (2) Chris Hay This nugget is a deep dive into Isolated Storage, where it is on disk, how it is represented internally, how to clean things up when it goes wrong.  At the end of this nugget you will know everything you need to know about Isolated Storage (and probably stuff you didn't need to know either), but hey knowledge is power.
15:00	Break
15:10	Gaming Richard Costall Silverlight has a great future as a viral gaming platform. Richard will show you how to utilise a gameloop, the basics on animation, before a demonstration of a true gaming classic.
15:30	User Controls Richard Costall XAML, like HTML can be very Verbose. In this session Richard will show how easy it is to build usercontrols and then utilise them in your applications
15:50	Silverlight Encryption + Compression Chris Hay Wow are we still going on about Isolated Storage.  Well this one is really about Encryption + Compression within Silverlight. You don't really want folks peeking at your hard earned data after all.
16:10	Custom Install and Loaders Richard Costall Give your Silverlight application a more compelling and enticing experience with a custom Silverlight Install and application installer.
16:30	Silverlight integration Martha Rotter Silverlight plays nicely with everyone.  Want proof?  Learn how to use Silverlight with your PHP applications, with Live Mesh and yes, even with Adobe Flash.  Yes, really.
16:50 – 17:30	SWAGGILY FORTUNES Gameshow What a better way to end the day than with the ‘Internationally acclaimed NxtGenUG GameShow’ Swaggily Fortunes – Answer Simple Questions and win SWAG!

 Hope to see you there....

I've now been to Disney World 10 times, but couldn't believe it when this arrived....- I've been given my own day in DisneyWorld

Announcing PDC2009:  November 17-20, 2009 in Los Angeles, CA.  After 3:00 PM PST (GMT-8), Thursday, October 30 you can add your name to the PDC2009 mailing list to receive all the latest information.

http://microsoftpdc.com/View.aspx?post=http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/PDCNews/Announcing-PDC2009/

Gray Short has posted a great video on YouTube of the MVP Open Day - No, you won't see lots of future projects and demos - but you will see some MVP's rocking out on Rock Band, including Rich Costall on drums. Highlights for me was Mark Dryden on vocals for Run to the Hills and Guy Smith Ferrier on guitar!

Great Night

Last week I was over at the Silverlight UK User Group at the Conchango Offices in London. We managed to fill a two hour slot with our Silverlight, XNA and Gaming talk - featuring Miner Willy the XNA/Silverlight Manic Miner Game. Thanks to Michelle and Mark  for inviting us. The feedback I saw was excellent. See Below...

“Very informative, interested me greatly due to the background. Designers probably felt left out but the technical ability was outstanding. Really good presentation. Peter is a real talent!”

“Probably a bit less typical designer view as I am interesting in games and games graphics but although technical aspects of the presentation hasn’t completely lost me. Plus really useful to get a idea of what aspects of game graphics are affected by aspects of the games engine. How the way we make graphics can help the game developer, improve performance etc....”

“Really enjoyed the session, good mix, good ideas which can be used anywhere in general programming”

“As a dev and as a fan of retro games & Silverlight I enjoyed all aspects of the presentation. I also liked the tips about using the ASP.NET Providers”

“Well presented by both Richard and Peter. Great organisation of the event.”

“Very good demo, love to see new things in progress. Collision detection stuff was very useful for Silverlight. Would definitely come again!”

“I would like to see a more technical breakdown of how certain techniques were used to overcome problems encountered. Enjoyed the meeting – many thanks”

“Everything was great, can’t wait for the next one! Made gaming interesting to a non-gamer. Really interested in seeing Silverlight with mapping tools.” 

 The bonus is Ian Smith recorded the sessions in excellent quality for your enjoyment.