brad abrams kicked off some webcasts regarding silverlight over on msdn.  you should check out the on-demand as well as the upcoming webcast series...

Kickoff Webcast:

• MSDN Webcast: An Introduction to Silverlight (Level 100)

designers:

• MSDN Webcast: Designer Series (Part 1 of 5): Getting Started with Silverlight for Designers
• MSDN Webcast: Designer Series (Part 2 of 5): Working with Expression Design to Create Visual Assets
• MSDN Webcast: Designer Series (Part 3 of 5): Introducing Events in Expression Blend to a Silverlight Designer
• MSDN Webcast: Designer Series (Part 4 of 5): Working with JavaScript and Publishing Your Work
• MSDN Webcast: Designer Series (Part 5 of 5): Understanding Development Fundamentals and Publishing to the Web

developers:

• MSDN Webcast: Developer Series (Part 1 of 5): Introduction to Silverlight 1.1 Using Visual Studio 2008
• MSDN Webcast: Developer Series (Part 2 of 5): Silverlight XAML and Dynamic Code
• MSDN Webcast: Developer Series (Part 3 of 5): Silverlight 1.1 Events and APIs
• MSDN Webcast: Developer Series (Part 4 of 5): Working with XML
• MSDN Webcast: Developer Series (Part 5 of 5): Learn How to Work Alongside a Designer

i love the title of the last one "how to work alongside a designer" -- makes it sound like it is going to be a therapy session.

"Go back to Jersey, Sonny. This is the City of the Angels and you haven't got any wings." (from LA Confidential)

i'm headed to los angeles, ca tomorrow for a week of the phizzpop design challenge.  while last week already yielded some training in some of the expression tools and silverlight, i'm headed out to do my best to mentor those that are taking advantage of the microsoft working areas.

what is the phizzpop design challenge?

The PhizzPop Design Challenge pits top interactive, Web, and design agencies against one another to push the limits of technology and creativity in a battle royale. Think Mad Max for design.

basically teams have been chosen and they will be presented with a problem statement on monday.  this problem statement will include instructions to them of what those team should incorporate into their solution.  the implementation, however, will be up to them.  there is a panel of judges who will listen to the teams present their solutions and how they went about solving this particular problem statement.

i've yet to visit the la office and i'm excited to spend some time out there.  i'm coming off a weekend of, well, let's just say "pain."  i'll be bringing my meds though.  more importantly i'm bringing my new camera rig in hops of talking to some of these teams while they are out there.

if anyone knows any celebrities as well that might be in the la area and are willing to do a cheesy public service announcement for internal videos, let me know...i've got some ideas.  if you know anyone in the cast of Heroes that would be sweet...drop me a line.

well, that's where i'll be this week.  i'm hoping to head down to irvine with woodyp on wednesday and chill out at the installfest down there.  hope to see some of you there!

i hopped on a plane at 4am this morning to head back to phoenix from seattle.  oddly enough i landed in rain.  what gives phoenix?  actually it is a welcome refresh for me.

i was in seattle for the silverlight fire starter event with my comrade mithun.  this was basically a one-day silverlight lovefest.  and the lineup of people was awesome:

• jesse liberty
• adam kinney
• laurence moroney
• adam nathan
• ernie booth
• arturo toledo

it was awesome.  if you had silverlight questions, this was the place to be.  i mainly lurked in the back and twittered occasional thoughts on what i was seeing (which probably did nothing since a poll to the audience showed not many people are on twitter in that area).  i saw a lot of people ask the presenters questions which i assume is always a good sign.  i learned some new stuff myself which is always great.

adam kinney proved no smoke and mirrors on his...er...i mean...lenny's xbox live gadget built in silverlight.  after getting gamertags from the audience i think he suddenly realized that the statuses would be offline because they were all there :-) -- but yet, one person had a "1 minute ago" update and they were in the audience...hmmm...portable xboxing?

the popfly demonstration seems to always get a smile from most even if you aren't interested in mashups or anything.  i think it is because you just realize the ease of bringing information together and not having to spend a ton of time together -- and getting an interesting visualization!  adam actually whipped up a similar xbox live gadget in a few minutes using popfly (not the same features, but for not writing a lick of code and getting xbox live gamer information and a silverlight UI plus implemented in a vista sidebar gadget that was impressive).

there was a couple of things i twitter'd about that might be worth mentioning here as well (aside from my happiness to chocolate milk on campus)...

• arturo demonstrated the desginer/developer workflow of
• laurence's book on silverlight 1.0
• there was a question about positioning text within elements.  although silverlight 1.0 does not have justification settings in elements explicitly, you can do it.  the code in my user controls in 1.0 sample has some code that you can look at how i used some simple functions to center the text on a button based on the text and size of the button...very simple.  hoping this will be obsolete in silverlight 2.0.
• adam kinney talked about user control patterns and specifically called out an important createFromXaml parameter (second, optional parameter) which is createNameScope.  this boolean parameter provides a unique name to each element that you create.  this is very helpful (and required almost) when you are creating a lot of same controls in an iteration for example.
• i learned of two tools JSLint and JSMin.  the latter is for 'crunching' javascript to reduce size of the script files (you know remove whitespace, etc.).
• adam nathan's book on silverlight 1.0 unleashed
• ernie had really good pointers on working with media, specifically with what attributes in playlists are supported.  i couldn't capture them all in time, but the content will be posted.
• ernie also had a session on what silverlight might look like in the future...his message: understand WPF.

great sessions.  the content was recorded, so subscribe to this blog and i'll update a link once it is available.

check out the beta of the microsoft download site.  it is built on silverlight...some media streaming happening as well as some of the subtle interactions done in silverlight.

if you click on the browse downloads link you can see some of it as well as other new navigation areas...

good to see microsoft starting to implement it in broader sites.

i'm twittering some of my thoughts on the silverlight firestarter event.  also as people are answering questions i'm trying to provide direct pointers...so if you are interested, follow me on twitter.

also the event is being filmed so subscribe to my blog for updates on when that information is available.