January 2010 Silverlight MVPs

Happy new year to all!  I hope you enjoyed a safe celebration whether that be playing a board game with friends, toasting the new year with some bubbly, throwing things at Ryan Seacrest on TV, or whatever.

Each quarter, new MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) candidates are awarded.  January 2010 is the first awards of the year and so I present the new/moved/re-awarded Silverlight specific MVPs:

• Jeff Prosise – If you aren’t subscribed to Jeff’s blog, stop and do so now.  It’s filled with some great nuggest that are usually on the advanced ‘how’d he do that’ side of things.  Jeff does a good job spelunking the framework and figuring things out.
• David Yack (@davidyack) – David is a CRM guru and has also written a great Silverlight 3 Jumpstart book (recommended for beginners).  He’s been spending more time with RIA Services for biz/CRM apps lately and been providing great insights into integration uses.  He should blog more :-)
• Laurent Duveau (@LaurentDuveau) – another re-award for Laurent who keeps cranking out great stuff and helps with the Silverlight Tour in Canada.
• Laurent Bugnion (@lbugnion) – one of the XAML experts at IdentityMine, Laurent also has written one of the definitive Silverlight reference books – and is one of the nicest guys you’ll meet.
• Ward Bell (@wardbell) – Ward has some great thoughts on application building for XAML clients and extensive experience with multicolored jackets and general antagonistic views ;-)
• Page Brooks – organizer of SilverlightContrib and various control development efforts in the community.  Control Wrangler?
• Rob Eisenberg (@EisenbergEffect) – one of the brains behind Caliburn, an Open Source Silverlight application framework.
• Andy Beaulieu – have you played a Silverlight game?  If you have, it’s most likely been one of Andy’s :-)
• Jordan Knight (@jakkaj)– hailing from down under (is that phrase still used?), Jordan does a lot in the Melbourne area around Silverlight community and has a great blog of content.
• Alessio Leoncini (@aleoncini) – One of our Italian friends that has been doing a lot in working with Silverlight in Italy and spreading the good word! Grazie!
• Andrew Tokeley – Andrew was one of the developers behind the Buttercup Reader, a completely accessible Silverlight application which is now Open Source.
• Koen Zwikstra (@kozw) – Have you heard of Silverlight Spy, the indispensible Silverlight debugging tool!?  Koen is the brain behind it.
• Qing Li is a new MVP in China that has been doing a great amount of work helping the community understand and learn Silverlight development.

Congratulations to all the new/renewed/moved Silverlight MVPs.  I look forward to seeing you at the MVP Summit soon!