This morning I turned on my computer to see that Todd Weiss and the folks at Linux.com had featured this idea on their home page. Go check it out the full article!

When you’re done. Check out my Dependency Injection on Silverlight presentation.

Related

• Featured article on Linux.com
• ars techica’s article on the Codeplex Foundation
• Jeremy’s Post on CodeBetter
• Scott Bellware chimed in on this “watershed moment, a turning point for the Microsoft platform and .NET community” – I couldn’t agree more.
• Phil Haack is shedding some more light on Codeplex Foundation
• Red Monk’s Q&A on the CodePlex Foundation

Today there were two big announcements from Microsoft regarding their involvement with the Open Source communities. First, was the formation of the CodePlex foundation, an open source foundation for the

Enabling the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities

Awesome. Great. Fantastic. This is the natural progression of a lot of the open source work that’s been happening at CodePlex, in the ASP.NET MVC stack and a lot of the other OSS projects that Microsoft has been initiating and contributing to lately.

The other announcement was more disappointing, Bill Hilf, the general manager of Windows, announced that Sam Ramji would be leaving his post at Microsoft to be the interim president of the CodePlex Foundation (cool – but why interim?) and then he would be pursuing some other opportunity.

Sam’s primary focus is to drive Microsoft’s Linux and Open Source Strategy, working together with Microsoft technology development teams and open source communities to build interoperable solutions

Horrible. Tragic. What a loss. At least, that’s what I thought at first. The truth is that Sam is leaving a much different Microsoft than the one he joined three years ago. A better, more open Microsoft. I agree with Bill’s assessment,

Microsoft’s open source strategy is no longer just locked in a single ‘lab’ on campus – now OSS is an important part of many product groups and strategies across the company

Sam’s role seems to be that of an OSS advocate, working to build OSS awareness and acceptance from group to group within Microsoft. Well done. Mission *mostly* accomplished.

So where does that leave us? I believe that at certain times in history a company like Microsoft will be faced with opportunities. Opportunities to move boldly forward or slink back in to the status quo, and (to quote that great philosopher and social commentator Dr. Horrible) the status, is not quo. I believe that now is the time for Microsoft to up the ante.

Rather than replace Sam, with yet another “Senior Director” – how many of those are at Microsoft? – I believe it’s Microsoft’s time to embrace an OSS strategy that moves beyond the director level. They need to show the world a bold move, similar to what BMC did over 2 years ago. Microsoft needs an Open Source advocate with teeth.

Three reasons Microsoft needs an Open Source Officer

1. The Timing is Right – The Momentum is there.
   Change is in the air. Sam is moving on. The Codeplex foundation has launched, there’s a new Chief Architect in town, and Microsoft has embraced many aspects of OSS is so many areas of their business because they have realized that – when it makes sense and in the right environment, OSS is good for business and good for your customers.
2. It’s a different world out there.
   Not only has the world inside of Microsoft changed, so has the competition. Microsoft is increasingly competing in an open web world, with open standards against open platforms. More and more, these competitors also become their partners and customers.
3. Go big or go home.
   I believe that it is the spirit of Microsoft to take on new challenges, to put there money where there mouth is, and to embrace a big future with a strong vision.

Who should they hire? Well, I’m sure there are a lot of qualified people in this space, and I’m not going to mention anyone specific by name here… but if you follow my twitter feed then you might have seen something that I posted earlier today.

… and hey Microsoft, if you’re listening, I wasn’t the only one that thought that…

… I’m just sayin.

Old                                                              New

If you are watching my RSS feed then you might not have noticed the change. Ultimately I’m planning on merging my Health Blog and Developing UX into a single space. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to organize my content by categories. Development, Health, Family, Religion, Politics, Entrepreneurism are the categories that I’m thinking about, of course I’d still like UX, Silverlight, Speaking, CommunityCast, SixFlags, Microsoft in there… so I’ve still got some thinking to think about.

Of course, not everyone likes the change…

randypeterman @CalebJenkins if UX is your priority DO NOT do white/grey text on dark colors. 'cept when showing people what not to do.

Well… I didn’t say that I was done yet.  What are your suggestions?

Back then there were only 7 of us. I joined Improving because they were the best consultants and trainers in the Dallas area… and still are.

Sadly, this week will be my last at Improving Enterprises. One of the great things about being a consultant is that you get to work with a lot of people, meet a lot of teams, and meet a lot of needs. You get to see teams that work, and even some that you’d like to work for. One of our clients, Six Flags, offered me a position to join their staff permanently and I’ve decided to pursue it. I work with incredible people at Improving and after discussing it with the leadership there, this is a good move for all of us, and so I want to make sure and thank the Improving leadership for supporting this opportunity!

The last two and a half years with Improving have been amazing. If I wanted to keep doing consulting – I wouldn’t pick anyone else to do it with. We’ve grown a lot in 2 1/2 years! Today Improving has over 60 people, 6 MVP’s, 2 INETA National Speakers, we’re one of Microsoft’s leading Gold Partners, and home to the leading .NET mentoring and training practice in the South Central region. We also have thriving agile and Java practices, an incredible rural-sourcing development center in College Station, plus we do a ton of community work…

I was actually offered a practice lead position a while ago with another consulting group, but everyone that I would want to build a practice with is already at Improving.

I’m working forward to this new chapter in my life. Leading a corporate development team day in and day out is very different from moving from company to company every couple of months. I’m looking forward to a consistent commute, to owning the projects beyond their development cycles, and to really helping to shape the technology future at one of the funnest places on the planet!

To all of my friends at Improving – Thank you. It’s been a blast – Keep up the great work (‘cause I’m hanging on to my shares ) and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone at future Improving events!

A different kind of COE.

It’s good to give back.

I personally think that Improving does more to support the growth of technical communities than any other consulting company in the world. That might just be me, but seriously, check out this list:

• We run and host the:
  • Dallas C# SIG.
  • Team System Live (Chris Tullier)
  • DFW Scrum (they rotate locations)
• We co-run:
  • Dallas Team System User’s Group
  • Dallas Presenter Mentor
• Our people organized the
  • Agile DotNet Conference
  • The DallasTechFest (Tim Rayburn)
• Our people have been featured presenters at
  • VS Live! Dallas (2 Presenters, 5 sessions)
  • Dallas DevCare (featured presenter – Tim Rayburn)
  • Tulsa Tech Fest 08 (2 presenters, 4 sessions, 1 keynote)
  • Dallas Tech Fest 09 (7 speakers, 8 sessions – 3 .NET 5 Java)
  • The Big (D)esign Conference 09
  • Agile 2008 Conference (2 sessions)
  • Tulsa School of Dev (keynote)
  • Dallas Tech Fest 08 (3 speakers 4 sessions)
  • Tulsa Tech Fest 07 (2 sessions)
  • Houston Refresh (featured presenter)
  • Dallas Refresh
  • UPA Web 2.0 Usability Panel
  • Multiple User Group’s across the country*
• We’ve also been requested presenters for various Microsoft events like:
  • Start Spark
  • MSDN DevCon
  • Microsoft TechDays Dallas
  • XAML Fest (Houston)
• We’ve hosted or currently host groups like:
  • Java Spring Group
  • Java Certification Study Group
  • Dallas Ruby Brigade
  • Dallas Rules User Group
  • Dallas C# SIG
  • DFW UPA (They rotate around from month to month)
  • Dallas AJAX User Group
  • first Dallas Silverlight DevCamp
  • Dallas BarCamp 4

we’ll be hosting the

• Dallas PreDevCamp (next month)

Update: (7.22.2009) Several people from Improving and the commnity have reminded me of some of the events that I missed! So here they are:

• Speaking at / or upcoming:
  • LoneStar Software Symposium
  • Twin Cities Software Symposium
  • New England Software Symposium
  • SpringOne/2GX
  • The Greater Boston Chapter of ACM (at MIT)
• Run / Host
  • Dallas APLN (apln.org)
  • Aggieland .NET Users’ Group (aggielanddnug.org/)
  • Agile BCS (agilebcs.org)
• Speaking at and hosting
  • DrupalCamp 2009!  www.drupalcampdallas.org

5. UX Skillzes

Sorry for the haxx0r lingo… but I’ve been liking it a lot lately. So, what are UX Skills? In short, this has nothing to do with Silverlight. Silverlight (or Flash, or WPF) are technologies that make it easier to create a better User Experience. At the end of the day though, it is the developer / designer that has the responsibility of creating the experience. the platform just makes it easier to realize that designers vision. No tool can completely make up for a lack of skill.

User Experience (UX) is made up of multiple areas and disciplines. Including concepts like Information Architecture (IA), Interaction Design (ID), Visual Design, Human-Computer Interaction studies, Human Interaction Psychology, etc…

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/surfaceappeal/3085503904/

Some of the resources that I use to hone UX principles and concepts:

• Jared Spool’s UIE Podcasts
• Silverlight Team Blog
• Microsoft Expression Community
• Chris Bernard’s Design Thinking Blog
• Mix Design Articles
• Stephen P. Anderson’s Poet Painter blog and Slideshare Presentations
• My Delicious UX Bookmarks

4. .NET Voodoo

My favorite feature of Silverlight 2 and beyond is that it has the .NET CLR built in to it. That means that .NET developers are able to leverage their existing skills while creating amazing applications in Silverlight. This has also opened up the door to a number of .NET libraries and resources being ported to Silverlight. Some of my favorites, Ninject, Rhino Mocks, Dynamic Proxy, SL Unity from Microsoft, WPF Pixel Shaders. To become a Silverlight Expert, be prepared to flex some .NET muscle.

3. The Way of the Web

While Silverlight is more like WPF and WinForm development than ASP.NET development it’s still important to realize that you are building for the Web. That means that learning technologies like REST (ADO.NET Data Services), JavaScript, the browser’s document object model (DOM), browser sandboxing and using tools like Fiddler are going to be important to you.

2. Blend / Visual Studio Combo

Aside from .NET being in Silverlight, the other awesome feature of Silverlight is that the UI is built with XAML, the same UI platform that WPF uses. That means that Microsoft’s design tool, Expression Blend, is what you use to design UI in Silverlight. This provides the most amazing workflow between designers and developers. Blend 3 is amazing. While Blend 2 is great for mocking a single screen, Blend 3 is awesome at quickly creating mocks for an entire applications. Including features like SketchFlow, mock application data and many more incredible features.

1. Get Started with Silverlight -

So there you go… my last step is to go get started! I find that many people avoid the first step of working with Silverlight because they are intimidated by the newness of it all. I also find that once people do get started, they are usually surprised by how familiar development in Silverlight actually is. Enjoy!

• Silverlight.net – the official Microsoft site for developers and Silverlight designers. Specifically, make sure to check out the getting started section and the how to videos!
• SilverZine – Silverlight designer / developer, Alex Knight, started this great collection of links and tutorials for Silverlight designers. I found out about the site through a Silverlight insiders email list that I’m on, and I’m glad I did! There are some great insights and resources here!
• http://twitter.com/silverlightshow – this actually is a great collection of links and pointers to some really nice Silverlight content.

OK, so those are my top 5 steps. What are yours? Did I miss anything important? Add yours to the comments.

In June I’ll be the local Silverlight expert, leading a technology track on Rich Internet Applications (RIA) at a Microsoft’s BizSpark event, SparkStart.

From the official announcement:

SparkStart is a full day of business and technology discussion (open format) and learning event for startups (“startup bootcamp”). This event will also be a networking opportunity for those startups who are new to the BizSpark program and not yet enrolled in the program and would like to mingle and learn from key business and technology influencers. It will also be an event for those startups who are recently enrolled and need to keep the momentum going by learning key strategies for success, both in business, and in technology.

I’m looking forward to checking out Microsoft’s new Technology Center in Las Colinas, TX – It’s an amazing building!

It’s going to be an incredible event for startups and entrepreneurs to learn, network and get to know some of the incredible technologies that are now available. I’m especially looking forward to hanging out with some of the other people that will be presenting at the event. (too name a few)

• Local start up expert, Alex Muse
• Social Media Expert, Giovanni Gallucci
• Blake Burris of Facebook development and CoHabitat fame
• Angel investment and venture consulting mastermind Marc Nathan
• Microsoft User Experience Architect Christian Thilmany
• Microsoft Architect Brian Gorbett

Check out SparkStart on twitter and read some of Christian’s other related posts. Be sure to register. It’s going to be an amazing day!

I’ll be speaking at the Big Design Conference in Dallas. From the website:

The Big Design Conference is an intense day of learning within the scope of Strategy, Social Media, User Experience, and Code Development. Experts from across the country will gather to present theories, research, experiences, and best practices to students, professionals, and executives looking to stay on the bleeding edge.

My 1pm topic is “Bring Back the Sexy: What’s New in Silverlight 3 and Why Everyone Should Care”. Basically I’m going to be walking through some of the awesome goodness that’s been added to Silverlight 3 like 3D Support, hardware acceleration, custom shaders and behaviors, offline/out of browser integration, Blend 3, plus the new line of business features like data forms and WCF integrations. You know, all the awesome Silverlight sexy that I can get in to my allotted hour. it’s gonna be awesome.

Be sure to register today (tickets are selling fast!) – See you there!

• Big (D)esign Conference
• Big (D)esign After Party
• (Free) Style & Travelocity Design Challenge

Last month Microsoft released the Release Canidate1 of Windows 7. For what it’s worth I will say that I like it, more importantly, my wife likes it too. Just like Vista has nicer features than XP (no seriously, I actually like Vista!), there are features in Win7 that I really like over Vista. That being said, after spending two months on a Mac, here are the things that I wish Microsoft would “barrow” from Apple before Windows 7 RTMs.

Apple’s “Show Desktop” Implementation

 I like Win7’s Desktop Peak. But let’s be real. When I want to look at my desktop, it’s probably because I want to do something on my desktop. If I click on the “Show Desktop” button, then everything get minimized and I loose my place when I’m done with the desktop (I have to go restore all of my Windows manually). Macs have this great feature that let’s me, in a single motion, push everything to the side, lets me see and work with my desktop, then with a single click anywhere on the edge of the screen and I’m back to where I was before. Awesome. Dear Microsoft, I know what they’ll say, you stole it. Mac had it first. it doesn’t matter. Go ahead, take it. It’s a better implementation. thx.

Apples “Widget” View

I like Widgets, I like Gadgets. I’m not talking about Apple’s widget “zoom in” and “zoom out” views (although those are nice!), nor am I talking about how Windows 7’s Gadgets can go anywhere on the desktop and are always on your desktop (although I like that too!) I am specifically talking about the scenarios when you have a bunch of windows open and your in the middle of working and you need to take a quick look at your widgets/gadgets. On a mac you set your Expose’s hot spots to bring up your “dashboard”, in Windows 7 you either “peak” at your desktop, or you press the Win+G keys.Here’s the thing, on a mac when you do that, they do a dark overlay on the rest of your desktop. It makes it really easy to to focus in on your widgets and see them quickly. it sounds like a small thing, but you already know how busy your screen can get when you’re working on various projects and then you try to see your gadgets and they just don’t stand out very well.Dear Microsoft, please fade out the background when I push Win+G. kthx.

Apple’s Colors.

Not all of their colors. I like some of the rich look of Vista and Windows 7, but here’s something that I noticed while working on the mac. The “system tray” (or whatever you call it) is boring. Everything is the same color. Compare that to the spectrum of color that the average Windows user is used to. It’s not that color is bad… but I’m starting to think that business is. Business and clutter compete for your attention, and let’s face it… the reason that it’s in the system tray is because it’s important.. it’s just not that important. I know that I’m focusing on the system tray, but really I’m talking an over all effort to make the things that I want to focus on, visually focusable (is that a word?). Reduce noise, increase signal.

So what does Windows 7 have going for it?

A lot. But here’s the thing that it soooo much better on Win7. The Taskbar – so much better than the dock or expose for moving between applications – especially tabbed windows. On one hand, I really like the pop and slide of exposes, and I really like the fish eye affect in the mac dock… but here’s the deal, the dock is great for launching applications, but it’s lousy for moving between open applications. The new Win 7 dock does an amazing job of organizing all of your open tabs regardless of which window their in. It really creates a nice, unified way to move between the things that you are working on and to close the things that you don’t care about. I know that it sounds trivial, but think about where you spend your time – it makes a difference.

What about you? What are you love / hates with Windows 7 or teh mac?

BTW – Travis promised to teach me some mac foo… I’ll have to post again after that!