Since our last meeting in April featuring the enigmatic Jesse Liberty, we’ve seen a big rise in the interest in Silverlight 4 and Windows Phone 7 on blogs, feeds and twitter. That said, it appears to have been a slow start for the proliferation of Silverlight 4 amongst the global masses since it’s launch on April 13th. I’ve been tracking Silverlight 4’s progress through riastats.com and the results have recently looked more promising. The adoption of the new plugin seems to have taken an astronomical ascent on 4th-6th July – not sure why - I did not see a massive publicity drive from Microsoft nor any other internet wide event that might have caused it. I’ll shrug my shoulders and just celebrate the fact that the people of the internet are slowly upgrading their computers to Silverlight 4.
Well, unfortunately, the adoption of Silverlight 4 has not been my only concern recently. I have to apologise in that we have not had a Silverlight UK User Group meeting recently – getting presenters organised has been a bit turbulent. One would hope that the underlying cause of late cancellations, just as I get things finally mobilised, is due to the exuberance of getting their first Silverlight 4 and Windows Phone 7 demos/applications written – but to be honest I’ld blame the upcoming World Cup 2010 Finals in South Africa or summer holiday season.
Nevertheless, I am still canvassing for presenters and even though I’m chasing down a couple more on my list, if you would like to present at a Silverlight UK User Group, then please send me an email). In the mean time, here are some other user group events that might be of interest.
 | | UK Bing Maps User Group – 2nd Meet!
16th June 2010 - Canary Wharf, London
Paul Graham - Overview of the Eurocar Surface and Silverlight app using Bing Maps
Ricky Brundritt - Building Bing Map Applications
More details… |
 | | EdgeUG – June Meet.
16th June 2010 - Victoria, London
Andrew Westgarth - Overview of IIS 7
Mark Rendle - Functional Alchemy
More details… |
 | | NxtGenUG
14th July 2010 – Cambridge
Glenn Block on MEF - Silverlight Application Partitioning and Extensibility with MEF
More details… |
| | NxtGenUG Fest10 - “Being beside the C# Side”
16th July 2010 – Bournemouth Pier
multiple presenters, multiple sessions, a geek dinner and more!
More details… |
I hope that these will keep you occupied while I finalise the next Silverlight UK User Group.
mark.