Code Confessions

I’ve been meaning to post this for awhile.

A couple of guys at Sogeti and Broadlane (including yours truly) have formed the North Texas Silverlight user group!  The response has been amazing.  In less than three weeks we have gone from 0 to almost 40 attendees for the first meeting.  We’ve also managed to wrangle two fantastic speakers, Caleb Jenkins and Teresa Burger for our first meeting.  Caleb will be presenting on Windows Phone 7 “For World Domination” as the primary speaker for the first meeting.   Knowing Caleb it’s bound to entertain.  Teresa will be doing our first blend segment or “Blendlet” on grid splitters and handles in Microsoft Expression Blend.

Forming this group was in one sense much easier than I thought and in another much harder.  What was easier than I thought is how willing people and companies are to help out.  We needed money and our sponsors graciously agreed.  We needed space at the last minute and Chris Koenig and Microsoft stepped up to the plate.  We needed exposure and Teresa, Caleb, Shawn Weisfeld , and many others in the community retweeted and blogged on our behalf.  The goodwill from everyone I interacted with during this process was heart warming.

The harder parts have been the little things that we as user group goers barely notice when done right.  Getting food for 40, a space, security, swag, etc. is a more involved process that I would have thought. I bet going forward we’ll get it down to a science though.

Wish us luck and we hope to see you there!  For more information visit the group at www.ntsilverlight.com.