A received a note from Anthony Handley a few weeks back feeling out my thoughts around renaming (and re-chartering) the Chicago Designers and Developers User Group (CD2) to the Chicago Silverlight User Group. I thought it was a great idea as it provided a directed focus on what the topics and general direction of the group would be. It would only help the community at large understand the conversations that were taking place.

The intention of the group from the beginning was to bring the conversations between designers and developers closer together from a platform agnostic approach. As Anthony expounds on below, the group started to gravitate to more discussions focused on a particular area – Silverlight. Changing the name only solidifies the charter of the groups intent to the community and provides a means to bring more people together around a common cause (a “community”).

We are still able to facilitate conversations and idea sharing between designers and developers through events such as RIApalooza. Myself, along with the leaders of the Chicago Silverlight user group and the Chicago Adobe user group are currently in the planning stages of RIApalooza 3. More details to come.

Here is Anthony’s message…

In the past 18 months, the Chicago Designers and Developers User Group has sought to walk the lines between design and development while remaining platform agnostic. We’ve had some great presentations and speakers in the past; however, it has become increasingly difficult to find and schedule topics that appeal to designers and developers in both the Adobe and Microsoft worlds. After careful introspection and evaluation, the CD2 leadership team have chosen to clarify our place in the community and focus on Microsoft Silverlight & WPF.

And so, we’re extremely excited to announce the creation of The Chicago Silverlight User Group. The core purpose of the group (better designer/developer collaboration) hasn’t changed, but includes a renewed focus as we concentrate on all that Silverlight and WPF have to offer as a rich platform. We invite all of CD2′s members to continue to join us in this new and excited SIG in the coming months.

In effect, this is the sunset of CD2 as we know it today. We realize that some of the content we sought to bring to CD2 is already capably provided by the likes of IxDA and the Chicago Area Adobe User Groups. We believe these groups also add value to the designer and developer communities.

The new user group’s inaugural meeting will be at 6PM on Wednesday, March 3rd at The Illinois Technology Association (ITA) 200 S. Wacker Drive, 15th Floor | Chicago, IL 60606

We will be launching a new registration website in the coming weeks. If you have any questions or comments about The Chicago Silverlight User Group, please contact us at the email addresses below.

I am happy to report that I will be speaking at the (re)inaugural meeting of the Chicago Silverlight user group on March 3rd. We will be discussing the new features of Silverlight 4.

Ram Cherala, Principal Program Manager in the Visual Studio Test Tools Business, will be visiting the Midwest District to provide a deeper dive into the innovative new capabilities being introduced in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Visual Studio Test Elements and Test and Lab Management products.

These sessions are targeted toward Developers, Architects, and Quality Assurance teams. Attendees will be given the unique opportunity to have a first glimpse into the products and interact directly with the Redmond team responsible for designing and delivering these products to the market. We will cover a broad range of important topics including Software Quality Assurance, historical debugging, manual test runner, test impact analysis and test lab management.

Book raffle and Zune Give-a-way

One random attendee will be selected to receive a brand new Zune HD!

Agenda:

  My colleagues and I have been hard at work for the past month or so working on bringing you the latest information to get you prepared for the upcoming launch of the Windows Azure Platform. We are going to discuss the latest and greatest of what the Windows Azure Platform has to offer and how our very own Microsoft IT team has been using it to build line-of-business applications.

This roadshow will travel across 17-cities in the Central Region with a session focused on the IT Professional in the morning and digging into the Development side of the house in the afternoon.

You can find all the details by visiting my Event Calendar.

What??? You didn’t know I had an event calendar? Well, I do. The Event Calendar gives me the ability to keep you up to date on the developer events taking place without getting lost in the blogroll.

I will be presenting a session on Multi-Enterprise Business Applications in the Cloud as part of the July meeting of the Chicago Cloud Computing Users Group on July 30, 2009 at 6PM in Downers Grove, IL.

Join us for the July local meeting of the Cloud Computing User Group – this month in Downers Grove.

Our topic this month is Multi-Enterprise Business Applications (MEBAs), a new category of application for business collaboration that the cloud makes possible. We’ll review what the current thinking on MEBAs is from Microsoft and the cloud community followed by an in-depth demo and code exploration of an Azure business collaboration application.

Dave Bost, Developer Evangelist from the Developer Platform and Evangelism team at Microsoft will be the presenter. He will discuss how MEBAs facilitate business processes that span enterprises, how they are enacted by the exchange of messages, and how complex, cross-organizational challenges are managed through these applications (e.g. Security, Data, Management and Governance).

In this session, I will discuss the work that I was recently a part of in Redmond on “Project MEBA” in partnership with the Platform Architecture team. If the planets align, we will have the visionary and brainchild behind “Project MEBA”, Jack Greenfield join us by conference call.

You can find all the details and registration information at http://www.azureusergroup.com/events/event/show?id=2698780%3AEvent%3A13229&xgi=6zA1EHT.

…and Homer couldn’t be happier! Ok…not THAT Springfield, but Springfield, IL.

Part of my job as a Microsoft evangelist is fostering developer communities across the region. It just so happens that my region (officially) covers Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. However, I like to help provide support to any and all developers communities where and whenever I can.

One of the areas of the region that hasn’t seen much action in way of community (at least that I know of) is the southern half of the state of Illinois. Well…that all ends now. Darrin Bishop, in partnership with Levi, Ray and Shoup, are bringing the Central Illinois SharePoint Users Group to Springfield, IL.

(You can read the full announcement over on Darrin’s blog.)

I’d like to see additional developers groups started in the southern area. If you’re interested in starting a user group, there are a few organizations like INETA that can be a valuable asset and resource. To learn more, check out INETA’s whitepaper on Starting and Running a User Group.