What Silverlight deed am I proud of in 2009?

John Papa asked me (and other Silverlight MVPs) what was the one BIG thing we did around Silverlight in 2009. Here is what I had to say:

As a few of you may know, although I have technical background, I am really in love with Silverlight (and WPF) for the user experience it makes possible. I think my BIG thing was that I spread the love on tons of Silverlight and related topics during 2009. I had a 4 hour talk about UX, sketching and Sketchflow at the Architecture Forum; 4 hour talk about Silverlight, another one on NUI at the same place (and I got the highest ranks for the sketching talk out of 8 presenters). I talked about Silverlight 3 beta, and later about Silverlight 3 the next working day after it was released – in the middle of the summer, still over 90 people came. I participated in the local Silverlight 3 launch event later, in front of 500 people with sessions about SL3 and Blend. I had several other talks about Blend and Sketchflow, including a 5 minute(!) Sketchflow talk in front of Linux and Mac maniacs – and they liked it! I launched the Hungarian Silverlight User Group in December, and we already have 35 members, probably because they know me from the conferences. I wrote the WPF chapter of the book “Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4 Six-in-one” (http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Studio-2010-NET-Six/dp/0470499486), and convinced the editor to turn it around, focus on UX and Silverlight, and only add a little bit of WPF at the end. But the biggest result from all this preaching about UX and the great technologies that make it possible to concentrate on UX, is that I believe the Hungarian audience is starting to get it. They are realizing that getting developers to do UI may not be the best idea. They are realizing, that UX will be the differentiating factor for their products in the middle term. And spreading this word is my passion. Towards the last months of 2009, I started to receive feedback that the transition has started to happen in the minds of Hungarian developers and managers. This is probably what I am most proud of.

Another big thing for me (but maybe not for Silverlight :) ) is that I became part of this awesome group [Silverlight MVPs], and had the chance to meet many of you online, or even in person. 33 days from now, I will be sitting on a plane to meet even more fellow MVPs at the Summit. Can’t wait!