PDC 10 was last week and we have a ton of great sessions you can check out over on the PDC site. And be sure to check out and vote for my session Kung Fu Silverlight: Tips and Architectural Patterns and Practices. Along with the flurry of sessions I am sure many of you have read or heard about some of the comments made about the future of Silverlight.
First, please take the time to go read the updated statement from Bob Muglia that was released today, then come back 
OK, are you back yet? Good. I appreciate that many of you have reached out to me in various ways looking for some guidance over the weekend on the future of Silverlight. I appreciate my ties with the development community and all of you. I am the straight forward “tell it like it is” guy that I have always been, whatever the truth may be. So how do I feel about Silverlight’s future?
To be blunt: I love Silverlight and I am personally invested and committed to its future.
Since I have now been at Microsoft for 1 year, I want to share with you my commitment to Silverlight. I have been honored to have had opportunities to work with Microsoft a few times, but I never accepted because my family was born and raised on the east coast and we just did not want to relocate. I loved consulting where I could work with customers in various industries and I love working with the development community. When the opportunity arose to work as the corporate Silverlight Evangelist, I would love to say I jumped at it. But I did not. At first, I hesitated at the move, but then my wife reminded me of how much this position mirrors what I love to do most: Communicate with the product team, communicate with the customers, communicate with the community. It’s what I was doing on my own, but this was going to give me a greater opportunity to have a larger impact. So my wife and I packed up the truck and we moved to … Redmond.
It was a huge change for us and I will admit the first year was rough at times. I thought when we landed in Seattle airport last October and we were driving in a rental car with our 4 kids, dog, and 20 bags of luggage (carry-ons and suitcases) through what was the largest rainfall of the year … that my wife might look at me and make me get back on the airplane. She was awesome of course and very supportive. But coming from sun and fun, to gloom and rain and being 3000 miles away was a lot to handle. I’m not sharing this so anyone can pity us for moving or losing a ton on our house: we made our own decisions and we stuck through them. We made the change for our family and for an opportunity to make an larger impact on Silverlight.
It’s been a great year and things have settled down in our family life. Silverlight is going strong and I am proud of how it has evolved and how it continues to evolve.
