Vancouver Silverlight User Group (VanSLUG.NET) Launch

On May 5, 2010 I launched the Vancouver Silverlight User Group which I named VanSLUG. The group's web site is at http://vanslug.net/. The first meeting was held at BCIT and was co-hosted by VanSPUG, .netBC, and VanSLUG. Habaneros sponsored the snacks. We had attendance of over 80 people.

The speaker was Laurent Duveau, who is a Silverlight MVP from Quebec City. He gave a talk entitled "Silverlight 4 Business Applications". His presentation was very well received and he got many questions from the audience. He has blogged about the event at:

http://weblogs.asp.net/lduveau/archive/2010/05/09/my-talk-at-the-launch-of-the-vancouver-silverlight-user-group.aspx

You can download his presentation and examples from the above site.

Installing "RIA Services" on IIS 7

To install "RIA Services" in an IS 7.x environment:

1) Download the "RiaServices.msi" file from the Microsoft download page for "WCF RIA Services Release Candidate 2 for Silverlight 4 and Visual Studio 2010".

2) Since you are not expected to have Visual Studio .NET 2010 on the server, it suffices that you only install the assemblies into the GAC. This is done by installing the msi file with these command line swithches:

msiexec /i RiaServices.msi SERVER=TRUE

Cannot uninstall "WCF RIA Services Beta"

There is a bug in "WCF RIA Services Beta" software that makes it almost impossible to uninstall it from add/remove programs in windows. The side effect is that you cannot install the "Silverlight tooks for Visual Studio 2010" without completely uninstalling "WCF RIA Services Beta".

I found this article that proposes a brute force solution to this problem:

http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/p/149912/334721.aspx

Building LOB Applications with Silverlight 3

I had a blast at the TechFest 2009 event held at BCIT in Burnaby, BC on Saturday November 21, 2009. We had about 250 attendees out of 500 registrations. The initial feedback I got from attendees was very positive. My only disappointment is that I lost the camera used to take pictures of the event. It is more to do with the value of the pictures rather than the camera itself. Oh well, shit happens.

I gave a talk at TechFest 2009 on the topic of "Building LOB Applications with Silverlight 3". You can download the powerpoint and demo code from this link:

http://penguin.bcit.ca/medhat/techfest2009/SilverlightLobApps.zip