Want to get started with Silverlight, but does the thought of Blend and XAML give you a headache? In this talk, we'll discuss the capabilities of Silverlight 4.0 and look at how Blend and Visual Studio work together to build Silverlight Applications. We'll demystify XAML and see how to add animation to our applications. Since Silverlight is a mix of server and client side development, traditional data access methods don't apply, so we'll see how to connect to and display data. Finally, we'll take a look at a number of great resources to learn more about Silverlight.

Rich Dudley is a former scientist, but these days instead of studying organisms you’ll find him working with Microsoft Visual Studio.  With over 10 years of enterprise development experience, Rich has written articles and given talks relating to ASP.NET, SQL, XML, Windows Phone 7 and Azure.  Rich has been working with Azure since the early beta days, with Windows Phone 7 since before you could leave one in a bar, and is co-author of "Microsoft Azure: Enterprise Application Development" from Packt Publishing.  As a Technical Evangelist for ComponentOne, you’ll find Rich at your local user group event or tradeshow or blogging online.  His passion for development is evident in his work, whether it’s a demonstration, talk, or sample project.  Follow Rich's blog at http://c1.ms/c1_richd, or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/rj_dudley

Coded UI Testing is a new framwork that allows you to test your Silverlight user interface.

Have you ever wondered about having combo boxes with multiple display lines or treeviews with images and text? Have you wanted to use buttons that are not square or rectangular? How do you make your application special? This session will cover several advanced Silverlight topics: Templating and Styling.

John Baird is the founder of Xamlware, a professional consulting firm specializing in Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 development. John has 30 years of experience designing, coding, and implementing software solutions. John co-founded the Northern Delaware .Net Users group, is heavily involved in the local .Net communities, and travels extensively presenting to user groups, code camps and special interest groups. John is also a 3 time recipient of Microsoft’s MVP award and is one of the first MVP’s for Windows Phone 7.