This evening I went to an event put on by the PDXRIA user group. Ryan Stewart, a recently acquired evangelist by Adobe was presenting on Flex 3 and Adobe Air. The Flex 3 stuff was really interesting. I approached it from a developers standpoint, and while I see some features lacking in tool support (refactoring, test automation, and other things that make the ALT.NET group sing) I couldn't help but notice how all these new improvements really make the platform approachable for me - a developer by trade rather than a designer doing "hack" development. The Flex SDK is open source so you can even use notepad if you don't have $650 bucks for a Flex Builder 3 license.
I've been really spoiled by Microsoft every since I started learning DotNet back in 2002. I've never had to purchase a license for any of the versions of Visual Studio, Office, XP, Vista, or even the new Expression Suite. I attend various launch events and user group meetings where Microsoft gives out schwag like you'd never believe to the attendees. (BTW, I attend in order to learn, not get the schwag 
) It would be nice to see Adobe follow suit as they work to attract hard-core developers instead of just converted designers. I hope think they'll soon realize that they need to give away more copies of Flex Builder and CS3 in order to keep the curious-minded, alpha-developers interested. Flash/Flex may be ahead of Silverlight right now, but with all the tools being given away from Microsoft, I think you'll quickly see a point in the next year (maybe 18 months) where the number of C#/Silverlight developers outstrips the number of Actionscript/Flex developers by at least 3 to 1.
Tonight's event was sponsored by a company called Cynergy who specializes in RIA development. It was mentioned that they are soon going to be opening up a Portland office. It was also mentioned that they are looking for Flash/Flex designers and developers, and I saw in another email where they mentioned they are also interested in Silverlight. Sweet! So during the AIR portion of the presentation I decided I'd go find someone from this company and talk shop. I went up to this really tall fellow who was briefly introduced at the first of the meeting. I assumed he was either a recruiter or a marketing/technology higher-up. Yeah, his name was Carson Hager and he is the owner of the company. Now I didn't say anything foolish or embarass myself in front of him, no I save those moments for this blog. We had a good talk and he informed me that it is actually his company who is one of the Gold Sponsors of MIX this year. Wow. You know the MIX bash party that's going to be held at the TAO? Well, Cynergy is sponsoring that. I believe they are also presenting a session at MIX titled something like "Silverlight for Flash Designers," though I can't find it in the current sessions list.
One thing I learned tonight is that while I definitely have a preference for Silverlight over Flash/Flex right now, it's really amazing to see what else is happening in this space as I break down these superficial red vs. blue barriers and become technology agnostic. I think I'm going to start with implementing the Silverlight Chess demo Scott Guthrie gave at MIX last year in Flex 3. There's no time like the present to stop being primarily a spectator and start becoming an active participant. True technology leaders are not speakers or evangelists, they are doers, writers of demos which do more than "Hello, World" and those with practical experience rather than powerpoint/book experience. Keep an eye on mckhendry.com as that will be where I start posting some of these new apps. I'll be sure to link to them from this blog. What are you working on in your spare time right now?