I’d like to introduce myself and the new Silverlight blog where we will provide the latest and greatest information, commentary, and thinking for Silverlight. Here, you will get to hear from the folks who build and market the technology, find useful content, and have an open forum to provide feedback.

I’m Brian Goldfarb and am responsible for our UX Platform and Tools technologies including Silverlight, WPF, ASP.NET, as well the Visual Studio and Expression tools used for building these technologies. Here we will focus on our RIA efforts with Silverlight.

Silverlight, after being on the market for about a year and a half, has made incredible progress as a platform and has enjoyed unparalleled traction in the market. As a team we are incredibly excited about the possibilities of what can be done and what has been done with the technology.

We promised to provide the over 6 million .NET developers worldwide with the most feature-rich, flexible and secure platform for deploying their rich Internet applications (RIAs). The release of Silverlight 2 – which contained a cross-browser, cross-platform subset of the .NET Framework, an advanced set of controls, and cutting-edge features such as Deep Zoom – allowed us to deliver on that promise.

As a result, we've seen unbelievable momentum within the enterprise, design agencies and among a myriad of different SI and ISV partners. Organizations such as AOL, CareerBuilder.com, CBS Sports Online, eBay, Hard Rock, MTV, Renault, Samsung Electronics, The European Commission and Yahoo! Japan are just a few of the organizations that are building cutting edge RIAs using Silverlight.

Silverlight has also been tremendously successful in the media and enterprise video segments thanks to some of our great work delivering our customers the highest quality streaming video (with Smooth Streaming), the ability to scale to unprecedented levels of user demand, industry-leading DRM and unmatched price/performance. Silverlight was used to power compelling media experiences at NBCOlympics.com, the Democratic National Convention, Netflix, Blockbuster, and most recently, the live coverage of the inauguration of President Obama on the official Presidential Inauguration Committee (PIC) Website.

Silverlight 3 will continue this momentum, and bring even more innovation to market. At IAB, we announced that Silverlight 3 will include support for H.264. And at PDC, we announced that Silverlight 3 will contain support for 3D graphics, GPU hardware accelerated effects, improved data-binding support, and more. Stay tuned for several other cool features that we have planned for Silverlight 3, many of which will make their debut this week at Mix.

Because innovation is happening daily and customer momentum is just as fast, we thought it would be helpful to launch a blog where we can provide our customers and partners with more details about specific Silverlight features, news and success stories.

In addition to highlighting Silverlight's successes over time, some of the topics we plan to blog about include:

• H.264 support in Silverlight 3: How will you benefit?
• RIAs and Security
• The Cost Effective Switch from Windows Media Player to Silverlight

I want to briefly introduce some of my team members that will be writing blog entries in the upcoming weeks (I'll introduce several others, including those on the product team that will be writing for us, in a subsequent post):

Brad Becker, Director, Rich Client Platforms
Brad is responsible for strategy, product planning, and marketing for various next generation Microsoft platforms and technologies including Silverlight and WPF. Before joining Microsoft, Brad was a Senior UX Consultant at Macromedia and the Senior Product Designer for Flex Builder, Flash, Flash Professional, and the Flash Player. Prior to working at Macromedia, Brad spent eleven years as a software engineer and user interface team lead in the development of commercial client/server and web applications.

Steve Sklepowich, Group Product Manager, Media and Advertising
Steve drives media and advertising platform strategy and outbound marketing for Silverlight. Steve joined Microsoft in 1995, and has served in a variety of platform marketing roles. Steve left Microsoft for over a year in Dec 2004 to become VP Marketing at thePlatform, a leading video publishing services company. Prior to coming to Microsoft, Steve worked at Apple in Cupertino for over 6 years in a many different roles in digital media platforms such as QuickTime, as well as interactive tools product marketing.

Christopher Swenson, Sr. Strategy Manager, .NET Platform
Chris is responsible for a variety of strategic planning, market research and other product management projects for the team. Before Microsoft, Chris was Director of Software Industry Analysis at the NPD Group and Director of Market Research at Macromedia. Chris has also held several other research and planning positions during his 17 year career, including positions at Adobe, Silicon Graphics, Cadence Design Systems and the RAND Corp.

Brian Saab, Group Product Manager, UX Platform & Tools
Brian leads a team dedicated to ensuring a strong relationship and communication channel exists between the Silverlight marketing teams and the hundreds of evangelism and sales personnel working with customers worldwide.

Pete Faraday, Sr. Product Manager, Rich Client Platforms
Pete has a wide range of experience with WPF and Silverlight platforms, tools and competitors. He joined Microsoft in 1998 as a Program Manager, after completing his PhD at City University, UK in computer science and human computer interaction. His thesis project was built in MFC and Visual C++ on Windows 95.

Scott Barnes, Product Manager, Rich Client Platforms.
Scott works closely with Pete Faraday and has a wide range of experience in both WPF and Silverlight platforms, tools and also competitors. He joined Microsoft in 2007 as an Evangelist and recently moved to the Rich Client Platforms team to later become a Product Manager. Before joining Microsoft Scott spent a great deal of his career as a community member within the Adobe Flash, Flex & ColdFusion communities.

Jon Rooney, Sr. Product Manager, Media and Advertising
Jon focuses on driving Silverlight for Media & Advertising scenarios. He is part of a team dedicated to enabling advertisers, agencies and content publishers to deliver next generation on-line monetization models powered by Silverlight. A ten year veteran of high tech and digital media, Rooney has worked in various product development, product marketing and client services roles at several venture-backed start-ups as well as Andersen Consulting (now Accenture).

Jim Thill, Sr. Product Manager, Media and Advertising
Jim is responsible for telling the Windows Server 2008 story for content delivery, both Windows Media Services and IIS Media Services as well as enterprise video. Prior to joining Microsoft, Jim was a product manager for video editing software at Pinnacle Systems and Avid Technologies.

Jonathan Harris, Sr. Product Manager, Expression
Jonathan handles the product management for Expression Blend, Microsoft's product that enables designers and developers to create rich user experiences. Prior to Microsoft, Jonathan was at Macromedia, where he was a Technical Solutions Manager for Mobile and Devices and a Technical Sales Manager in Europe. Before entering the graphics software industry, Jonathan was a Product Consultant and Creative Marketing Manager at Computers Unlimited.

As you can see, we have some of the world's leading experts on RIAs and rich media experiences on the Silverlight team in addition to many of the best engineers in the world. I'm very proud of what our team has accomplished in just a little under a year and a half, and I'm even more excited about what we have in store for you in the upcoming months.

Brian Goldfarb