Although I've been here at the Kalahari since Tuesday, today was officially the first day of CodeMash.

The first session I attended was an Introduction to Silverlight talk in which Jesse Liberty walked through the basics of creating a simple online data form, showing off the layout elements and databinding features of Silverlight.

I followed this by attending a session on JQuery. The presenter - Adam McCrea - was a Ruby developer working on a Mac (I'm a .Net developer working on a PC), but it didn't matter as he showed a few simple JQuery functions to perform some tasks inside a browser.

I attended an open space in the afternoon. The topic - MEF and Silverlight - sounded intriguing but I left when it went far off-track, devolving into a debate over the usefulness of MEF and Inversion of Control container. This might have been an interesting side topic, but the arguments seemed fueled by emotion and I had little desire to engage, so I left halfway through.

Lunch featured a keynote address by Microsoft engineer Hank Janssen, who has been instrumental in bringing PHP to the Microsoft platform. IIS now supports PHP and bridges the gap with other open source technologies. This was a topic I know very little about, so I was able to absorb a lot of new information. As an bonus, NPlus1 sponsored a private dinner with Hank, where community leaders could ask him questions about Microsoft's future plans with open source technologies. I wasn't able to contribute much to this conversation, but it was a delight to listen to others discuss it in detail. Microsoft appears to be opening up their technologies and making them available to work with open source tools more than ever and it seems this trend will continue.

I recorded a half dozen more Technology and Friends episodes throughout the day. Topics include MongoDB, Open Spaces, and Software Craftsmanship. I will edit and release in the coming weeks.