I’m very excited to announce that, starting this week, I have joined the Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) group at Microsoft as a Principal Evangelist focused on Silverlight and the related components of Microsoft’s RIA platform. Specifically, I will be working on a variety of projects in the media and entertainment space. I will also be spending time working with the product teams to assist them with identifying customers’ problems and incorporating solutions into our products.

How did I end up at Microsoft?

As many of you know, I have spent most of my career working on Flash and AIR at Macromedia/Adobe. After leaving Adobe earlier this year I decided to put together a consulting business focused on helping interactive agencies and large enterprises understand RIA technologies and figure out how to incorporate these technologies into their long-term business plans.

Through this work I found myself spending a great deal of time speaking with design and development teams about the relative strengths and weaknesses of various RIA technologies – primarily the Flash platform, the Microsoft platform, and the leading Ajax frameworks. To my surprise, my views on Microsoft’s technologies became the most popular topic of discussion. As a result I spent a great deal of time diving into the details of Microsoft’s stack, particularly Silverlight, Windows Media Services & IIS, and the Visual Studio/Blend/SketchFlow tooling workflow.

My agency clients’ interest in the Microsoft platform was driven by a sudden surge of inquiries for strategic insight from their customers (some of whom I also ended up working with). The surge seemed to accelerate following the announcement of Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3 (particularly its SketchFlow feature). These agencies, which were primarily Flash/Flex shops, were suddenly very interested in figuring out their strategy for adding Silverlight development to their repertoire and they asked me for help.

Through the process of intensively studying Microsoft’s technologies I started to fully realize the potential of what they were doing and the unique position that they were in. Microsoft has the clients, tools, languages, frameworks, services, servers, developer resources, partnerships, desire, growing expertise, and trajectory to solve major problems that customers are increasingly facing. There are gaps in the platform and many areas to improve – but I really felt that Microsoft was prepared and committed to address those challenges.

As I continued to spend an increasing amount of time talking about Microsoft I focused on developing my relationships within the company so I could get access to the information that I needed to provide to my clients. Doing so allowed me to get a better idea of where things were headed and resulted in me starting to kick around the idea of potentially joining the company and helping them solve some of these challenges.

Over time I started having discussions with old friends who had worked with me at Macromedia and later left for Microsoft. I also spent time talking with several Microsoft evangelists, product managers, and engineering managers who I had gotten to know over the years. The overwhelming vibe was that they loved what they were working on and were very driven to build great software. I decided that I wanted to be a part of that.

It’s not a zero-sum game

The obvious question on the minds of my friends in the Flash community is “why switch teams?”

First of all, I love the Flash community and I’m very proud of the work that my former colleagues and I did over the years. I think Flash is a great piece of software. I also know – first hand – that the existence of Silverlight as a competitive technology has done more for Flash than most people realize. The end result is a huge increase in innovation and solutions development across the industry – and more options for customers.

We all know that web technologies evolve quickly – particularly in the RIA space. I want to continue to be a part of that and I feel that Microsoft is in the best position to take things to the next level. We may not be there yet but we’re working on some amazing things. The latest iteration of the tools and client have gotten Microsoft to the level that made myself and others take them very seriously. If they can accomplish this much since Silverlight’s initial announcement in early 2007 (just two years ago) imagine what they’ll do over the next two years.

I will soon be launching a new blog focused on the work that I’ll be doing at Microsoft. I’m very excited to be joining the team and given the opportunity to work on such an exciting technology.

Learn more about Silverlight 3 here.

UPDATE: You can reach me at miked –at– microsoft.com

• Previous Entry: Advice on purchasing a digital SLR camera
• Next Entry: Twitter accounts from the Photoshop and Lightroom teams