Q. Hi Alex. Congratulations on winning the Community Vote Prize in our Eco Contest, with your application ‘GreenLance – Freelance for Nature’! Please introduce yourself to the community at SilverlightShow – your country, job, experience with Silverlight, anything you think might be interesting to our community.
A. Hello! I’m Alex Sorokoletov, I live in Minsk, Belarus and work as a developer at Itransition. From the technology prospective - I love Silverlight. I’m developing on Silverlight from its beginning, very actively the last 2 years.
Q. The community at SilverlightShow voted your application as the best one among 26 entries! Well-done! What do you think was the key advantage of your application, what do you think impressed most the people voting for all those green apps?
A. Before answering I’d like to thank to all the people who helped me with idea, development and fine-tuning the application and thank to all the people who voted for my work. Thank you! That’s not my victory, but ours!
I viewed most of the entries (some were not loading, unfortunately) and I think the key was that GreenLance is not just application for a contest, it’s platform for Green collaboration. There are number of hub-like sites that just aggregate information in one place, making it easier to work with all this data. Like eBay and auctions. Same does GreenLance for Green organizations and volunteers.
Q. How did you come up with the idea of your contest entry?
A. That’s the easiest question ;) I was thinking about the concept and had some drafts, but just drafts. I came to my colleagues, Yury and Sergey, told them about the contest and we did a short brainstorm on what can be helpful for nature and forests. We had more than 10 ideas. GreenLance had good value/efforts ratio so I started with this idea.
Q. Which part of your application was most challenging to develop, and why?
A. Development. I missed start of the contest and discovered it shortly before it ends. Had to code a lot. One point I spent more time I planned was adapting application to the contest hosting page. Great help was provided by SilverlightShow team, thanks!
Q. What was your favorite among the other apps in the contest? Which apps did you give 5 leaves and why?
A. Technically I like ‘Do you twig’, because of growing trees. It has very advanced technical implementation. Interesting that I found a post about implementing ‘Do you twig’ before I found the application in the Gallery. Forest Findr has very good integration and usage of Bing Maps.
Third entry I like is Treeler, because of fun interpretation of the contest problem.
Q. We plan to make one Eco contest each year, with different Eco topics of course. How would you recommend to improve the contest, would you like to suggest the topic for next year perhaps :)?
A. From what I see you covered important problems as carbon and forests. Next one I face every day is water. I’m sure you will find the best application of developer forces to save our Nature!
Q. Have you been to MIX and Vegas before? How do you plan to take advantage of this great event, which are the sessions you look forward to most?
A. No, I haven’t. I’m excited because that was one of my dreams – visit MIX and listen to Deep Dive MVVM by Laurent Bugnion. Generally, sessions on MVVM, Silverlight and Windows Phone7 are my goals.
Regarding Vegas, I’m happy I will visit this city. There is no other city where you can visit so many sights, shows and attractions! And gambling, of course!
Viva Las Vegas!
Thank you, SilverlightShow and Telerik for your prizes!
Thanks Alex! We hope you will enjoy MIX and Vegas, and hope you will share with us your impressions from the best sessions there!