Ok, this should be a lot of fun!

ComponentArt has just announced the official beginning of the 2009 Summer Silverlight Coding Competition. Starting immediately and throughout the summer (until September 22), developers can submit their Silverlight applications for evaluation by our Expert Panel and the developer community. The author(s) of the "best" application, as decided by the Expert Panel and the community, will walk away with the grand prize of $10,000 USD. Authors of the two runner-up applications will each receive ComponentArt licenses (a $1,299 USD value).

How the Winner Will Be Chosen

Obviously, there's no such thing as the "best" application. The winner will be chosen based on the number of points collected from the Expert Panel (maximum 450 points) and the community vote (maximum 100 points). So, we highly value the opinion of our Expert Panel, but the community vote might well tip the scale and select the winner!

The grading criteria and the precise details for collecting points and are outlined on the how to win page.

Our Expert Panel

We are proud to have the following individuals on our Expert Panel:

Use of ComponentArt Products is NOT Required

Applicants are not required to use ComponentArt's products to enter the competition (or as the legal jargon requires us to say: NO PURCHASE NECESSARY). We'll obviously let you use our products if you want to, but the purpose of this contest is to increase awareness of Silverlight features and applications already released, so we would like to keep it open to the entire Silverlight developer community.

The full contest rules are available here. Let's have some fun and may the best app win!