Support Your Local Phone Farmers - Florida Edition

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One core tenent for me in my job at the Florida Developer Evangelist for Microsoft has always been "help make Florida a great place to do software development". In Microsoft terms that's called supported the Local Software Economy. Ya'll may snuff at that, but run the numbers. Florida has 4th most devs in the USA by state according to US Census. I know Florida has submitted a large number of apps to the WP7 marketplace. And in aggregate, across the entire state, our software dev results are impressive, and the community appears to be thriving.

So let's think about Windows Phone 7 from a Florida perspective. What are some of the cool things we've got going on state-wide.

Florida Devs Only Mailing List - There's a Florida-only developer mailing list at https://fla-wimo-dev.groups.live.com for discussing various Windows Phone issues. Great way to dialog on a local level. When you apply for membership, plese state where you are in Florida and your blog or twitter if availalble

Apps Written in Florida Website - List your apps here - for Florida WP developers - Feeds into the Florida Apps App (see below) - click here to list your app - https://new.efficientcoder.net/2010/11/florida-windows-phone-7-applications.html

The Florida Apps App - Yes, there is an app out there for tracking applications written in Florida. Pretty cool live tile update and a neat way of 'supporting the local farmers' by finding new applications coming from the local area. Written by @bytemaster. See it here via zune marketplace. Hint: just get the trial mode version. Query - is the Florida Apps App listed in the Florida Apps App? Ow, recursion.

Show Your Pride - if you've published an applicaton for Windows Phone, why not get a tshirt for it? Link on how to get a Windows Phone 7 tshirt so is here - https://blogs.msdn.com/b/devfish/archive/2010/11/29/got-windows-phone-7-app-want-tshirt-maybe-some-cash.aspx

Local Authors - Finally, how about some books. There are two books coming that are 100% Florida author driven. SAMS coming in March, APRESS released already. Here's some links:
Beginning Windows Phone 7 Development from APress by Henry Lee of and Eugene Chuvyrov, both of Jacksonville, FL
Sams Teach Yourself Windows Phone 7 Application Development in 24 Hours by Scott Dorman, Nikita Polyakov, Kevin Wolf, and Joe Healy, all of Tampa, FL

As you can see, Windows Phone is a big part of the local software economy for the geeks around here. Support your local "farmers" buy some apps or a book!