finding a "semi-pro" project for Silverlight, suggestions?

Question

I'd like to get my feet wet in Silverlight. I think all the reading and tutorials in the world don't work nearly as well as a real project. Plus I've done tutorials, read some books, listened to podcasts and so on. I'm ready for the next step. I'm not sure how to make that step though. I'm certainly not ready to put "Silverlight development" on the resumé with any confidence. Some options:

• get on elance and make some lowball bids for RIAs, assuming that part of my compensation is the experience
• craigslist
• find a designer who needs a programmer - already asked all my designer friends ;)

I'd like to find a non-profit ideally, it'd be cool if I felt like I was helping while I was learning. But that seems like a longshot. I'd really want it to be a publicly facing website so I can use it as a bit of a portfolio piece. And I'd be willing to work for free, or a sliding scale sort of fee. I'm not a designer, so I'd need some help in that dept. I've got some experience with that, but it was so long ago and I don't delude myself about my skills.

I've got about 4 yrs experience in ASP.NET, Winforms and C#.

Suggestions for finding this mythical project?

Answer 1

My first, and unfinished, project in Silverlight was started in November 2007. I was designing a poll map of the US in which the user could see realtime vote count, hover over a state and get a detailed breakdown. Similar to John King's Magic Map.

My newborn twins were three months old at the time, so I didn't have a chance to finish it but it was great experience. Silverlight is great for very visual applications. Some more ideas:

1. Anything geographical, like the polling stuff. There is a free XAML USA map available, Google "XAML USA map".
2. Graphs, charts, etc. There are some third-party controls available for this or you could experiment with rolling your own.
3. Drag and Drop type interfaces can really pop with Silverlight.
4. Games! (My personal favorite)

Answer 2

Here are some ideas:

• Make a easily-skinnable shopping cart in Silverlight that integrates with an e-commerce back-end system
• I'd try to join an existing Silverlight open source project as a contributor like this Silverlight Ribbon project on CodePlex.

Answer 3

There is no shortage of non-profits who would love to have someone build software for them, and they don't care what technology it is (this is more or less the sentiment of any customer). I found a non-profit that has a technology need and I'm using ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight to fulfill that need, though admittedly with free time at a premium it's not progressing nearly as fast as a "paid" project. So, my advice is to find a non-profit whose mission you believe in and just send them an email. I doubt they'll turn you down.

Alternatively, help me out! :)