Have you ever been fired up about doing something, but every time you try to start you get bogged down in the details and loose interest? If you're a developer and tinker with projects at home I'm sure this has happened a time or two. I had an idea for a website, similar to Craigslist, but instead of hosting classified ads it would host a calendar of events for motorcycle enthusiasts. If you want to plan a ride to a specific destination next weekend, just go to your city's site and post a ride. Other members can join in if they're interested. It wouldn't be limited just to rides, but also bike rallies and club events.

I brought all the pieces together except one major facet, the event calendar. I used DotNetNuke as a basis for the site and couldn't find a decent event module. The core module didn't display well and was a bit buggy, and on top of the standard limitations I was trying to customize the site so events would tie in with discussion threads. Post an event and an associated thread would be created where people could ask questions and talk about the event. I also saw the need for moderation/abuse reporting, which would need some custom work. Every time I tried to make some headway it seemed I was farther away from my goal.

It's been over a year since I started struggling with the site and tonight I resumed my efforts to get something launched. What makes now different than all the other times? My current client needed a management portal and wanted it created using DotNetNuke. This gave me the opportunity to develop some custom modules in an environment where I was focused with no distractions. The result was some pretty nice modules and a lot of useful experience. I also did some work this summer with Microsoft Silverlight. If you're not familiar with Silverlight, it's similar to Flash in that it's great for making media-rich web interfaces. This is perfect for an interactive calendar. The last piece of the puzzle is Silverlight Desktop for DotNetNuke. It provides the framework for easily including Silverlight applications in a DotNetNuke site.

My goal is to have SOMETHING working by the end of the weekend. It probably wont be very pretty and it surely wont have all the functionality I want, but if I can get something published it should get me out of this rut and help generate some momentum.