Hi all, since my title is buzzword compliant I hope I will get lots of answers to my question or any pointers to the right direction.

OK what I usually do is have a ViewModel which contains a list of ViewModels itself.

public class MasterViewModel
{
    public ObservableCollection<DetailViewModel> DetailViewModels { get; set; }
    public DetailViewModel Detail { get; set; }
}

   <ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding DetailViewModels}">
        <ItemsControl>
            <ItemsPanelTemplate>
                <StackPanel />
            </ItemsPanelTemplate>
        </ItemsControl>
        <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
            <DataTemplate>
                <views:DetailsView />
            </DataTemplate>
        </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
    </ItemsControl>

With this in mind I will now come to my questions. I read a lot of good things about MEF and also saw the dashboard sample of Glenn Block but this was not helping me enough.

What I want to do is sidbar (like the windows sidebar). Sidebar = StackPanel ListItems = Gadget

ButI want it MVVM style

OK I have something like a contract

IGadget

I implemented an custom Export.

[ExportGadget(GadgetType = GadgetTypes.News)]

I have my NewsGadgetView.xaml (which implements IGadget) and imports the NewsGadgetViewModel and also makes itself available as ExportGadget.

so far so good. With this I can create a set of gadgets.

Then I have my SidbarView.xaml which imports a sidebarViewModel.

and now I get lost...

I thought of something like a GadgetFactory which uses PartCreator to create my Gadgets. but this would sit in my SidebarView.xaml But I want to have control over my Gadgets to add and remove them from my sidebar. So I thought about something like an ObserveableCollection...

Which I bind to

The GadgetHost is basicaly Grid which will dynamicaly load the Gadget....

So how would I create my sidebar containing different gadgets without knowing which Gadgets are available and have a ViewModel for the sidebar as well as for each gadget?...

Thanks for any help....