This post is long, but I've divided it up into sections so if you're only curious about specific portions you can find information, or you can consume a section at a time. Otherwise, charge ahead. I've tried to keep it compact and dense.
Both Keynotes were good, but the Ballmer interview was the highlight. Now that I've had a few days to let my thoughts coalesce I am more impressed by Ballmer. Ballmer spoke with candor about key subjects to the future of Microsoft. Noam pointed out how impressively Ballmer answered audience questions about fine details of Microsoft's operations. Another poignant moment was when Ballmer, addressing the crowd of software developers directly, said "I know you have a lot of choices out there. Please pick us." Reuters picked up the story of the keynote if you're looking for a quick upshot.
I did pretty well session wise this year, no real stinkers. Here is what I attended with links (if it's worth seeing). Here is a link to the Mix08 sessions page if you want to explore on your own.
Wednesday (Day 1)
Welcome to Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (Chris Wilson) - Meh, it was informative and interesting. All in all it looks like IE8 is going to be a real standards enabled player in the browser world and not some quirky afterthought. I was really there because I knew the one that followed in the same room was going to be packed. Building Rich Internet Applications using Microsoft Silverlight 2, Part 1 - This session was really great. The first session of this two part-er was Mike Harsh. He did a great job of just showing me how to get started writing a Silverlight App. If you want write a RIA this is the place to start with hands on XAML authoring and basics about the whole programming paradigm Building Rich Internet Application using Microsoft Silverlight 2, Part 2 - While the sessions page credits Mike Harsh one of his colleagues actually took the reins. This just took us to the next step with some good information about putting finishing touches on your app.
Welcome to Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 (Chris Wilson) - Meh, it was informative and interesting. All in all it looks like IE8 is going to be a real standards enabled player in the browser world and not some quirky afterthought. I was really there because I knew the one that followed in the same room was going to be packed.
Building Rich Internet Applications using Microsoft Silverlight 2, Part 1 - This session was really great. The first session of this two part-er was Mike Harsh. He did a great job of just showing me how to get started writing a Silverlight App. If you want write a RIA this is the place to start with hands on XAML authoring and basics about the whole programming paradigm
Building Rich Internet Application using Microsoft Silverlight 2, Part 2 - While the sessions page credits Mike Harsh one of his colleagues actually took the reins. This just took us to the next step with some good information about putting finishing touches on your app.
Thursday (Day 2)
Overview of Microsoft Ad Formats - This session was all right. Technically it was on the creative track and consisted mostly of ad sizes, some demo's of multi-ad-slot ad interaction and takeover style ads. As well as some innovation around in video product placement with rich mouse-over drill in interaction. Frankly, going directly to the MSN adCenter Labs site is more interesting. Developing ASP.NET Applications using the Model View Controller Pattern - This session was fantastic, I mean to the point where I've made my team at work watch it and have sent the link to another guy around here. I posted earlier about how Scott Hanselman was the contender for best presenter I saw this year. I know some of you are thinking man-crush, but you'd be wrong. He's just a good presenter who ran us through some solid technology that has been at the front of my mind for a while now. My uptake on MVC - It's not for me, but it's damn pretty.
Overview of Microsoft Ad Formats - This session was all right. Technically it was on the creative track and consisted mostly of ad sizes, some demo's of multi-ad-slot ad interaction and takeover style ads. As well as some innovation around in video product placement with rich mouse-over drill in interaction. Frankly, going directly to the MSN adCenter Labs site is more interesting.
Developing ASP.NET Applications using the Model View Controller Pattern - This session was fantastic, I mean to the point where I've made my team at work watch it and have sent the link to another guy around here. I posted earlier about how Scott Hanselman was the contender for best presenter I saw this year. I know some of you are thinking man-crush, but you'd be wrong. He's just a good presenter who ran us through some solid technology that has been at the front of my mind for a while now. My uptake on MVC - It's not for me, but it's damn pretty.
Friday (Day 3)
Future of Advertising Technology (as told by Microsoft) - This was interesting and really just went quickly over the topography of the Online Ad Landscape (of course maximizing Microsoft's "position" in that space and touching on other players). The presenter touches briefly on the "fragmentation problem" (just watch the video). And then lingered on the idea of an Advertising Exchange (a bit longer than he should). This was on the business/creative track so it kept to the numbers. All and all a bit dry and more insightful as a look at what the "other guy" is thinking than a learning session. Unlocking the Creative Genome - XAML - The title of this talk was changed to something else that I neglected to catch. There are a few things to cover quickly A) this talk was on the creative track B) the presenter Arturo Toledo did a fine job both keeping the pace up and digging into stuff. Initially I thought this was going to be a bit more about the markup XAML instead it was about the tool, Expression Blend. This turned out to be great. Expression Blend is the tool they provide for doing the integration and rich interaction around Silverlight. And while I like being able to roll up my sleeves and pound out some XAML, having a tool that helps and generates XAML I can read makes the learning curve that much flatter. This means I can drop something on the design surface, manipulate and figure out what the heck I just did. I am antsy to play with this stuff and dying to right a RIA
Future of Advertising Technology (as told by Microsoft) - This was interesting and really just went quickly over the topography of the Online Ad Landscape (of course maximizing Microsoft's "position" in that space and touching on other players). The presenter touches briefly on the "fragmentation problem" (just watch the video). And then lingered on the idea of an Advertising Exchange (a bit longer than he should). This was on the business/creative track so it kept to the numbers. All and all a bit dry and more insightful as a look at what the "other guy" is thinking than a learning session.
Unlocking the Creative Genome - XAML - The title of this talk was changed to something else that I neglected to catch. There are a few things to cover quickly A) this talk was on the creative track B) the presenter Arturo Toledo did a fine job both keeping the pace up and digging into stuff. Initially I thought this was going to be a bit more about the markup XAML instead it was about the tool, Expression Blend. This turned out to be great. Expression Blend is the tool they provide for doing the integration and rich interaction around Silverlight. And while I like being able to roll up my sleeves and pound out some XAML, having a tool that helps and generates XAML I can read makes the learning curve that much flatter. This means I can drop something on the design surface, manipulate and figure out what the heck I just did. I am antsy to play with this stuff and dying to right a RIA
Sessions I wish I went to and will be catching via download: (If you beat me to them, please leave a review in the comments)
Opportunities and Challenges in Mashing up the Web From Long Tail to Fuzzy Tale: Why "Fuzzy" is the New Clear The Back of the Napkin: Solving Design Problems (and selling your solutions) with Pictures How Design Impacts the Bottom Line (A Panel) Monetization 101 Advanced Cross Browser layout with Internet Explorer 8
Opportunities and Challenges in Mashing up the Web
From Long Tail to Fuzzy Tale: Why "Fuzzy" is the New Clear
The Back of the Napkin: Solving Design Problems (and selling your solutions) with Pictures
How Design Impacts the Bottom Line (A Panel)
Monetization 101
Advanced Cross Browser layout with Internet Explorer 8
These links are here as much for you to know what I found interesting and didn't get to as well as for me to have a place to return to and check them out. If you're looking for a little trick, you can download the WMV of the talk and then play it in Windows Media Player. If you look under Now Playing > Enhancements > Play Speed Settings you can up the playback speed of the talk in 10% increments. The cool thing is it won't "chipmunk".
In the course of the conference I spent some of my time at the labs area where they had a bunch of PC's set up where you could do a set of Hands On demo's of the technologies - from Silverlight to IE8 to ADO.NET to Mobile. After having seen the Part 1 and Part 2 of how to make a Silverlight App I had to give it a try. While the labs were there to be followed and I definitely came back to them when I got mixed up - I mostly went off-roading. Here is a screen of my Hello World that just moved the text around on a mouse click. Sorry no video.
Mix University - This has a bunch of training materials about several subjects offering everything from Video's to Hands on Labs.
Sessions.VisitMix.com - You can view sessions from Mix 08 / Mix 07 / Mix 06
Well, there were the Mix08 Windows Mobile Beret's (see right). I did get a black one, but for some reason I neglected to wear it around.
Aside from and IE8 foam boomerang the real schwag was a copy of VS2008 Pro and a disc with a couple Virtual PC images of a Vista install with IE8 and Vista with Visual Studio 2008 all setup with Silverlight 2.0.
Now aside from the fact that the images are huge resource hogs, that looks pretty good. One of my complaints with Silverlight 1.1 is I never found (didn't really look) a Virtual PC image and getting everything installed to actually start to work was a pain
The people at the conference are always high octane. Met up with a talented designer/developer Ian Muir who I had met at Mix07 when he was one of the ReStyle winners. Here is a link to the Gallery of this year's entries and here is a link to my favorite entry of his from this year. I again tried to recruit him; I'd love to work with him. I talked to Dylan Greene, Senior Dev Ninja (it's what his card says) from Clearspring. He was a bit surprised when I mentioned that I read forgetfoo.com (NASFW) since "foo", as we call him, works over at Clearspring. We also ran into Steve Berkovitz, VP of Development at mbc out of Toronto whom we had met at Mix07. He's a good guy who "gets it" and is always great to hang out with. I will be evaluating moving my hosting over to him.
There were a lot of luminaries there from the .NET world. I hope Noam will go over them in his imminent post. The one fellow who was there as a participant and not a presenter was Rockford "Rocky" Lhotka (that I could tell). I didn't get a chance to speak to him but he's been a significant influence since back in the VB6 day.
Vince Mira a Johnny Cash cover artist played in before the keynotes was really great. Turns out he's a 15 year old kid from Seattle. You can catch a few of his tracks here at his Myspace page. I will definitely see if he's playing the next time I'm in Seattle.
Can't really talk about much... You know how it is about "staying in Vegas". I'll say this. I made a $160 donation to the Vegas charity, entirely at black jack. I'm considering changing my name to "fourteen hits to sixteen" - no really.
And Finally, would not be complete without:
The Flickr photo feed from the event. It's a bit schizophrenic so feel free to jump ahead. I think some of my stuff is in there. Otherwise here is my flickr link (not really much new here). I'll just shut up now and let the pictures talk:
Disclaimer The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.
© Copyright 2008 Jason Woodard