MIX08: The Day Before

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Having arrived in Las Vegas for MIX08 on March 4, I found out a lot was going on already.  There was a pre-conference in swing and the playground for MIX was already set up. 

First off, there were 2 Microsoft Surface tables set up for attendees to play with.  I've seen these things in action already in Redmond, Washington and I know they will be a hit at MIX.  It shows how you can bring user experience to a common object like a coffee table and make it something very dynamic.

In addition, there is something called the Open Space.  Open Space is a community-driven discussion on topics picked by the MIX community.  I saw a version of this last year and I think it will be a great success this year as well. Even though the board was only opened for sessions today, there are a number of great discussions that are available already, including:

  • Silverglobe
  • Silverlight Mobile Applications Demonstrations
  • Medium and Internet Explorer 8:  Making the Web Social
  • Silverlight Slideshow
  • Software + Services Blueprints
  • Business Value of SQL Data Services
  • Medium:  Secret Stuff We Can't Announce
  • SilverReader
  • Sync to the Web (Enable offline access to web data to any data store)
  • Developers' View of SQL Data Services
  • Wii and WPF
  • Silverlight Game Engine
  • Securing Web Applications Using Healthcare Standards
  • Good News, Bad News:  WPF in the Real World
  • Family.Show vNext
  • SQL Data Services
  • Ruby Ruby Ruby
  • Mono:  Cross-Platform .NET
  • Q&A on Visual Studio 2008 WPF (and Silverlight) Tools

Below is a picture of the board where any and every MIXer can add their own discussion:

 

I saw an interesting concept called MIXSandbox.  Basically, anybody registered for the conference can sign up to get their very own hosted sandbox to try out building web applications complete with SQL Server back ends for 4 months for free.  If you're at the conference and interested, all you have to do is sign up at https://www.mixsandbox.com.

There was also an evening event where there was a showing of the movie King of Kong that describes how the current record holder for points in a game of Donkey Kong was challenged by a new challenger just recently.  I wasn't able to stay for the full showing as I went to dinner with a number of Canadian MIXers, but the premise and movie looked quite interesting - I'll be watching it in the future.

I also saw some talented (and not so talented) people take a stab at Rock Band.  They've set it up quite nicely with a stage and the like, so I'll get a picture of that soon.

Well, that's it for March 4 at MIX08; I'll be posting information from the keynote at MIX, so stay tuned!

Paul

Technorati Tags:  Canadian MIXers, MIX08