Greetings from MIX 09

Well, I had the good fortune to get to attend MIX 09 with Ashish Jaiman this week, and would like to report to you on all the stuff my colleagues haven't posted already.

First and foremost, it was great to see designers in attendance - in greater proportion than in years past I'm told.  I'm hoping that they were pleased by what we previewed in Blend 3.  Features like Sketch View, Behaviors, Design Time data improvements, and rich Creative Suite imports are built to help them - I'm very hopeful they'll like Blend 3 based on audience reaction to the demos I saw.

Second and nextmost, it was a pleasant surprise to see all the offline out-of-browser features that are coming for Silverlight 3.  Lots of ISVs have been asking for these, but the SL3 team was very discreet about whether they were going to get this into SL3.  Now, not only will we be able to write SL apps that look like native apps on the platforms where they run, but we'll even have the capability to call out to trusted native apps (via a local TCP socket connection.)  This makes for some interesting possibilities, especially if you have to have an app print for you or open a file in a native editor.

Third and finally, it was great to spend time with friends and colleagues, as well as the folks making the platform.  Our interaction with MIX attendees has had a profound impact on our platform.  By attending, you can help shape what we're doing, and help guide us to build a better platform for you to build on.

If you've never been to a MIX, I highly recommend going next year.  The conference is short, focused, and hey - it's in Vegas too.  I hope to see you there next year!