Impressions From Mix 07

As I am working my way back home from the MIX 07 conference, I have had time to reflect on the conference and whether it was a good use of my time and money:

I did not attend MIX last year, but very much enjoyed and benefited from it this year.  I actually walked away with it having exceeded my expectations – but given how many conferences I attend and speak at over the course of a year, I am somewhat jaded and my level of expectations is not that high J

Here are some specific comments, in no particular order:

(1)    I attended a few sessions that I really learned from and got a lot out of.

(2)    I found it interesting to sit in on a few sessions and think about stuff that I don’t normally think about, e.g. marketing and content.

(3)    Had some good conversations with people besides my usual crowd – some MS people and some different people that I met.

(4)    Keynotes – I thought that both were excellent, but I’d give a big “thumbs down” to the respective Q/A and panel discussion.  The keynotes ended on real highs, but the attached discussions took the air out, in my opinion. 

(5)    Several of the sessions I attended had a  few customer speakers / case studies embedded in the talk – a different and interesting approach (if it was laid out as such in the session description - I do not really remember if it was or wasn’t)

(6) As far as specific technology, Silverlight was clearly the star of the show.   However, another interesting observation is the swing (back) away from strong/static typing - as you can see from the development of the DLR (Dynamic Language Library) and the additional support for loosely-typed web service calls instead of only SOAP calls.

All in all – sign me up for next year !

Download videos of all sessions, including kenotes, from here.
You can download session contents as they are available from here.