Mix Sessions 08

by Don Burnett

Well, as some of you might know I was planning to go to Mix 08. My knee had other plans though. About three weeks ago I was involved in an auto accident. In the accident my knee was pretty tore up and damaged by the impact. I ended up being lucky to be here, with the car totaled. Well, my knee swelled up like a huge grape fruit and I couldn't walk on it. So instead of going to Mix I ended up in the E.R. and later having a procedure done to drain my knee of the blood and fluid that was collecting in there with no place to go..

Today (Friday) is the first day I have been out.. I have been attempting to catch up, so I watched the first two days of Mix sessions, and maybe it's just me but I haven't been as impressed with the content as I was the year before. Not to say it's not great content and Microsoft has a lot of impressive partnerships and "wins" to show off this year. There are a few things I have been hoping for and haven't seen as of yet..

If you want to see the sessions from the past few days check out the VisitMix.com blog. They are available for viewing over Media Player, your iPod, or Zune. So far there have been only about five or six sessions (out of over 20 something) that have interest me or told me something I didn't already know. So did I miss out by not making it to Mix? I am not really sure I did. Sure the parties and the people are fun, but if I had to compare the content to last year or even the Adobe Max conference I am not really sure that the topics really interested me on a personal or professional level overall.

Quite a few of the subjects have already been covered elsewhere in a more thorough way other places.

So did I miss out? I won't be at SxSW.com which looks like a more interesting show for designers. Considering the new technologies like Silverlight 2.0 (which seems like it's in the Phantom Zone still trying to get out and be a real product not in beta) and Silverlight Mobile. There should have been a few "silver bullet/red phone" moments, but those opportunities seem to pass by with not much happening. Mix 07 might have set my yearly expectations a little too high.

Some of my favorite sessions that I have viewed at Visitmix.com (editorial comment: yeah they could be better but they are great!)

Understanding Microsoft Partner Programs, for Designers, Developers and Agencies (BCT03)Encoding Video

for Microsoft Silverlight Delivery Scenarioes (BCT07)

Welcome to Internet Explorer 8.0 (BCT08)

Advanced SEO for Web Developers (BT03) (where's the Silverlight Analytics)

Building RIAs Using Microsoft Silverlight PT 1 (CT01)

Building RIAs Using Microsoft Silverlight PT 2 (CT02)

Adding Instant Messaging to any site (T03)

RESTful data services with the ADO.NET Data Services Framework (T07)

Developing Data Driven Web Applications using ASP.NET Dynamic Data (T24)

Great Presentation, but not what I was expecting..

Being a "Recovering Flash Developer/Designer" (to quote the presenter) I would say that while the "From Flash to Silverlight: A Rosetta Stone" was a good presentation on "beginning Silverlight", it did not capture what you need to know if you are a Flash designer/developer who is trying to translate their skills from Flash over to Silverlight.. Concepts in Flash itself that developers work with daily wasn't paralleled in the presentation and I really was disappointed because the presenter did a really great job on the content he had, it just didn't address what I was expecting to see.

I was really hoping for a more "conceptual" Rosetta Stone. One that talked about clips and symbols, and movies and how differently this works than multiple timelines and the bubbled event model in Silverlight. I expected some talk about browser/DOM integration and a Silverlight app can have multiple story boards and timelines based on events and the differences in Timelines conceptually and see both products on the screen and see the author doing work in both and showing where it all applies.

You could also tell the guy was more of a developer and ActionScript guy, than a designer because he immediately went into Visual Studio to do Silverlight, this I think is a big no-no if you are trying to convince a Flash guy on Silverlight's greatness, I think I could see from the video the designers in the audience's eyes glassing over at that very moment. Not how I would have started off to talk to people about transitioning to Silverlight from Flash. Flash is a GUI product and he should have been in Blend immediately. Visual Studio is a developers tool and a good turn off to a designer even with Cider..

Overall Impressions from Content Presentation at Mix 08

This Mix more looks like it was aimed at developers and the Microsoft developer community than it does the Designer community, and that's okay because we need everyone right? I believe after seeing this Mix and what Microsoft decided was "important" to talk about, that there is room for another Microsoft "Designer" event (maybe not even by hosted or sponsored by Microsoft) during the year..

Sure there were some great things here, the Astin-Martin, Hard Rock demos, the Olympics, Move Networks partnering with Microsoft, and of course the Atlas Ad Manager with Silverlight integration. It looks like the opportunity to capture some of the design folks that are heavily invested in other technologies were missed by mostly developer presentations.

Having said that if you are a developer it's a wonderful year for Mix. Managed code is finally cross platform with full data/entity connectivity from within Silverlight. There were great examples of how to get into all of those areas and there is a lot of depth to cover there.. This will bring the whole developer application world of Windows developers and web developers closer together with similar capabilities and Silverlight RIAs will start looking like their big-brother Windows applications. Certainly the UI capabilities, network services and data bound capabilities are way way better this year.

Questions I had (because I didn't get to attend!)

I expected to see at least something on Silveright analytics and there wasn’t anything about measurement or diagnostics.. Anyone see specific functionality for this while at Mix? Metrics and reporting are essential to Silverlight's success in the web community and it's a blocker to better adoption over other RIA technologies..

How much did you hear about the WPF service pack that is supposed to come out this summer??..

Was there a CTP of this with the improved WPF controls and improved performance it's suppose to offer? I assume it includes equivalents of the Silverlight Datagrid and Calendaring controls?

Is there and evaluation/ SDK/CTP out there available for the Atlas Ad Manager?

Is there more details on the "Expression Studio Professionals Program"?? (Please don't put us on a subscription model, unless you are really going to make QUARTERLY improvements and commit to them). I really disliked the Macromedia model for all of this, think DIFFERENT on this one please Microsoft..