MIX10 in Las Vegas is over. The reflections on the event and discussions on news announced there, however, will keep being a hot topic over the next few months.
What were the most significant announcements made at MIX, best sessions and demos, most useful and entertaining social events - find out from SilverlightShow live reporter at the event Cigdem Patlak. Cigdem got the Community Vote award at SilverlightShow Eco Contest.
Q. Cigdem - first, thanks for being SilverlightShow live reporter at MIX! The community showed great interest towards your mini notes (day1, day2, day3) from the event, you also made a couple of very interesting interviews (interview with Adam Kinney, interview with Laurent Bugnion) with key speakers at the event. Thanks for sharing your pics from the event, too!
Now that MIX10 is behind, and you managed to reflect upon all information and events there - could you make a summary of the key announcements made, and how those will affect the development trend for Silverlight applications?
A. There have been various key announcements at MIX10, such as Windows Phone development with Silverlight, Visual Studio 2010 RC, Silverlight 4 RC, IE9 Developer Preview, Microsoft’s contribution to JQuery, OData etc. But just as Bill Buxton noted in the 2nd day keynote, Mobile is key for any kind of technology app/service we decide to offer today. We all love to access technology 24/7 anytime, anywhere – so Windows Phone 7 was the hottest topic at MIX10!
The best news for the developer/ designer community was that the Windows Phone 7 Series’ development platform will be Silverlight and that games are supported through the XNA framework. Throughout MIX10, the excitement of developers could be simply captured in tweets like this one: Silverlight developer=Windows Phone developer. Windows Phone 7 will come out in Winter 2010, yet developers already have started to brainstorm in monetizing creative mobile apps and games. Anyone interested in mobile apps, should not wait any longer to experiment with Windows Phone developer tools!
Silverlight 4 is already launched and Out Of Browser Silverlight applications will probably increase in numbers. In my opinion, the new features of Silverlight 4 and the Windows Phone excitement will be key factors in the adoption of Silverlight throughout 2010.
Q. Which were the most interesting sessions you attended? Which sessions and demos delivered at the event triggered most discussions and excitement among the design and development community?
A. It was hard for any session or announcement to beat the buzz about the Windows Phone and Silverlight at MIX10! Based on the Mix10 recap post by Mike Swanson, who is a Microsoft technical evangelist, the top 5 topics/words mentioned on Twitter were Phone, Windows, Microsoft, Silverlight, and WP7 during MIX10 and I can just agree!
The Windows Phone sessions were all packed and attendees had numerous questions after the presentation; the Silverlight sessions were crowded too. I heard many good reviews about the design and UX focused presentations during breakfast and lunch chats; so I will definitely catch up with those sessions’ MIX10 videos.
My favorite sessions:
Silverlight Performance on Windows Phone (Seema Ramchandani)
Understanding the Model-View-ViewModel Pattern (Laurent Bugnion)
Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 1 (Mike Harsh)
Search Engine Optimization for Microsoft Silverlight (Brad Abrams)
Unlocking Audio/Video Content with Speech Recognition (Behrooz Chitsaz)
Q. Despite the whole information load, and busy schedule, you managed to attend a great lot of social events. Which event do you think was most useful in terms of creating connections?
A. I had two favorite social events. The first one was the Tweetup on Sunday, March 14th before MIX10 actually kicked off. The event was at the Mandalay Bay Mix Lounge, which had a breath-taking view on the 64th floor. It seemed many attendees already arrived during the weekend, so it was nice to meet attendees before the actual keynotes and sessions and share the MIX10 excitement together!
The other event I enjoyed the most was the Developer & Platform Evangelism Mix10 Exclusive Party on the first evening of MIX10. The party’s location was very stylish, the Gold Lounge at the Aria Hotel. This event was targeted towards a smaller crowd, so socializing and networking was much easier and a lot of fun. I got the chance to meet Scott Kerfoot, the director of Microsoft West Region Customer Evangelism, Scott Stanfield, the CEO at Vertigo Software, Daniel Egan, Microsoft Southern California Developer Evangelist and Michael Scherotter (Synergist), Microsoft Media Experience Evangelist. Michael Scherotter released the Silverlight Analytics Framework and also presented a session about the framework during MIX10.
Q. Did any of the people you meet recognize you as the SilverlightShow Eco Contest Community Vote winner?
A. Several MIX10 attendees came up to me and congratulated me on my contest entry, which was very surprising and amazing! I got some good feedback on the design details and many took me for a Silverlight designer. In fact I am a developer, who has just started to experiment with various design aspects of Silverlight and Expression Studio! But with Silverlight tools and technologies there is so much potential for developers, who are aspiring designers.
Q. How will MIX10 experience reflect upon your personal plans for professional development?
A. I had been closely watching the potential of the mobile app market. Now that Windows Phone 7 Series enables a developer to dive into the app market with existing Silverlight skills right away, I definitely want to come up with unique and fun mobile apps for the Windows Phone and share my development/design experiences along the way.
Apart from technological news/plans etc; events that make the tech community come together, just reassure us that our individual community involvement may have an impact that we are not aware of. Even one person, who comes up to you and thanks you for a blog post, a sample code or simple tips/tricks; reminds you, why you have a web presence and why you should share information, which could be useful for others.
Cigdem - thanks a lot for your contribution to making SilverlightShow community part of MIX! Undoubtedly, most of us have watched the recorded MIX sessions, but your personal impressions and feedback live from the event have added a lot to the excitement and enthusiasm around all those announcements made. We'll look forward to having you join our team on one of our next featured events!
Cigdem: Thank you so much for giving me the chance to help out the SilverlightShow team with my insider reports and the interviews. It made my MIX10 even more fun, unique and memorable.