Last night in Vegas — MIX 08

Tonight is my last night in Vegas before I fly to Orlando. Unfortunately I made a mistake and booked a flight that has a stop in Washington, DC. It is a Ted / United flight, which means it is 99% likely that I won’t have power at my seat. Looks like I will only be able to work for half the flight... I guess the non-removable battery in the MacBook Air is an issue after all :(

Anyway, back to why I was in Vegas — Microsoft’s MIX conference. MIX was really good this year and was a lot of fun as always.

A few thoughts about the past week:

• I came down a day early as Microsoft was hosting an event for influencers, which unfortunately turned out to be a little weak. It focused too much on the Expression tools and the presenters didn't answer a number of questions as they didn’t want to steal any of the thunder from the main keynote. Everyone received an 8GB Zune which was cool. I have already gifted mine to Steven at work as it won’t work on my Mac, too bad as I find the UI on it slick.
• The session on adaptive user interfaces was interesting. I am working on an intranet project right now and we might be able to make use of some of these techniques.
• There were too many panels! I hate panels! Down with panels!
• The Ballmer and Kawasaki keynote was the highlight of the conference for me. Before the conference I was somewhat lukewarm on Ballmer, but he really impressed me. I recommend checking the keynote out online!
• It was awesome to spend some time with both the Microsoft Canada team and Habañero’s Canadian peers. Microsoft Canada always puts on a good event and this year’s was no exception.
• There was very little mention of SharePoint at the conference. Unfortunately Microsoft scheduled the two events during the same week, which was a bit of a bummer. I would have liked to see more sessions around creating exceptional user interfaces in SharePoint.
• The Internet Explorer team had an awesome after party at the Kingpin Suite at the Palms. The suite had a bowling alley in it which allowed me to discover that I am not a very good bowler.
• I got to see the chicken – thanks Bryce! :)

Anyway, I think that's it. Looking forward to MIX 09!

Comments

[Meade Skelton]

Hi there,
Neat blog ! Have fun on your trip. I dont know if we're related, but anyhow my great great great great granddaddy Josiah Skelton came to Powhatan County, VA about 1790 and built his home there called "Paxton". If you're related to the Skeltons of Powhatan, County, VA. I was just curious

Best of luck!
Meade Skelton Haufe