MIX06

Mix06 Update - Day 2

Joe Pruitt — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 22:15:00 GMT

Ok, I'm a day late. It's really day three, but I'll take a shot at remembering what went on yesterday.

The opening keynote was by Joe Belfiore, the VP of the eHome group. Basically everything Media - XBox, Media Center, ... His first topic was "Beyond the Browser". Basically covering how consumption of media is moving well beyond the browser. In the home via TV and Media Enabled PCS and on the road through Cell Phones, PDAs and Portable devices like the recently announced Ultra-Mobile PC (aka Origami). He moved on to richer client apps that will be made super easy by the WinFX framework. He then moved on to the Office product line with some demos of integrating external information via RSS feeds into Excel, Outlook and the upcoming Vista Sidebar. Darin Brown, the President of Avenue A/Razorfish then took the stage to talk about how traditional advertising is going to have to evolve to survive. With the popularity of the DVR, TV ads are becoming less and less effective and a move to the web will be essential for those who used to rely on that media.

I then sat in the "Beyond the Banner" panel session with Yahoo, Microsoft, Jenstar, New York Times, Interpublic Group, and Avenue A/Razorfish talked about the future of advertising on the web and how with the new richer content available, ads will be more infused into the user experience. I was getting a bit hungry for lunch at this point so I kind of zoned out as most of the topics were covered in brief in the keynote.

At 1:30, Dan and I went to the "Today's Identity Crisis and the Identity Metasystem". The panel consisted of Hilary Ward from Citigroup, Kim Cameron from Microsoft, Johannes Ernst from Netmesh, Paul Trevithick from Social Physics, and Stefan Brands from Credentica. The goal here was to go over the new InfoCard technologies and how Passport won't work and a new system is needed in identity management.

The 3:00 session was titled "The Digital Home" and I walked out after 20 minutes as the presentation was almost identical to the topics covered in the keynote.

The last one of the day was "Making Your Site Work with IE7 Security" and was led by Rob Franco, the Lead Program Manager of IE. This was basically a demo of the new security features in IE. The only part I really saw regarding "making your site work" was to make sure if you are using SSL, get one of their enhanced uber-secure certificates.

Dan and I then went on a hunt for Dinner and ended up at The Fix Restaurant and Bar in The Bellagio Hotel. Great Shellfish platter! We then headed back to the The Venetian and I plopped down $90 on the blackjack tables. I dropped down to $15 and crawled my way back to $225 when I decided to call it quits. I figured, that covered my ticket to the previous nights Blue Man Group show.

Whew, one more day to go...

-Joe

Mix06 Update - Day 1

Joe Pruitt — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 15:30:00 GMT

Day one of Mix06 is over. We started Day one off with a keynote by Bill G talking about how applications are taking on new dimensions with the use of the browser and how IE7 (which has a beta refresh today) is going to be a new medium for delivering these applications. Also, technologies like Atlas are going to drive usages to everything from cell phones to pdas, to desktops. Tim O`Reilly then had a impromptu interview with Bill G which seemed to be fairly tame. I was hoping for some more pointed questions. One note for Bill's writers, work on limiting the word "phenomenal"...

I then spent a few hours recovering from a splitting migraine and missed the session on "Web 2.0 Show me the Money". We'll have to hear from Dan how that one went...

I made it back for the session titled "From HTML to Services: Building a site for REST, POX, AJAX, RSS, SOAP, and WS-*". Long title for basically showing how to build a media center experience remoting the presenters home programming from Germany to the conference room. Pretty cool stuff, but nothing I haven't seen before.

Last one for the day was titled "Running a Megasite on Microsoft Technologies" hosted by guys from Microsoft.com and MySpace. They talked about the ways they have designed their systems (from front end to the database tier) to handle the tens of millions of users they support. Pretty interesting stuff.

After the sessions we hit the sponsor evening event at the Tao Night Club here at the Venetian. Dan and I walked in the door and after about 15 minutes of waiting in a dark, very crowded, smokey line, we decided to take a hike and see if we could catch a show. The Blue Man Group was here at the Venetian so we went to see if there were any last minute tickets. We lucked out with Front-Row Center. The highlight of the show was having one of the "Blue Men" jump off stage and stick a camera down Dan's throat with a full screen image blasted on stage of Dan's esophagus! Good thing we waited to have dinner after the show...

On to Dan #2...

-Joe

Viva Las Vegas

Joe Pruitt — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 15:42:00 GMT

Dan and I just arrived in Vegas for the Mix06 conference. If there are any DevCentral users here, look me up and we'll try to setup a get together.

No real update yet, as Bill Gates keynote starts in about 20 minutes. The only bummer I had was that the hotel we are staying at charges $35 for the workout facilities. Oh well, it's an excuse to sleep in.

More to come...

-Joe

Mix06 is close...

Joe Pruitt — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 17:45:00 GMT

MIX06 is coming. Scoble recently threw up a call-out for those who wanted to meetup next week at the conference. I tried out the Mix Meeting Place that he mentioned we use, but it wasn't very easy to use.

I later got a message from Dave Verwer from Link HR Systems telling me he was having the same problem. Instead of sitting on it, like I did..., he setup a wiki to help out with some of the issues in the main meeting site. If you are attending, you might want to check it out.

See you there!

*Update : For those interested in meeting up, either comment here (or on the above link) and we'll try to schedule something. Otherwise, you can keep an eye out for me. I'll likely either be in the bar or at the blackjack table. Anyone up for getting a poker game (low stakes) going? Maybe we can hijack a table in the Venetian if we get enough players...

-Joe

[Listening to: Until the End of the World - U2 - Achtung Baby (4:38)]

Mix06

Joe Pruitt — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 21:38:00 GMT

Looks like I'll be at Mix06 in March in Las Vegas. Anyone else planning on attending? Info on the conference can be found here.

It looks like it's going to be an interesting conference focusing on web applications and Microsoft's up and coming platforms.

If there are any DevCentral/F5 users going to be there, comment or trackback to this entry and I'll coordinate a roundup. Who knows, maybe I can squeeze a few bucks out of my budget to buy a round of drinks B-). Or better yet, maybe we could get us a mini DevCentral Texas Holdem Tournament going with some DevCentral prizes for the winners. Or, we could just talk iRules all night...

Regardless, reply if you are going to be in town and I'll get something organized.

-Joe