This week I was at MixUK, the UK remix event. I was part of the community developer track (organised by Phil), hosting the micro-presentations, which are based upon Pecha Kucha - the "20 slides/20 seconds each" presentation format created in Japan a few years ago. For those of you who have done presentations, you need to know that the 20 seconds per slide isn't optional - the slides automatically flip over, meaning you have to keep up and have just enough content for each slide. It's harder than you think. I've done many, many presentations, but this was my first of this type and I found it hard, but it concentrates your mind and means you have to cut down the content to just the essentials. It's quite invigorating, in a masochistic kind of way.
We weren't sure what to expect from the micro-presentations, and did open it up a little to allow short demonstrations too, but overall I thought they were excellent. I was lucky enough to do mine on the first day, thus avoiding the problem of following on from the two best. Alex wins a prize for best abuse of the rules, using the defense of "nothing said I actually had to speak - it just said 20 slides, 20 seconds each"; he had a great slide deck and just played some music as it gradually flipped over; I loved it. The top prize however, has to go to Dave and Rich, whose so obviously choreographed presentation was hilarious. These guys are clearly unhinged, a point also borne out by the Swaggly Fortunes game show that ended the day, which was so busy I couldn't even get into the room.
The rest of the presentations in our track were also excellent and well attended. We managed to snag Scott for a nice cup of tea and some biscuits in a small Q and A session, which was very good of him considering he had many talks and a large number of press interviews. He also told us (and showed a few of us later) about the new MVC framework that they'll be releasing some time next year, which looks awesome.
I have to say a big thank you to everyone who spoke in the community track and made it so good. Many thanks also to Phil for organising it, Clare at Microsoft for making it happen and getting such great AV and hosting staff. Oh, and to Zi, for organising the meals on two of the nights. You can find out peoples views and pictures by checking out the backnetwork.