Having arrived home from Mix with a man-cold, I find myself unable to do much beyond staying awake and coughing. I fear TB is just around the corner.
My view of Mix is somewhat, err, mixed. On one hand the event itself was excellent, with some great sessions and a wonderful vibe. But, and it is a small but, I was under whelmed in some areas; this possibly has much to do with my insider knowledge, but I was expecting some wildly amazing new announcements, or at least announcements of amazing new things. Scott's posts about Silverlight 2.0 took the excitement away, but he was sensible in posting them, allowing everyone to get started with 2.0 as soon as possible; and I'll be doing the same, this afternoon, while watching some of the sessions I missed. The demos showed though, were full of inspiration and I've come away with some ideas for a Silverlight project I'll be starting later this year.
It was interesting seeing Scott do the 'manager on stage introducing people' thing in the keynote, rather than coding demos. Anyone not a developer could easily get the impression he was just a corporate stooge introducing partners, but of course those in the know (aka the entire developer community) understand the truth; deeply technical, deeply committed and still finds time to write all his own blog posts. His juggling sucks though and I hope he never takes it up; it's nice to know there is one area where I'm way better than him. Sadly the panel reviewing user submitted videos in the open space area disagreed and the video of Andrew Duthie and I juggling won't be uploaded as it wasn't 'relevant enough'; we thought a title of 'tips for Scott Guthrie' would get it in, but alas. Mind you, I mentioned it to Scott and he said he'd try and work something out.
Another mixed feeling was with IE8. I am glad they've gone to standards mode by default, but I wasn't that impressed by the other additions they've done. Maybe I'll come to like them in time, but just giving me full standards compliance is enough and for that they deserve an enormous amount of credit. I had drinks with some of them on Friday afternoon and they are an excellent bunch.
So, what didn't I do? Well, I didn't attend the main party and instead headed off to the Stratosphere with Phil and Ryan to be scared and scream like a girl (at least, Phil & I did; Ryan was totally cool about the rides). We then headed down to New York New York for a steak at Gallagher's, which was one of the best I've ever had. In all the years I've been travelling to Vegas I can't believe I've never eaten there before. I also skipped a couple of sessions to play with the Surface (totally cool by the way), network, catch up with people I hadn't seen in a while, or even in years in the case of Molly. We first met in Vegas almost 10 years ago and haven't seen each other since, but seemed to just carry one from where we left off; both the leaving off and carrying on were in bars, so that seemed oddly appropriate. We're hoping to get her over to the UK for some talks later in the year.
For those who couldn't attend, you can watch or download all of the sessions and I encourage you to do so. Watch them in your lunch break, put them on your iPod or Zune, but watch them; you'll either learn something or they'll make you think, neither of which are bad things. Would I go again? Definitely.