ReMix was a blast, I had such a fun time. Phil & I arrived around 6pm on Wednesday night to a venue that was a building site. Literally. Walls were going up, stages being built, curtains draped; by the morning the transformation was amazing. People from the Brighton Centre itself were taking pictures so they could prove to others how possible it is to change the space of a large area. We had a great community room, open and welcoming and right opposite the main vender and food area, where there was constant music from the VJs, except when interrupted by the gameshows hosted by the NxtGenUG boys.

We started on Thursday morning with the keynote split between Bill Buxton and Scott Guthrie. I’m a fan of Bill’s book and really enjoyed his talk; I really like talks that make me think about usability, the design process, how things get created. Scott was, as usual, great too. Then the sessions started and I spent nearly all of my time in the community track, watching the sessions we’d invested time and effort into bringing to the show.

For me the top session was Robin Christopherson from AbilityNet, who stepped in to fill the entire session when Julie at the last minute announced she was ill and wouldn’t be able to make it. Robin was, quite honestly, amazing; it was humbling to see the problems a blind person experiences when using web sites, but he didn’t stop with the blind and also covered problems experienced by people with other forms of disabilities and cognitive disorders; it' really was enlightening.

The most fun was Sara’s 20/20; normally these are 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide, but Sara thought it would be good to do 20 Visual Studio Tips and Tricks, each 20 seconds long. So off she set, with me shouting “Next” every 20 seconds; it was fast, furious, educational and highly entertaining.

All other sessions were great too. We deliberately had a mix of topics and styles, from technical to creative, fun to serious; all were well attended and seemed to be received well. In fact, the whole conference had a great vibe to it, with many people feeling it really wasn’t a Microsoft conference at all. So goal achieved. I’m now really looking forward to next year and to seeing if we can bring some of the fun community aspects for the main Mix  conference.