MIX08 - March 6 Summary

Another great day here in Las Vegas.  Some great sessions on a variety of topics today as well as some very good discussions on the state of technology and the web today.

Above: Tyler Simpson (left) and Nishant Kothary (right) presenting the session Microsoft Expression Web: From Comp, to CSS, to Code!

Above: Danny Riddell from Metalliq presenting the session The Business of Microsoft Silverlight

The highlight of the day for me was the Steve Ballmer / Guy Kawasaki keynote.  I wasn't sure what to expect but it was certainly interesting and very enjoyable to watch.  It gave the audience a bit of everything; a few tough questions from Guy, some good-natured ribbing, a Macbook Air having a near-death experience and some really interesting questions from the audience.  The topics ranged from Yahoo! to competitors (like Apple, Google and Adobe) as well as some discussion on recent Microsoft acquisitions including aQuantive and the rarely discussed (but IMHO, very significant) acquisition of FAST, an enterprise search vendor based out of Norway.

Above: Guy Kawasaki interviewing Steve Ballmer in the Wednesday Keynote

In addition to the day's events, Microsoft Canada held its party for Canadian MIX08 attendees at the V-Bar in the Venetian.  It was a great event with a lot of fantastic discussion on the future of the web and the role web designers and web developers will play in guiding the trends.  Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera died so I wasn't able to take any photos.

Paul

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