MIX08 - My Mind Bending Sessions - Part 1 - Allan's Best Week Ever - Site Home

so we meet again...

How do you choose when you have so many different flavors of coolness? MIX08 was a blast, here are the sessions I attended. Heavy on the mind expansion, light on the fluff. And yes, I still consider myself a developer.

I missed the first day, hooray for the sessions web site, I'm all caught up!

PNL11 - How Design Impacts the Bottom Line

http://sessions.visitmix.com/?selectedSearch=PNL11

Will Tschumy of Microsoft ran a tight ship with good content and an illustrious panel. I enjoyed this one. Panelists: Jimmy Kim - Executive Vice President of Nexon Corp, David Watson - VP of Product Design & Development of Digital Media Disney/ABC TV, Luke Wroblewski - Senior Principal of Product Ideation & Design of Yahoo!, Dave Blakely - Director of Technology Strategy of IDEO and Jason Brush - Executive Vice President of UX Design of Schematic.

I would highly recommend this session especially if you are in the "innovation" business. This was truly well done and thought provoking. My attention kept gravitating to David Watson as he started of by saying:

"I liken my job to being a stunt man. Where our job is to fail and by failing we are learning where we can succeed and push the boundaries of common sense to come up with outstanding products."

His advice later on keeps playing in my mind: "Be flexible, Be remarkable, Be brave."

PNL15 - Is Web 2.0 sustainable? What business models will work?

http://sessions.visitmix.com/?selectedSearch=PNL15

Looking for answers to the questions posed in the title? So was I. Answers?

Perhaps.
The ones that make money.

Quite the crew on stage for this. Don Dodge moderated and has a great write up on his blog. Kimbal Musk, CEO of Me.dium, said it best: "We see Web 2.0 as a huge loss leader for something..." Yes, we were all left hanging. What do you think it is?

PNL08 - Social Networks: Where Are They Taking Us?

http://sessions.visitmix.com/?selectedSearch=PNL08

I was hoping for hard, cold facts and conclusions :) Found out that the title of this session was a rhetorical question. The answer? We don't know yet!

Moderated by Guy Kawasaki, here are the panelists with their blogs:

David Morin of Facebook
Joseph Smarr of Plaxo
Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon
Marc Canter of Broadband Mechanics
John Richards of Microsoft - couldn't find a blog, so read Angus Logan instead :)

C03 - Virgins, Spaceships and Hob-nailed Boots!

http://sessions.visitmix.com/?selectedSearch=C03

Is "funnest" a word? If it is, this was funnest for me. Paul Dawson from Conchango had a fantastic sense of timing and told great stories. Everyone seemed disappointed that we had to end. He introduced us to the new math: Loyalty + Experience = Advocacy.

Which sessions do you like? More MIX08 ramblings soon.

Allan, the Microsoft stunt man.