I am on my way back from MIX right now. At the moment I am in the San Francisco International Airport waiting on my flight to Singapore. MIX was great! Why? The buzz. I have been to a number of Microsoft events, both as part of Microsoft and as an outsider, but I'll say that this ranks as one of the best.

At MIX07 we announced a number of pieces of our Silverlight cross-platform runtime. Silverlight, if you are unfamiliar, allows you to put video and interactive content in to any number of browsers on the Mac and Windows platforms. Very cool. At MIX we announced that we had gone beta with our version1 of the plug-in, but simultaneously announced an early beta (CTP: Community Technology Preview) of the next version. The cool part was the reaction of the crowd. What was the biggest hit was the programming models where we now have x-platform CLR allowing developers to use .NET skills across out entire platform: the web - desktop applications (and servers) - and RIA (Rich Internet Applications). The conversations were great. We (Microsoft) really caught everyone's attention in a good way I feel.

Many people who use Adobe tools have asked questions about the releases and that is nice. Since I first took my position (I am ex-Adobe) I have been always excited by the conversations with designers who are totally amazed that Microsoft ha anything use for them. I think our announcements this week go a small way to showing that we have some good technology that we hope people will take a look at. A great event.

I also had the chance to catch up with many friends, co-workers, partners and new acquaintances at MIX. Many good conversations, both hard and easy, to make the event pleasant. Great fun.

 

On to ReMIX!