Day 1 ended late but what a day it was. I’m down in Las Vegas at the first ever Mix conference. The conference is very much a conversation with business decision makers, developers and designers on building the next generation of web applications. What does that mean? build the next wave of rich, compelling and immersive applications composed of and using the Web as a core data provider.
One interesting fact I wanted to share with you. Canadian attendees make up the second largest group of attendees at Mix 06. This is both encouraging, and demonstrates that Canada and Canadian companies will play an important role in the development and adoption of Web 2.0 technologies.
The opening keynote was provided by Bill Gates and he didn’t use any slides. He highlighted the key themes for the conference and supported these with some fabulous demos. First the CTO from MySpace.Com highlighted that myspace.com is the second most visited site on the internet (I don’t think he mentioned who the first was) and it runs on Microsoft .Net and SQL Server 2005. They demonstrated some very cool capabilities that they are working on to provide their members with incredible flexibility in personalized profiles(ASP.Net 2.0/Atlas). He also showed a gadget they’ve built for Windows Vista that sits in the Windows Sidebar and is connected to a user’s personalized space – a user can see pictures, RSS feeds and all sorts of other information connected through a set of web services back to MySpace.com.
One of the key opportunities for Windows Vista is the ability for developers to build richer more immersive applications. The next demo was by BBC and it definitely delivers on this promise. Everyone I spoke to later on in the day was definitely wowed by the demo. Both demos highlighted two key things 1) Windows Vista and Gadgets are going to allow companies/web properties to extend the *stickiness* of their sites and 2) Windows Vista in the hands of people who make their living in the digital media space have a platform to build incredibly immersive applications.
I encourage you to take a look at the videos and podcasts from Mix 06.
Bill’s keynote closed out with a Q&A between he and Tim O’Reilly. Tim posted the questions he plan to asked Bill here and answers. Some interesting remarks:
- Microsoft is working harder than ever to be user centric
- What are we doing about releasing incremental versions of our products? You can shorter product release cycles for things like Live.com or Internet Explorer but products like SQL Server will still be on a 2 year update cycle because of the sheer size, complexity, testing and reliability a product like SQL server must have. Clearly one size does not fit all
- Is our business model dead? We’ve seen ad supported model come of age and what’s Microsoft’s response to this. Again one size does not fit all. You’ll see an evaluation to a more targeted advertising model/experience.
- Is physical media dead? Bill made a point that the current HD DVD format battle is the last one so enjoy it – the future is the bits will be delivered over the net.
- Web 2.0 is all about network applications being better the more people use them. It is the evolution of the internet as an application platform to which a person in the audience asked: Will internet applications open up such that developers can integrate something like MySpace with the “my space” capabilities demonstrated in the BBC demo. If the data is the “value proposition” then will companies make that data and provide the API’s to get to that data.
- Live clipboard – Bill spoke to the Ray Ozzie’s demo and the notion that sharing data between systems is well understood and the internet will take that paradigm to sharing data between users.
Some final thoughts from day 1.
- Get ready for IE7.
- Look at Atlas and how easy it is to integrate Atlas into existing applications and not just ASP.Net (demonstrated Atlas with PHP)
- Elevate the experience. The technology is there for the most creative to create compelling new applications.
- Great design skills and great development skills come together.
- Evolution of the internet as a platform
- Canadian companies doing great work in the Web 2.0 space:
o illumiCell built the demo that Ken Levy demonstrated on IM bots. I have the chance to speak with Karl Meema the President of illumiCell afterwards and the good folks at Navantis.
o Spent time with the Toronto.Com folks and all the great work they’ve done with .Net and Toronto.com with iMason. Look for more cool stuff from Toronto.com.
One final thought. During the BBC demo it was highlighted that it costs BBC 7 million pounds a year to broadcast a channel over terrestrial lines. It is a factor of 10 less expensive over satellite and another factor of 10 over the internet. Is broadcast TV dead? Can you imagine a world in which HBO sells a subscription over the internet to anyone in the world and watch programs on your PC or on your TV commercial free anytime on any device? Will this change the world of advertising? Already today I don’t watch broadcast TV and use my Windows Media Center to record the shows I like and watch them when I have time or when I’m on a plane. Is a day so far off where the content creator are one step closer to the people consuming the content.
I can’t wait for day 2 and Joe Belfiore’s keynote.
