View MIX09 sessions all online!
Thanks to the MIX team for getting a nice, organized list of all the MIX09 session videos up – complete with multiple video formats, as well as slides!
http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/All
Not as good as being there, but essentially great, free training!
Naturally, the keynotes are definitely worth seeing, and also, I like this session on the Windows Live Messenger Toolkit. It does a nice job showing examples of how Live Services can make your site more social and engaging, and also how easy it is to get started.
Unlike the Live Framework/Mesh part of Live Services – which is extremely cool in its own right, but still in CTP and not yet ready for production use -- everything Chris Parker from the Windows Live team shows in this session is ready to go into production on your site today.
The screen shot above is from the last demo in the video – it shows Chris picking an item from a list, dragging it over and dropping it on one of his Windows Live Messenger contacts, and that kicking of an IM to the user with a link to the item he picked from the list. Basically, a free and easy way to add real time collaboration to your web site! Very cool.
Equally cool, Live Services lets people leverage their existing social network and social capabilities (via Windows Live infrastructure) on your site instead of asking them to invest in creating yet another collection of friends. I believe this is important because, frankly, I’m sensing some “social networking fatigue” – users like social capabilities, but they don’t especially like the proliferation of their data and fragmentation of their social experiences online. In other words, allowing users to leverage their existing social networks contributes to a thoughtful consumer experience.
As a bonus for site owners, helping people connect with their networks on your site makes it easier for them to share your site with their friends – which helps drive both more traffic and more time on site.
Learn more about Live Services in general at dev.live.com, and more specifically about leveraging Messenger in your site here.
Enjoy!
John Mullinax is a Platform Strategy Advisor with Microsoft's DPE Team. Before joining Microsoft in 2006, John held a vartiety of positions at Ford Motor Company, most recently leading IT services strategy to support explosive business growth in China. Other positions included: Enterprise Architect, Application Portfolio Management, Technology Governance, and Product Manager. Prior to joining Ford, John earned his MBA at the University of Washington. Before that, he was Director of Elections for Douglas County, Washington, where he conducted the first Federal mail-ballot election in the USA. Subsequently, he joined the Secretary of State's office as a consultant working with county election officials in Washington state to improve operational effectiveness, integrity, and security (aka, to prevent the kind of debacle we saw in Florida in 2000).
