Mike Swanson's Blog : MIX

MIX09 Keynote and Session Videos

mswanson — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:01:00 GMT

Whew…what a show! Thanks to everyone who joined us in Las Vegas last week for our fourth MIX conference, MIX09. It was great to meet many of you in person and to associate Twitter aliases with real names. It’s awesome that someone can walk up and say, “Hi, I’m WoogyChuck,” and I actually know what that means!

As we’ve done in prior years at both PDC and MIX, all keynotes and sessions were recorded and published within 24 hours by the talented Brian Keller. The first video format we publish is WMV, and the other formats show up as they’re encoded. By now, almost all of the videos in all of the formats have been published. The few that remain will be added over the coming days.

Special thanks to Greg Duncan for taking our session data and publishing a simple list of links within days of MIX09. Based on Greg’s work, feedback from the #MIX09 tweets, direct e-mail, and many blog comments, our online team quickly implemented a dynamic list of all MIX09 session and keynote recordings. We’ve learned that you like this straightforward format, and we’ll make sure we add this to our list of features for PDC09 and MIX10. If you prefer to browse the videos by image, check out the thumbnail view.

To download videos for offline viewing, you have a few options:

Visit the list of all MIX09 sessions, and download them individually.
Use your favorite RSS tool to download all of the videos in your format of choice (All, WMV, WMV High, MP4). Note that there are also many non-session videos and audio recordings that are available in WMA and MP3 format.
If you’re like me and prefer a command-line tool, download a recent build of cURL (1.2MB), and extract it to your folder-of-choice. Then, download MIX09Downloader.zip (1.27KB) and extract the MIX09Downloader.bat file to the same folder. From a command prompt, start MIX09Downloader by passing it one of the following parameters: WMV-HQ, WMV, MP4, Zune, PPTX. Then wait. :-) For files that aren’t available, cURL will download a file that is around 220 bytes in size (if you change the extension to .htm and open it, you’ll see that the file is simply an HTML “not found” error page).

Here’s how much disk space you need to plan for (~45.5GB in total):

WMV-HQ
= ~22GB
MP4
= ~7GB
PPTX
= ~530MB

WMV
= ~10GB
Zune
= ~6GB

If you'd like to rename your downloaded files, I've created a MIX09 Renamer batch file (4.19KB) that will do it for you. Extract the MIX09Renamer.bat file to the folder that contains your downloaded files, and from a command prompt, type MIX09Renamer WMV to rename all of the .WMV files to the full session title. By changing the parameter, you can also rename your PPTX and MP4 files. For example:

B01M.wmv is renamed to B01M - Scaling a Rich Client to Half a Billion Users.wmv

Last, but not least, we did record some of the workshop sessions. However, because we don’t always record them for publishing (often for contractual reasons), we’re working to determine which ones can be posted. Also, we’ve noticed some audio/video quality issues with some of them that we’re trying to fix. It’ll likely be a few days to a week before we know more, and I’d encourage you to keep your eyes on the MIX09 session list.

Is there anything else that we’ve missed? I’d love to hear your feedback!

Getting Ready for MIX09

mswanson — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:27:33 GMT

Our MIX09 conference in Las Vegas is only one week away, and things are heating up! We’ve finalized the keynote content, published all of our session titles and abstracts (well, except for a handful we’ll announce at the event), locked-down the on-stage customers and demos, and handed off the bits for replication. It’s a flurry of activity, and we’re all very excited!

I thought I’d take a moment to highlight a few things that should help you plan for MIX09, even if you can’t join us in-person:

The session browser was upgraded today, and you can now create your own personal schedule. First, look for the [SIGN IN] link just below the session grid. Login with the same username and password that you used to register for MIX09, then click the green “plus” symbol next to each session that you’d like to add to your schedule. You can quickly filter sessions by clicking a tag in the left column (like Azure, ASP.NET, or Expression). The grid will display your selected sessions in green, and you can use the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday links to change your view. Note that at MIX09, you can attend any session you’d like, and by adding sessions to your own personal schedule, you are not “reserving” a seat. Don’t miss the .ics or Printable Schedule links…they’re pretty handy too.
If you’re a Twitter user, be sure to follow MIX09 for little bits of information before, during, and after the event (and Anyware, if you dare listen to me). If you want to participate in the conversation, add the #mix09 hashtag to anything you tweet. To see what people are tweeting, you can search on the #mix09 hashtag, or download any number of Twitter applications. There are a lot of apps out there, but since I live in Outlook all day, I personally use OutTwit. Oh…I almost forgot…there’s a MIX09 Tweetup event on Facebook too.
As we’ve done for MIX06, MIX07, MIX08 and PDC2008, all MIX09 presentations will be recorded and published on the internet for free, for anyone within 24 hours after the session is complete. This makes it much easier to pick from two conflicting sessions that share the same time slot, knowing that you can download and watch the missed presentation at your convenience. We’ll also post the slide decks and any sample code that the speaker provides, though these don’t always show up within 24 hours. Watch the MIX09 site for details.
The MIX09 event site is your best friend. During the show, all keynotes will be streamed live on the home page. So, if you can’t join us in Vegas, carve out some time, sit back, and tune-in. And if the Twitter feed isn’t providing enough information, subscribe to our MIX09 headlines RSS feed for even more news. Bring a snorkel.
Friend, colleague, compatriot, Mastodon-worshipper, and MIX Online curator, Thomas Lewis, has written The Devil’s Field Guide to MIX09. Read this if you want to be “in the know.” Plus, he mentions me…isn’t that enough? :-)
After you’ve scheduled your favorite sessions, don’t forget to add these must-attend events to your calendar:

The Wednesday night attendee party at TAO. Let’s hope for warm weather for TAO Beach!
The very special screening of Gary Hustwit’s new film, Objectified, on Thursday night…just days after its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival. By the way, Gary will be on-hand for Q&A after the screening.
Immediately following the Objectified screening, stick around for Show Off, and see what cool stuff your peers have been working on. Check out the MIX08 Show Off winners, and when you’re done, go buy Crayon Physics Deluxe, last year’s winner. It’s addictive.

Last, but not least, if you want to be a true MIX09 geek, watch the most recent Countdown to MIX09 episodes with Jennifer and me. They’re 10-minutes in length, so you don’t have to endure us for too long. :-)

For those of you who are attending MIX09, if you see me wandering the halls, stop me and say “hi.” I love meeting my blog readers!

Have a safe trip, and I’ll see you in Vegas!

MIX09: Objectified Screening, Scott Guthrie Interview, and More

mswanson — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 10:08:53 GMT

First, we've coordinated a special screening of Gary Hustwit's new documentary film, Objectified, at MIX09 in Las Vegas! We'll be showing it only days after its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, and Gary will be on-hand for some Q&A after the film. I'm a huge fan of Helvetica, and I'm looking forward to his new documentary about industrial design and the creative process. Watch the trailer for a sneak peak, and be sure to subscribe to the Objectified newsletter for the latest news. And yes, I love the T-shirt!

Next, you'll want to spend 18 minutes watching Charles Torre's latest interview with Scott Guthrie where he talks about some of the announcements you can expect in his MIX09 keynote. He doesn't reveal all of the juicy bits (of course), but he does mention Silverlight 3, H.264 video, 3D support, and hardware acceleration. Oh...don't miss Scott's recent post about the ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Release Candidate. There's definitely a lot of exciting stuff to talk about this year.

Also, Robert Hess, the former host of The .NET Show, has started up a new video series called The Knowledge Chamber. His first-ever episode has been posted on Channel 9, and I encourage you to spend 9 minutes checking it out: Steve Guttman - Microsoft Expression Web: No Platform Left Behind. I can't wait to hear more of Robert's interviews.

Finally, our MIX09 Content Owner, Michael Suesserman (the guy who is ultimately responsible for all of the sessions that are presented at MIX09) joins Jennifer and I for the latest episode of our Countdown to MIX09 show.

MIX09

mswanson — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:25:00 GMT

Yes, I’m still alive, and no, the rumors about the PDC Hard Hat Challenges melting my brain are false (it was only a minor contusion). The good news is that I’ve fully recovered, and I’m now focused on our upcoming MIX09 event in Las Vegas! This time around, I play the role of MIX09 Keynote Owner. That basically means that I’m responsible for driving the process that we use to determine what our story is this year, who we’d like on stage, which customers and partners we want to feature, how we organize and tell our story, and the practical matters and logistics around making it happen. It’s a group effort, and I depend on a brilliant and passionate keynote team to get the job done.

But enough about me.

MIX09 is going to be an amazing event, and it’s our job to deliver a return on your investment to attend. We understand that the economy is forcing everyone to re-evaluate the benefits of taking time away from the office, let alone the travel and expense to fly to Las Vegas in the first place. Based on my years of experience working side-by-side with customers and partners in the field, I know that you may only be able to attend one event (period) each year. And for many of you, attending any event at all is often a benefit or perk. Not only is it in your best interest to attend the “correct” event given your role, but it’s also in our best interest to ensure that we attract an audience that aligns with the content we produce. To help you make the best decision, it may help to watch this 4-minute video where I quickly explain the benefits of the conference. To hear the benefits from one of our partners, watch this interview with Scott Stanfield, the CEO of Vertigo Software. Finally, if you register by February 13th, save $400 by using the “MIX09offer“ RSVP code.

There are a lot of exciting things going on at MIX09, and I’d like to list a few of my favorites here:

Scott Guthrie, a MIX veteran, is going to keynote again this year. Scott is a fantastic speaker, and he always receives amazing attendee feedback. Check out his keynote from MIX08, then use your spider-sense to extrapolate what he might announce or reveal this year. I’m not telling. At least not yet.
Bill Buxton was just announced as our second keynote speaker. I could try to summarize Bill in a sentence or two, but I can guarantee that it wouldn’t come close to doing him justice. Go grab a fresh cup of coffee, close the door to your office, and watch some of the videos on Bill’s site. He is a champion for user experience (among many other things) and is the author of the highly-regarded book, Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design.
The sessions. Not all of the sessions have been posted yet (we’ll end up with over 100), but a few that interest me are: What's New in Microsoft Silverlight 3 by Joe Stegman, The Future of Microsoft Expression Blend by Douglas Olson, Integrating Microsoft Expression Blend with Adobe Creative Suite by Joanna Mason (I’m an Adobe user too), and C# for Designers by Jennifer Smith and Fred Gerantabee. Honestly, there are too many great sessions to choose from. But I guess you’d expect me to say that, wouldn’t you? :-)
MIX 10K Smart Coding Challenge. I should have blogged this one earlier, since the entry deadline is January 30th, 2009. The grand prize winner receives a pass to MIX09, 3 nights at The Venetian Hotel and a $1,500 USD Visa gift card. Sweet. Even if you don’t enter, it’s fun looking through the gallery of submissions. Make sure you vote for your favorites and leave a comment or two. Since Genetic Algorithms hold a special place in my heart, I’m a big fan of Rick Barraza’s submission.

Also, by popular request, Jennifer Ritzinger and I are back with our weekly (or so) video series, Countdown to MIX09. I don’t have a single link to all of the episodes, but I’ll list a few of them here. They’re all around 10 minutes in length, and if you subscribe to the MIX news feed, you’ll hear about them when they’re published.

If you have suggestions for topics that you’d like to hear us address on future episodes, send some e-mail to mix09 (at) microsoft.com. I promise that we’ll read everything you send, and we always try to reply.

Thanks for taking the time to read this long overdue post, and I hope to see you at the event!

Being Green at PDC2008

mswanson — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:58:00 GMT

As the Content Owner for PDC2008, I'm now a member of the Tier 1 Events Council at Microsoft. This is a group that meets a few times a year to share ideas and best practices around our largest events (like Tech·Ed , MIX, and PDC). We met all day today and covered a number of great topics.

One of our sessions was titled Environmentally Sustainable Events Initiative, and it was presented by Gina Broel and Jessica Ludders. We discussed what it means to be a "green" event based on the Green Meeting Industry Council. According to the council, a green meeting incorporates environmental considerations to:

Achieve economic and strategic business goals
Minimize or eliminate environmental impacts
Positively contribute to the environment and host communities

We love to measure, benchmark, and assign metrics to just about everything we do at this company, and environmental sustainability is no different. We've looked at things like the amount of waste generated by our events, the amount of uneaten food and scraps that are discarded, and tangible items like plastic water bottles, attendee bags, and other giveaways that aren't used. We'll use metrics to measure and track how much we improve the situation year over year.

For an example of some work that is already being done, check out Tech·Ed's Environmental Sustainability Efforts. And if you attended MIX08 in Las Vegas, you probably saw the bag that Tim Aidlin designed from recycled materials.

For PDC2008, we're back at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This past month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recognized the Los Angeles Convention Center (PDF) as an “Earth-Friendly” Green Venue, and their Food Services went green (PDF) late last year.

In today's meeting, I was fascinated to learn that the hotels we use for our events report finding bags and backpacks that have been left behind by our conference attendees. It made sense when I thought about it: you bring your stuff to the event in last year's backpack, and because you receive a brand new backpack at this year's event, you "upgrade" and leave the old bag behind since it won't easily fit in your luggage. This caused me to wonder:

How important is it to receive a branded bag or backpack at PDC2008? Would you be disappointed if you didn't receive one? For MIX06 and MIX07, we didn't hand out big bags, and I don't recall anyone giving us feedback that they were disappointed.
As an attendee, would you be willing to pay an optional additional fee to help us make the conference more environmentally sustainable? This is my own crazy idea, by the way. But it's driven by the feedback that attendees would like us to be more green, and this is one way that might make it even more doable.

I'd love to hear your feedback. If you have any other suggestions about how PDC2008 can do more for the environment, please leave a comment to this blog post. Last, if you'd like to submit your ideas to our council, you can send e-mail to grnmeet@microsoft.com.

Thanks!

Update: We just launched a new site that talks about Microsoft's environmental sustainability efforts.

Donkey Kong at MIX08: Behind the Scenes

mswanson — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 09:39:02 GMT

In the two weeks since our MIX08 event in Las Vegas, I've been asked many times about Steve Wiebe's attempt to re-claim the Donkey Kong world record at our TAO attendee party on March 5th, 2008. So, I thought I'd document what happened "behind the scenes" for those of you who may be curious.

The story really began back in September, 2007 when a few of us at Microsoft had dinner with Steve at a local restaurant here in Washington. We're all fans of The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, and our only motives were to eat some good food and meet Steve Wiebe. It honestly didn't go any deeper than that.

Some time passed, and as we started to think about entertainment for our MIX08 event, Steve's name came up again. I was a member of our MIX08 core team (the group of people who organized and ran MIX08), and we reasoned that our audience—which consists of a lot of people who grew up playing classic arcade games—would love the opportunity to play some classic games and meet a true master. Due to space constraints at TAO, we eventually dropped the idea of renting a club-full of games but stuck with the record-breaking attempt.

I asked Steve if he'd be interested in participating, and after coordinating the time off with his school district (he's a teacher), he said yes. Steve then put me in touch with Ed Cunningham (leftmost in the photo), the producer of The King of Kong. In addition to being an all around great guy, Ed knew a lot about what it would take to make this an official world record attempt...more on that later. Ed also suggested that we screen the movie at MIX08 so that anyone who hadn't seen the film would understand who Steve was and what he was trying to do. He offered to help us coordinate and also put me in touch with Walter Day, the founder of Twin Galaxies.

I love Walter. The first time I talked to him on the phone, I had a smile on my face from ear-to-ear. When I started to explain what a Microsoft Technical Evangelist does, Walter actually gave me one of the best descriptions I'd ever heard! And most people have no idea what we do as Evangelists at Microsoft...even after I try to explain it to them. He's poetic in his phrasing and articulate in his speech. For our event, though, he was not only the official referee, but he helped me coordinate the intricate process of staging an official world record Donkey Kong attempt.

According to Walter (and Ed and Steve), the release of the movie and its ever-increasing popularity has raised the bar for what it takes to stage a record-breaking attempt for Donkey Kong. To start with, I needed to find a Donkey Kong printed circuit board (PCB) that I could have validated as authentic and unmodified. As luck would have it, we have a vintage Donkey Kong arcade machine in our building on the Microsoft campus. Unfortunately, the cabinet is locked, and despite my many attempts, I could never find the owner of the machine.

Walter put me in touch with Jeff Kulczycki (maker of D2K: Jumpman Returns) as one of two people who are trusted by Twin Galaxies to validate Donkey Kong boards. Thankfully, Jeff had an extra PCB he was willing to rent to us for Steve's attempt. To mitigate the risk of the board being damaged during shipment, Jeff also located and purchased a second PCB. Both of the boards were tested and validated by Jeff before being sealed and shipped directly to Walter Day at The Venetian Hotel (where they were kept sealed in The Venetian's secure area until Walter's arrival in Las Vegas).

To maintain a chain of custody, around 11:00am on the morning of March 5th, we had a camera crew film Walter as he signed for and accepted the two packages from The Venetian. The crew kept filming as he carried the packages to TAO and unsealed the first of the two PCBs. We had coordinated with a local arcade rental company to deliver an original Donkey Kong cabinet (along with two other related machines for attendees). Walter observed as one of the technicians removed the PCB from the original Donkey Kong cabinet and replaced it with the validated board.

After verifying that the machine worked properly, it was sealed and guarded by security personnel as the lighting and audio/video equipment were set up. A professional-quality video camera was mounted on a tripod behind and to the right of where Steve would sit. This camera would not only be used to record every moment of Steve's record-breaking attempt, but it would also send a live feed to the large monitors positioned in the club so that everyone could watch him play.

Steve arrived early in the afternoon to go through a technical check. We needed to make sure that the game was performing correctly, that the joystick and buttons were operating properly, and that the video and audio feeds were functioning. After playing some warm-up games, Steve left the club to put on a darker shirt (his white t-shirt was reflecting off the glass and interfering with the video image). Throughout the technical check, Steve's wife, Nicole, and their two kids came to visit too.

When Steve returned around 5:00pm, he started his first game. We wanted to give him as many opportunities as possible to beat the high score, and since the official party was from 6:00pm - 10:00pm, starting at 5:00pm gave him an additional hour. According to Steve, he had scored over one million points the prior weekend while practicing in his garage. Walter sat next to Steve and tracked his pace against prior attempts.

Though I didn't note the actual scores myself, Twin Galaxies reports that Steve reached 929,800 points on his first attempt. While not enough to re-claim the world record, this was the sixth time that someone has reached the kill screen at an event like this. It was great to see in person. After a short break, Steve played a second game and scored 579,300 points. I played a lot of Donkey Kong when I was young, and I have to tell you...it was amazing to watch Steve do what he does. I almost couldn't look at the screen, because my instincts were telling me that there was no way to get out of many of the situations he found himself in (or rather, put himself in). Perhaps most impressive of all, he looked just as calm, cool, and collected in the loud nightclub as he did in the movie. He is truly a professional.

Overall, Steve put on a very impressive performance. We had a huge crowd, and everyone seemed to have fun. If Steve would have beaten the record, we would have filmed the removal of the PCB and shipped it back to Jeff Kulczycki for re-validation (according to the rules). As it turned out, however, we didn't have to do that. As an additional "thanks" to Steve for participating in our event, we gave the second validated Donkey Kong PCB to him for his own use.

I've published some photos from the party. Some were taken by our MIX08 event photographer, some were taken by Robert Hess, a 20+ year Microsoft employee, and the third set was taken by Andrew Laidlaw who was gracious enough to let me host his images. There's also a video of the Q&A session that followed the movie screening and a short video interview with Steve and Walter.

There are three other questions that I've heard, and I'll respond to them here for completeness:

Why are you playing a Nintendo game at a Microsoft event? Honestly, this thought never crossed my mind until someone asked it at MIX08. It's simple, really. We grew up on classic arcade games too, and we figured that our attendees would love it.
What about Billy Mitchell's hot sauce? Yes, it's true that Billy Mitchell sent a case of his hot sauce to the event (you can see the bottles in some of the photos). The bottles have a limited edition label titled "Steve Wiebe Attempts Donkey Kong World Record March 5, 2008" along with various Billy quotes. Depending on who you talk to, this is either 1) a way to honor Steve's attempt, or 2) the "long arm" that is talked about in the movie. Regardless, even Billy would agree that this was Steve's event, so we didn't make mention of the sauce that evening.
What affect will the new rules have on the Donkey Kong world record? Well, I can tell you that it took more effort to pull this off than I had originally anticipated. If it takes this level of effort each time someone thinks they may break the current Donkey Kong world record, I can tell you that the opportunities for this to happen will be greatly diminished.

In closing, I'd like to thank Steve and Nicole Wiebe (and their two kids), Ed Cunningham, Walter Day, Jeff Kulczycki, and New Line Cinema for helping to make this event a success.

MIX08 Show Off Winners

mswanson — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 07:21:38 GMT

It's hard to believe that MIX08 is over. I was involved in so many aspects of the event that it seems like I attended in some parallel universe! At least I got to see many of you there.

Thanks to everyone who submitted an entry for Show Off. Thomas and I weeded out the less inspiring entries and ended up with the 16 videos we showed on Thursday night. The room wasn't completely packed, but we had strong attendance, and our audience was pumped-up and supportive. It was great to hear applause after each video.

We tallied up the results, and here are the top five submissions (as voted by the audience):

Crayon Physics Deluxe - like many of the comments on the voting forms, I want this game now!
Real Time Physics in Silverlight - a very cool open source physics library for Silverlight hosted on CodePlex
Wii Data Visualization and Multipoint Nonsense - using the Wii for some Minority Report fun
40 - My Life in Silverlight 2 - probably the only computer application that's ever caused me to have this kind of emotional reaction
Social Retailing - how we'll shop for clothes in the future

The top three will each receive a $500 gift card to spend on whatever they'd like. Congratulations to all three of them!

If you missed Show Off at MIX08, don't worry. We're planning another Show Off event at PDC08 this October. There's plenty of time to think about what you might submit.

What Does “Sold Out” Actually Mean?

mswanson — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 09:06:11 GMT

You’ve probably heard that next week’s MIX08 conference in Las Vegas is sold out. But do you know what that actually means? Does it mean that we decided months ago to cap registrations at an arbitrary number of attendees? Or perhaps we picked a mystical date? Or a financial target? Or the cynical among you might believe that “sold out” is just a way for us to create buzz around the conference. It might surprise you to learn that it’s none of these.

When we organize a conference like MIX08, one of the first tasks is finding a city that can accommodate thousands of attendees and the large support staff that it takes to run a big event. This is more challenging than you might think, because we have to consider things like meeting room layout, space to accommodate large sessions, the number of people we can fit into the ballroom for lunch, how many hotel rooms are available, opportunities for evening events and activities, weather, transportation, etc.

After applying all of these criteria, the list of candidate cities is typically pretty small. Also, reserving space for a large conference requires more than a year’s notice. In fact, it's common for associations to book their annual events over five years in advance! These aren’t like hotel rooms that you can casually move with 24-hour notice.

After we’ve selected a location, determining how many attendees we can accommodate then becomes the lesser of:

How many people the conference center can handle (which is subject to strict fire marshal rules)
How many hotel rooms are available
How many people we can feed at lunch

Yes, it actually comes down to this. When we sell out, it basically means that we’ve hit a hard physical limit based on one of these constraints. In particular, the fire marshal codes are there to ensure that our attendees are in a safe environment, and we take them very seriously.

Other than those who help run the event (staff, speakers, etc.), we limit Microsoft employee registration as much as possible so that our customers and partners have an opportunity to attend. With events as informative, educational, fun, and exciting as MIX08, we frequently disappoint our colleagues by blocking their registration. In the end, though, everyone understands that we need to optimize for the non-Microsoft attendees first.

That said, many Softies don’t understand where the limit comes from, and I hope that this post helps to shed some light on the situation. This also explains why it’s next-to-impossible to accommodate the inevitable last-minute barrage of “it’s critical that we get so-and-so into the event” requests. We get them every time. It's an easy problem to solve if someone else is willing to give up their space, but that rarely happens.

The good news is that we understand the physical limits of convention space, so we try to capture as much of the actual event as possible and broadcast it out to the world (for example, we post videos of every session within 24 hours of its presentation). So, if you aren’t able to attend in person, know that every session—and a lot of other content—will be available on http://visitmix.com/2008. We’ll continue to evolve our virtual presence for PDC08 and future conferences.

The King of Kong and Show Off at MIX08

mswanson — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 08:12:11 GMT

We're only one month away from MIX08 in Las Vegas, and I hope you've already registered! In addition to our new MIX UX track for designers, we have a lot of great sessions on the schedule. But MIX isn't just about pumping your brain full of raw content. It's about networking, inspiration, and good fun too.

So, to kick off the event, we've invited Steve Wiebe, Ed Cunningham, and Walter Day (of Twin Galaxies) to Las Vegas to give us a special screening of their movie, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Even if you've never played Donkey Kong, this is a fantastic documentary. Don't take my word for it...check out the 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie will be shown the evening of Tuesday, March 4th around 7:30pm, and Steve, Ed, and Walter will be on hand after the show for questions and answers. Note that this is the night before the opening keynote, so be sure to plan accordingly.

But that's not all. During the attendee party on Wednesday, March 5th at TAO, Steve will attempt to re-claim his Donkey Kong world record. This is a chance to see a master at work. Ed and Walter will be there too, so show up and cheer them on!

Then, on the evening of Thursday, March 6th, we'll break out the candy and popcorn while watching the best of our Show Off entries (by the way, we're now accepting submissions). This is a great way to share your work with fellow developers and designers. I've already linked to a few inspirational ideas in my post about MIX08 Contests; here are a few more that seem like they'd be audience favorites: Andrew Rudson's Drum Machine for your Rock Band drum set, the vision-guided fireball-throwing robotic catapult by the guys at Harcos, Inc., and Zombomatic by Miniclip Games. We're looking for stuff that's cool, fun, beautiful, inspirational, or just plain amazing. The audience will pick their favorites, and we'll give away some prizes. It should definitely be fun!

SEAMonster Loosed to CodePlex

mswanson — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:07:32 GMT

Well, I had good intentions. Ever since my first post about SEAMonster in October, 2007, I've wanted to refactor and clean-up the code for release. In the meantime, I've received many, many e-mails asking when that would happen. To everyone who has patiently waited, today's the day. SEAMonster is now hosted on CodePlex.

Before you get too excited, know that I haven't had the time to do any clean-up (at all). I finally realized that I just had to let it loose. This is one of those "20 lines of code" test projects that evolved into an unarchitected proof-of-concept with a load of TODOs. There's no doubt that it could use a lot of help from the community. If you'd like to contribute to the project, please drop me a line.

Here's a sample image that ships with Windows Vista that I've resized using both SEAMonster and Photoshop.

Notice the "squashed" and distorted look of the bicubic resize as compared to the seam carved version. The seam carved version looks like it could be a real photo, even though it's width has been significantly reduced.

On a related topic, I've been asked about 15 times now if I would present a session about SEAMonster (and possibly SWF2XAML and my Illustrator plug-in) at our upcoming MIX08 conference. Every one of our session slots has already been allocated, but it's possible that I could give a talk in our Open Space area at the event. If you'd be interested in hearing something like that, please leave feedback to this post.

Helvetica: The Documentary

mswanson — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 07:47:44 GMT

I ran across Jeff Atwood's blog post, Typography: Where Engineers and Designers Meet, about a week ago. Like Jeff, I've been interested in fonts and typography for a long time. As a matter of fact, I used to create bitmap fonts for the TI-99/4a, Commodore 64, and Atari 400/800. I'm sure if I dug through enough boxes I could find a pile of old graph paper with 8 pixel x 8 pixel character sets on them! Those were the days. :-)

Until Jeff's post, I hadn't heard about the Helvetica film by Gary Hustwit. I immediately ordered the DVD (it's only $20), it arrived a few days later, and I watched it this morning. What a great movie! It was obvious from the moment I pressed play that this was made by someone who is passionate about the subject. From the beautiful photography to the perfect music, this film reflects the cleanliness and simplicity that is Helvetica. You do not have to be a font geek to appreciate this documentary.

The film traces the history of the typeface from the 1950s when it was known as Neue Haas Grotesk. Through fascinating interviews with industry luminaries and designers, we hear how Helvetica has influenced graphic design and typography over the years. Along the way, we also discover how pervasive it really is. I particularly enjoyed the balance of perspectives (some like Helvetica, some despise it, and many are apathetic). I also found the insights into design and the creative process to be very inspirational.

If you decide to buy the DVD, be sure to watch the extras. The feature itself is around 80 minutes long, and the extras run for over 95 minutes! Here are some of the topics that are touched on: Pencil vs. mouse; How technology has affected type design; The reader’s awareness of typefaces; Helvetica and the Macintosh; Helvetica and branding; “Mean” Modernists; Music packaging; One typeface is not enough; Designing for an audience; Approach to design; The value of good design; The Simple typeface. The extras are almost like watching a bonus movie.

As a Microsoft employee, my ears perk up whenever I hear our company name mentioned (which is quite often). So, I particularly enjoyed listening to comments from Erik Spiekermann about our Arial typeface where he calls us "big bullies," says that we're "baddies," explains why he "won't go near a Microsoft product," calls us despicable, and adds that we're "mean bastards." I'm not here to argue with Erik, because frankly, I don't have enough context, but I appreciate his passion!

If you have any interest at all in typography, this is easily worth $20. Highly recommended.

What Do I Do? Top sites, MIX08, and PDC08.

mswanson — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 06:57:00 GMT

A few days ago, I received the following e-mail:

Help me out here. I've been reading your blog off and on for years and I can't figure out what it is you do. Your obviously involved with the PDC and MIX conferences, you send a lifesize cardboard cutout of yourself as your resume, you've made a plug-in for Illustrator and a converter for Flash files (which rock BTW), you take amazing photos, you implement seam carving in your "spare time", you write Tivo gadgets, you taught me about continuous integration with your orb article, your article on code review was mandatory reading in one of my classes, you read quite an collection of books, you seem to be pretty good at design considering you claim to be a geek, you build small arcade machines, you counted to a freakin' million, you worked with Tom Skerrit, you write music, you build medical software, and who knows what else. Don't worry, I'm not stalking you. :) I just read through your old posts cuz I couldn't remember all of this! Just what the hell do you do at MS?

Yes, I'll admit to being a bit disturbed until I found out that this person had read through my old posts. Whew! It's strange to have your history read back to you. But, it's a very fair question, and it made me realize that my blog may provide a distorted perspective on the work I do. So, to set the record straight, let me try to explain my job at Microsoft.

For context, I work in Developer and Platform Evangelism, commonly referred to as DPE. My office is in building 18 on our main campus in Redmond, Washington. I've been in DPE for the past three years, and prior to that, I was a Senior Consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) for five years working out of our Michigan office. I've been working with computers for over 30 years now.

In my current role at Microsoft, it's easiest to categorize my work into three buckets. Note that—like almost any job at Microsoft—the things I do can change many times during the course of a year, but these three are accurate now:

I manage a group of Technical Evangelists and Program Managers to run a program we call Web GO. A primary goal of the Web GO program is to engage with top consumer-facing web sites to help them adopt our new products and technologies. In DPE, we focus most of our efforts on leading edge technology...usually stuff that hasn't shipped yet. As you probably know, it's a risk to work with anything this early on in a product lifecycle, and our job is to do what we can to make early adoption as easy as possible. Along the way, we get a lot of real-world feedback from our customers, and that feedback helps to shape our products and (hopefully) make them more relevant to a wider set of scenarios and usage patterns.

At the end of our engagement with a customer, we capture what we call evidence. Evidence is the story we tell about the customer and how our products and technologies helped them achieve a positive result. Sometimes this positive result is lower costs, sometimes it's faster time-to-market, sometimes it's how the new technology enables a scenario that couldn't easily be achieved before. Often, it's a combination of these. We create the evidence as a written case study, perhaps a video (like this one featuring yours truly), and occasionally a customer standing on stage at one of our big events.
I own and oversee many aspects of our upcoming MIX08 conference in Las Vegas, and I'm a member of the core team. You may find it interesting that there isn't an official MIX or PDC "events team" in Microsoft. Both of these events are owned by DPE, and we enlist a volunteer army to pull them off. Most of the folks that work on these conferences have another primary role in DPE if you can believe it (I jokingly refer to it as the "Microsoft 120% Rule").

Keynote partners - I'm responsible for helping to identify the customer and partner projects we have on stage at MIX08, and I work with the primary account representatives inside Microsoft to make sure that everything stays on-track. I also help to find projects that align with the overall themes of the conference. There's a lot of timing that goes into this, and as you can probably imagine, there are a lot more partners than we have slots, so selecting the right set of projects is critical.
The Signal - I co-host our weekly MIX08-related podcast along with Thomas Lewis. We provide a behind-the-scenes look at the event, and we interview speakers, staff, and other notables. Yes, we produce the whole thing.
Show Off - Like The Signal, I also work on this one with Thomas. The goal is to find cool projects that get people excited about technology/design and feature them at the Show Off event. This is a blast, and if you have anything that would inspire other developers or designers, please submit a video! Thomas and I will present the best of them the second evening of MIX08.
????? - Unfortunately, I can't talk about this one yet, but it has to do with the evening of day 0 (the day before the keynote) and something we're doing at the attendee party the following night. You're going to love it!
Then, there are activities that I oversee. That means that I don't do any of the actual work, but I provide guidance and make sure things are moving forward. I work very closely with owners for each of these activities, and frankly, they deserve all of the credit.

The Sandbox - owned by Hans Hugli and Glenn Podany, this is the MIX version of hands-on labs. Plus, there's an online component called Sandbox in the Sky that allows attendees to easily publish their work out on the 'net. This year we've also added technology that makes it easy to take the labs home with you. I can't wait to see how well it works.
Open Space - this is a mash-up of what used to be known as Open Mic and MIX Chat, and it's being driven by Drew Robbins and Jason Olson. Think of this as an area where you can meet other experts, including speakers, to chat about design and development topics. Self-proclaimed experts can also schedule their own mini-sessions to talk about whatever interests them. There will be a projector, lots of whiteboards, and couches. They'll also have video cameras on-hand to make it easy to record the content and publish it on the internet for all to see.
Session recordings - I had this role for PDC05 and MIX06, and the amazingly capable Brian Keller had it for MIX07 and is driving it again this year. The goal is to record every session we present and make it available online within 24 hours for anyone (not just attendees). Brian has some cool upgrades to the experience this year that I hope everyone will love.
Bits - David Tesar is responsible for wrangling the bits for the various products and technologies we talk about at MIX08. This means that he figures out which builds of which products will be available by the conference and works with the teams to get them onto DVDs and CDs we can hand out to attendees.

I am the Content Owner and a member of the core team for this year's Professional Developers Conference: PDC08. I've only just started this role, and my job is to drive the theme, tracks, sessions, and overall direction of the content. This is a heavy duty job, and it will likely consume most of my time as we get closer to October. The content direction that is set will naturally flow to almost every aspect of the event. I hope to be able to post frequently about the work I'm doing related to PDC08. I also look forward to your suggestions and feedback.

There you have it. Those are the three areas where I focus my time and attention at Microsoft. Interestingly, very few of my blog posts relate to my day job. I have an insatiable passion for technology, and I spend a lot of my spare time on hobbies like photography, writing little programs, reading about topics that interest me, and relating old stories (like counting to one million).

So, I guess the overall theme of this blog—if there is one—is me. I have a diverse set of interests, and I hope you'll continue to indulge me for another four years!

Programming Collective Intelligence

mswanson — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:20:20 GMT

I tend to read a lot of books, and most of them have a technical focus. Every once and awhile, I run across a gem that is timely, coherent, unique, and well written. Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications by Toby Segaran is one of those books. If you've ever wanted to understand how search engines perform their magic, how a site like Amazon.com knows what products to recommend, how spam detection works, and how dating sites predict good matches (among others), this book is for you. Check out Toby's Web 2.0 Berlin slides for a quick overview.

Many of the algorithms and methods that Toby describes are very complex, but he doesn't assume that you have any special knowledge of data analysis, machine learning, or statistics. Toby does a fantastic job explaining mathematical concepts in a remarkably straightforward and simple fashion. If you have a programmers understanding of math, you should do just fine.

The book is full of real-world examples that pull live data from sites like del.icio.us, ZEBO, Kayak, Zillow, HOT or NOT, eBay, Yahoo!, and Facebook. All of the code is written using Python. If you've never written a line of Python code in your life, fear not! Toby explains a few of the less obvious Python constructs and syntax in the Preface, and frankly, almost any developer should be able to easily understand what's going on. You'll be writing concise Python code in no time.

Chapters include: Making Recommendations, Discovering Groups, Searching and Ranking, Optimization, Document Filtering, Modeling with Decision Trees, Building Price Models, Advanced Classification: Kernel Methods and SVMs, Finding Independent Features, and Evolving Intelligence (cue the ominous music). Some of the algorithms that are covered include: Bayesian classifiers, decision trees, neural networks, support-vector machines (SVMs), k-nearest neighbors (kNN), hierarchical clustering, K-means clustering, multidimensional scaling, non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, and even genetic programming. Don't worry if you've never heard any of these terms...the names may be scary, but the text is extremely approachable and lucid. And you're sure to be a hit at the next geek gathering!

Not only will you come away from this book with a very good understanding of collective intelligence, but you'll also have a very powerful set of practical Python routines that you can immediately apply to your own data.

Highly recommended!

MIX08 Contests

mswanson — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 08:22:00 GMT

Let's kick off the new year with a post about our upcoming MIX08 event in Las Vegas. This is the third year for this annual conference, and we've found ourselves with a unique problem: we have so much great content that we've had to say "no" to a lot of really good sessions just to fit everything into the schedule. Truly insane! We're back at the fabulous Venetian Resort Hotel Casino from March 5-7, 2008. I'll be there the whole time, and if you're planning to attend, drop me a line so we can hook-up. After we've heard Steve Ballmer, Guy Kawasaki, and Scott Guthrie speak, maybe we can go see Big Elvis. I'm almost not kidding.

Anyway, you're probably reading this because of the "Contests" tease in the title (or maybe you Googled "Big Elvis"...I don't know), so let's get to it. There are three fun ways to win cool stuff around MIX08, and I want to make sure you're aware of them:

ReStyle, formerly known as the REMIX contest, challenges anyone to redesign the look and feel of the MIX08 home page using CSS. Three winners will receive paid registration to MIX08, three nights at the Venetian, and $1,000 USD towards travel. That's a value of around $3,000 USD by the way. Pretty decent winnings, even by Vegas standards! Check out some of the MIX06 entries for inspiration.
Show Off is the ultimate ego stroke. We provide a kick ass soapbox at an event attended by your peers, and you get to show off the cool developer and designer stuff you've created. All you have to do is submit a 3-minute-or-less video that represents your obvious superiority, then we'll pick the best entries and show them back-to-back on a big screen at our evening event. Your peers will feel pwned. Prizes will be awarded to the best entries. We don't know what those prizes will be yet, but they will not be lame. To get your brain humming, check out prior audience favorites Bar Code Blitz, /cameraFlow Labyrinth, and RoboCoaster.
The Signal is our MIX08 podcast, hosted by me and my partner-in-crime, Thomas Lewis (who still doesn't have a blog I can link to). If you've ever wanted to hear what I sound like, tune in to our weekly interviews to get the behind-the-scenes scoop on MIX08. As it relates to contests, we have two Xbox 360 Elite packages to give away, and we still don't know the best way to rid ourselves of them. If you have any ideas, or if you just want to give us feedback or suggest a future show topic, send an e-mail to signalm@microsoft.com or leave a voice-mail message at (425) 703-4650. Yes, you'll have to use a phone for that latter series of digits...it's that old skool device on your desk that your mom calls you on.

Last, if you want to sit back and watch a one-hour grainy video taken at a bar (and who doesn't!?), be sure to watch our video interview on Channel 9 called MIX 2008: What the hell is this MIX thing, anyway? You'll not only hear me speak, but you'll also see me move. Scary.

MIX07 Session Recordings

mswanson — Sat, 05 May 2007 02:59:01 GMT

It's been awhile since my last post! The group I'm in, Developer and Platform Evangelism (otherwise known as DPE), is responsible for both MIX and PDC. If you hadn't heard, our sold out MIX07 event took place earlier this week in Las Vegas, and the weeks leading up to it were hectic for many of us. The event itself was a blast, and Silverlight stole the show.

If you weren't able to attend in person, or if you couldn't make all of the sessions, there's good news. All of the keynotes, breakout sessions, and panels were recorded, and many of them (I just counted around 80) are already available for viewing and downloading online. Traffic to the site has been very heavy, so please be patient if it takes a few moments to load.

To "up our game" this year, we decided to see if we could publish a rough version of each session within 24 hours. By rough, I mean a version that contains whatever was displayed on the screen in each breakout room with audio from the presenter. On average, we were able to turn each session around within 15 hours, and we had nearly every session up and available within 12 hours after MIX07 finished. That's pretty amazing!

Each recording is available (or soon will be) in four formats: Silverlight, Zune, video iPod, and downloadable WMV. We added the portable formats this year based on user feedback from last year. I hope you like them.

This isn't the end of the story! In a few weeks, we'll start to release higher quality versions that include video of the presenter (the "talking head") along with what you see today. Plus, we'll tweak the interface a bit and include index points for each presentation. If you watch one of last year's MIX06 recordings, you'll see what I mean. Subscribe to the RSS feed to be notified when new videos are published.

A few of the sessions won't be published until they've had their audio edited. Why, you ask? Well, it turns out that some conference attendees like to rip off the tape covering the sockets in our audio/video power strips (which are unregulated and could easily fry your laptop, by the way). By plugging their laptops into this line, it introduces a very noticeable hum in the audio track. To make the recordings useful, we need to edit the audio a bit, and this takes some time. :-)

Last, I need to congratulate and thank Brian Keller for driving the whole session recording process this year. I had this task for both PDC05 and MIX06, and I know that it takes a lot of work to pull off. Brian has done an outstanding job, especially considering the 24-hour turnaround times.

Let us know what you think! We read all of your feedback and will consider it for our next event.

WMV-HQ	= ~22GB		MP4	= ~7GB		PPTX	= ~530MB
WMV	= ~10GB		Zune	= ~6GB