Mix: On Campus

By Kris Athi - Microsoft Student Partner

We have all been there, a mentally dull lecture that just seems to drag on for an eternity which is more than likely based around an aspect of computing your heart really isn’t interested in.

It usually all starts off well and good, but your notes quickly go from Neuro Linguistic Programming to a doodle of your friend in the row in front or a lovely row of connected cubes. 

In fact, the only reason why you turned up in the first place was to keep up appearances and get through the module in question so you could focus on the stuff you really consider cool.

I am the Student Partner for Nottingham Trent and recently organised Mix on Campus, a student orientated version of the content delivered at the Mix conference. For the readers who are not aware, Mix is Microsoft’s conference held annually for web developers and designers at which Microsoft showcases upcoming web technologies.

These technologies I personally consider to be very cool and I knew that students really would jump the Mix bandwagon after showing them what could be possible.  The great thing is that I am a student too and so to plan this event, I tried to look at it from the student’s perspective and try and make it a blast and not like that dragging dull lecture everybody would rather forget.

For the content, I put myself in the shoes of the average student and thought what would they know about Mix? The answer I came up with...nothing! And this is through no fault of their own. Mix really does show off some of the latest cutting edge technologies which could be very daunting for students, particularly in the lower levels.

After a bit of research and asking around, I decided to turn the event into a sort of “Introduction to Mix” and bring everybody up to speed on the underlying technologies and hopefully to visit the Mix site to take it further.

I started out with a “NET Primer” designed to introduce the .NET framework and its two components, the CLR and the class libraries. To put it into some context, I used a small demo of a .NET calculator application in Visual Studio 2008 which has simple functions written in VB.NET with a user interface written in C#

From here, I then moved on to introducing .NET 3 and Windows Presentation Foundation. I talked about what it and its key features and how it’s changing the user interface paradigm. To get some wow from the crowd, I presented some of the sample applications that come in the Expression Blend box. These included the 3D Bike viewer and famous photobook application. This was combined with an introduction to the XAML programming language.

I then walked attendees through the creation of the “Lotto Generator”, a simple application that randomly generates lottery numbers. The ball graphics, interface and animations were created in Expression Blend and the number generation required a bounce over to Visual Studio to add the business logic.

Extras at an event I feel are very important. Anybody who tells you they aren’t interested in freebies and swag are clearly lying and simply don’t want to come across as a geek.

 I brainstormed some ideas about “The Ultimate lecture”, what extras would make this event stand out from anything students have ever seen before?  These ideas ranged from very simple things, such as a small quiz prize, to the total fantasy of maybe having Claire Bennet from Heroes coming in to promote Mix. From these ideas, I was able to make several of them happen but unfortunately, Claire Bennet was out saving the world and was unable to attend.

Upon entry, attendees were given a Microsoft branded pen and pad and a tub of “thinking putty” to keep them amused. There were also bottles of coke available to keep people going.

I also put in a few quiz questions throughout the presentation to keep people hooked, and of course these came with Prizes.  Well done to David Brown and James Berry who won copies of Expression Web and an ASP.NET text book.  I also had several copies of PC Pro magazine that were given out to the people who showed up first.

I also managed to secure probably the best (realistic) idea on my list. 20 large Pizzas were delivered straight into the lecture theatre and satisfied the hunger of the many eager attendees.

“The Ultimate Raffle” was drawn to close out the event. The winner of which won a full copy of Windows Vista Ultimate.

To round up, did I manage to succeed in my goal of creating the ultimate lecture?  Here are some of the comments I received from students afterwards that lead me to believe I did.

"It was very informative with a good presentation style and introduced me to a lot of new programs" 

“Cleared up some confusion about where these new Microsoft technologies could be used and there potential”

"An entertaining and refreshing look at technology's future"

“Very gracious, informative, and educational. I particularly liked the demos how you demoed it all. Very practical”

“There was never a dull moment”