We had an absolutely awesome time at MIX; we met literally millions of fascinating people and have lots of very cool interviews and features to share with you over the next few days. There will be lots of feedback on
Silverlight, (if you haven’t heard enough already), and the implications that this announcement has on the interaction design community.
Perhaps most impressive for us was the general vibe surrounding the event. There is a social stigma that surrounds most of Microsoft’s attempts to engage with designers, however, for 3 days in Vegas this disappeared. Those folks at Microsoft deserve credit for creating an engaging environment; this was a BIG event on so many levels.
I’m not for one minute forgiving Microsoft for Internet Explorer, and the associated hassles for Creatives, but I find Silverlight refreshing. The keynote demos were awesome, (look out for these in our exposure section), and everybody at the event witnessed a vibe reminiscent of the early days of Futuresplash/ Flash. In summary – we think that Silverlight as a competitive – but very different - product to Flash can only be a good thing.
If there is a tipping point for Silverlight in the near future, I’m confident that MIX has taken us towards it in leaps and bounds – most impressive for us was the video workflow using Expression media encoder, blend, design and web. For anybody intending to publish video online, (in a more professional fashion than youtube allows), this set of tools is going to be incredibly useful. And good value compared to CS3. You can check out the keynote along with all of the other MIX sessions at:
http://sessions.visitmix.comWayne Smith’s demo of the media encoder was show-stopping, we grabbed him straight after his presentation, and
you can see his interview here.Stay tuned and we’ll introduce more demos, interviews and features from evangelists at the event. As mentioned earlier, perhaps the most important feature of MIX was the vibe – summarised here in
this interview with Jon Harris (User Experience Evangelist, Microsoft), conducted by John Davey (Flash on the Beach).John Davey has just announced Flash on the Beach 2007, this was easily the best UK event in 2006 –
book early to avoid disappointment!More to follow...
