MIX 09 Keynote
Well, for some reason I’m in Las Vegas attending MIX09. I’ve got bags full of swag and every other person in the Venetian has a laptop out (even while walking). I just attended the keynote, and it was awesome. It seems Microsoft has been pretty busy giving web developers some really powerful tools. First, Bill Buxton (principle researcher at Microsoft Research) spoke about the necessity of good design saying:
“If you are a trained programmer, the last thing you should do is start programming.”
He emphasized the importance of having a clear vision of the product – not just the individual states that it can take on, but the transitions between them as well. A demo he had bombed, but thankfully all of the other demos went very well.
Next up was Scott Guthrie (VP of .NET and director of Silverlight), and he had a lot of awesome stuff to show us. He showed us demos of Microsoft Expression Engine 3, Expression Blend 3, a new MVC, Silverlight 3.0, and a few others.
I was very impressed with both the new versions of Expression Blend and Silverlight. The coolest demo was of a company that is helping Rolling Stones and Playboy archive all of their old magazines. It was just the slickest interface built using Silverlight, and I can’t wait to try it out. Unfortunately, the Rolling Stones site doesn’t go live for a couple more months, but the Playboy site will go live tonight. Link here. (As you can imagine, possible NSFW).
Now I’m off to some sessions detailing the Azure Platform.