All MIX'd up DAY 1

Well I have just returned from MIX UK yesterday, and I bring back with me the most almighty of swag, Microsoft branded socks... Microsocks if you will. Well ok I got some other stuff as well but I couldn't stop laughing at the socks.

So MIX UK 07! It ran between the 11th and 12th of September in London and featured some of the top Microsoft people talking about what they are developing at the moment and a sneak peek into the future.

After finding my way around London in the rush hour... I've never seen that many people ever, I finally found the Congress Centre where it was held and slipped into the Keynote, the Keynote talked about some of the cool new technologies and what to expect at the event... a lot it seemed, most of the Keynote was held by Scott Guthrie and talked about Silverlight which I came to see was an absolutely amazing technology.

So after the keynote I met up with the other MSP I was with; Dominic Green, and we went to the first talk of the day on the developer track about Silverlight and how to build Silverlight enabled applications, again this was held by Scott Guthrie and seemed to be virtually full, this seemed to be a pattern with most of his talks... Now Silverlight is an amazing technology from Microsoft and if you haven't heard of it then I suggest that you go and find out about it. Scott showed how easy it is to build a web based application using it and showed how its becoming more and more intergrated with Visual Studio 2008; still in beta if your wondering.

Now most of MIX I would have to say was aimed at Web Based applications, and how Microsoft technology enables their quick creation and deployment. Technologies like Silverlight, Windows Live and also the Silverlight streaming server are great examples of this.

In the afternoon we watched how Windows Live services are able to create dynamic content for websites and how the Windows Live login method enables personal content from Windows Live to be added to your website... pretty neat stuff.

In the end we had a talk based around 'Cloud vs Client', should applications be Web based or Desktop based or can there exist a better hybrid of the two. It was great to see some of the smartest minds on the subject have their say and talk about their experiences.

So after the end of day one, coming away with a few bits of swag we headed out to Tas, a nice restaurant and had a few beers and discussed... with about 40 other developers and Microsoft workers some of the stuff we saw that day and our own backgrounds.