Day 2: Too many great sessions! No clones! WAH!
- Post breakfast headed to learn about IE8 - Webslices & Activities (how to build them and how to subscribe to them). Now, I am used to having an action-packed (spoiled by Day 1 sessions) tech-heavy presentations, and this one did not deliver. I learned about Webslices and Activities, but just felt that the presentation needed more. But perhaps, it was the first (early) morning session from the night before partying, so people were not really awake!
- My blood-stream needed more techy stuff! So, headed into Creating Rich Dynamic User Interfaces with Silverlight 2 Controls. Another awesome speaker Karen Corby. She is a Program Manager and was present at both the Day 1 sessions and helping out the presenters when they needed. I remember remarking then (Day 1), I got to go to her sessions.
- Post Lunch, the Keynote with Steven Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki was not what I expected it to be. It was Guy Kawasaki interviewing Steve Ballmer. It was awesome to see both of them, and no blog will really do it any justice! So, go see it for yourself on the mix08 site.
- The keynote really energized me (or it was the endless cups of coffee) to get to the afternoon sessions. To mix it up, I wanted to go to non-coding session. I did go to Creating Better User Experiences: Information Architecture. In this session we got to 'architect' as a group, the attributes for small boutique hotels in california. It was interesting exercise to do. There were other related sessions with the Creation of better User Experiences, and I definitely will read them... ah... post conference.
- Gaming sounds fun, and online gaming sounds fun too... so, how can Silverlight help as a gaming platform? I could not resist this one. So, while my friends dashed to hear Scott Hanselman, I headed to check this out. It was interesting to see what gaming design concepts to keep in mind, what works, what doesn't etc.
- Like I said at the start of the day, too many sessions happening at the same time, and not enough clones of me going all these places. Fortunately, the organizers realized that, and they repeated sessions after the day was done. Yeah! I really wanted to get to Crossing the Usability Chasm - Advanced and Adaptive User Interfaces. Anything that says "Advanced and Adaptive" kind of catches my eye. I was tired at the end of the day, yet, the presenter Dr. Gil Hupert-Graff held my attention with the simplest of the concepts of what is usable and what is not. Before this session, I was all ready to develop a really snazzy-blog application with flyouts, and flyins, expand and collapse and loads of Silverlight's Light up the web concepts. But, after this sessions, the realization hit home (yet again!) we shouldn't be doing something, just because we can. I am pretty sure (my friends agree), after this conference, there are going to be a host of really ugly, non-user friendly and downright hideous applications. I vow, that mine will be at the edge of cool. :)
- By 7:30 PM..... we were ready for .... er.... fresh air. We wandered around.... to different casinos. Finally the Bellagio Buffet looked great! Because it catered to one of my colleague's and my need for Japanese and the other who wouldn't touch fish with a ten-foot pole, had italian, american, chinese, salads, fruits, and a whole dessert section. I was happy with Salmon and Tuna Poke for dinner and dessert!