We're halfway through ReMix07 in Boston and I'm very happy I made the trip down. The conference has been meeting my objectives to get a real-world taste of Silverlight, Expression and XAML with some dazzle thrown in to get the juices flowing. I'm focusing my attentions on Silverlight 1.1 and Expression Studio 2.0, since as I blogged before, while these technologies are definitely in my future, that future won't begin until Silverlight 1.1 and Studio 2.0 arrive and are out of beta.
Brad Abrams did the keynote and must have a lot of experience presenting, because he did a wonderful job. I especially enjoyed his off-the-cuff jokes with Miguel de Icaza. I noticed that Brad already blogged on his presentation. I certainly got my dazzle fix, so if that was one of the keynote's objectives, then it was successful.
My first session with Rocky Lhotka and Anthony Handley of Magenic describing their experience building a WPF/Silverlight application was definitely Real-World. It's clear that Expression and XAML changes the game for designers and developers who can now work on a unified platform. Very cool.
For the afternoon's first session I was torn between Bill Wolff's session on Expression Blend and WPF and Jeff Prosise's Building Great Web Experiences with Silverlight 1.1. It was clear from the sessions so far that once I start Silverlighting that I'll probably be spending as much time in Expression as I'll be spending in Visual Studio, but I chose Prosise's Silverlight 1.1 presentation and I'm glad I did. All of my happy anticipations for working with the CLR in Silverlight 1.1 were confirmed. I took a ton of notes from this session and will post those online later.
For the second afternoon session I went with Fritz Onion's Server Communication with Silverlight and ASP.NET AJAX. (It's Fritz Onion, dude!) I was able to catch Fritz a couple of weeks ago at New England Code Camp 8, and there was very little overlap in this session. Having worked with the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit, I had used client-side web service proxies before, but Fritz provided a lot of deeper information about the process. Fritz also gave us a tour of client-side web service calls in Silverlight 1.1.
I'm not catching the end-of-day keynote from Molly Holzschlag titled "The New Professionalism," which is going on now. The topic is abstract (not geeky enough) and besides, I don't give a rip about being a New Web Professional. As soon as I file this ReMix report I'll be heading over to the Hyatt's Fitness Center, where I spent an hour-and-a-half last evening after registration. It has several high-dollar treadmills (cycles and ellipticals, too) with built-in TV, FM Tuner and all kinds of interactive fitness video widgets. Apart from a few basic fitness and duration measuring functions, the only thing they need is an input for my iPod, which of course they don't have. Then again, my iPod is of the pre-video generation so I guess it really doesn't matter.
PhizzPop has a party from 6 to 9 tonight on the top floor of the Hyatt tonight. I discovered PhizzPop last week and was seriously impressed, particularly considering its built on top of Community Server. (You didn't think I was going to not mention Community Server somewhere in this post, did you?) Definitely check out PhizzPop if you've not seen it. Tonight I'll be checking out their open bar. If it's not an open bar, on the other hand, don't bother. I'll let you know.
Later that same evening...
PhizzPop did indeed provide an open bar, so go ahead an visit the site. I only had a Diet Pepsi, myself, so I didn't exactly take advantage of it. That's okay, I made up for it with extra trips to the buffet table for mashed potatoes served in oversized martini glasses. Free mashed potatoes get me every time.