- UX track needs some work.
- Business panelists were not very impressive and forward-thinking. I found the 2006 sessions with Ebay, MySpace and Amazon to be more interesting. Those guys actually had profitable businesses. Web 2.0 guys make cool stuff but still have no idea how to make a buck out of it other than ads.
- Keynote was too demo-centric. I understand the need for some wow-factor in order to get developers excited acount SilverLight, but IMO flying images and glossy buttons don't "wow" anybody anymore.
The good:
- The Ballmer / Kawasaki interview was a lot more fun than the Gates / O'Reilly discussion at Mix 06. Tough questions, good humor, and Ballmer is just fun a guy. I was really thrilled I got to ask him the EC2 question.
- I got more interesting info on the tech side than I expected. SilverLight finally looks promising, Version 1 was just a toy, more of a CTP than anything else. But this is pretty cool.
- I'm very impressed with the MVC team. It's so unlike Micrsosoft: hire active smart bloggers, forward thinkers with deep community relationships (small team, only 4 FTE right now), give them complete freedom, and see what happens. They're not even locked into a release schedule. New builds will happen frequently and are completely based on community feedback. Basically it's like an open-source project with virtually unlimited funding. Any developers' dream. These guys were so honest about the company, didn't care about pissing people off, it felt very non-corporate. I loved it.
- Open Space is a great concept. I wish I had spent more time there. The 45 minutes I spent chatting directly with Scott Hansleman and Phil Haack were worth the $1300.
- The overall openness and unpretentious tone were promising. Microsoft's always been great at supporting developers, and that hasn't changed. "Web developers, web developers, web developers!!!"
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