Adam Kinney posts tagged with 'mix07'

Back in the Saddle

Adam Kinney — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 04:15:00 GMT

MIX07 was awesome. I was involved in supporting the VisitMIX site, posting an array of Silverlight screencasts on Channel 9 and a few other community events. I was lucky enough to go a few sessions, including the WPF Comics session which impressed me enough that I had to blog about it right away. I have notes on a few of the other sessions I'd like to share, but those notes would be about month late so who knows how useful they would be.

After MIX07, I pretty much dropped off the Internet. No blogging, no Ch9 forums, no IM, no email. After the conference I flew from Vegas to Indiana to visit my ailing father. After I was able to spend 6 days with him, he passed away. I was very grateful for the chance to be there with him and my family for the last couple of days and there with my mother during the last few minutes.

This is the beginning of my third week back at work after being "offline" for almost two and a half weeks. I feel like I've caught back up now, took a little to get back up to speed which was not surprising (out of the office three weeks including the conference trip). I wanted to start this week out right and one of the things I've been wanting to do is write more. I have so much queued up to write about and a large amount of art and experiments to share and I just haven't taken the time. Or I think I have to get everything perfect before doing it. But I can tell you that with the mind set I am now, no need to wait or hold yourself back. Live life now, because now is the only time you can be sure you have.

MIX07: WPF Comics with Identity Mine

Adam Kinney — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:14:00 GMT

I just came from a session given by Nathan Dunlap and Robbie Ingebretsen entitled “ZAP!, WHAM!, KAPOW!”: WPF and the Next Genertion of Online Comic Book Reading. And yes, it was as awesome as it sounds like as it should be. They presented an experimental WPF app designed to create a great on screen reading experience for comics.

I'm a fan of comics and enhancing reading experiences especially online, and this type of conceptually was similar to something Ernie Booth and I had dreamed up. Immediate improvements include a visual index of pages which you can use to navigate and preview, different display modes depending on the context of the display currently used and an authoring environment allow content creators to author a very rich path of navigation through the content. They did mention that the Sample should be available online soon once they have chance to clean it up for distribution.

A few technical items of note; each page that is presented can be a .jpg (they were using actual comic book pages from the 24 comic, 1000x2000 pixel images) or a xaml file. Once I heard that I thought "moving backgrounds!" (think DreamScene type movies). Which in due course, they demoed a cover page of their comic with a pulsating plasma-like image in the background. Nicely played Dunlap and Ingebretsen, nicely played. It was also interesting to see that they had chosen to use a Silverlight player within the WPF application to show their extra editor's clips.

Overall the two presented with excitement and obvious love for their science project. Both had previously worked at Microsoft building WPF and now they are both off apparently having a great time at Identity Mine. Towards the end they mentioned that their demo comic "Identity Men" had been actually printed (sure to be found on Flickr soon) and that they were releasing a collection of controls called Blendables, Nathan posted more here.

Great session guys, now I need to try and catch their next session Booyah! Designing and Developing Line-of-Business Applications That SIZZLE

MIX07 has sold out

Adam Kinney — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 22:34:00 GMT

...which reminds me, that I need to get my plane ticket.

I'm very happy to hear that MIX will have as full of an attendance as possible, providing the opportunity to get the most out of the conference. Although sessions and keynotes are the driving factor for conferences, the in-the-hall sessions can be just as fun and valuable.

A few of the MIX sessions I'm looking forward to (unfortunately, no permalinks available) include:

"ZAP!, WHAM!, KAPOW!": WPF and the Next Generation of Online Comic Book Reading
Deep Dive into Integrating Media with "WPF/E", Media Server and IIS7
Designing with AJAX: Yahoo! Pattern Library ( Bill Scott is the man )
Futures in Design
Ink for Designers and Developers
PANEL DISCUSSION: Getting Unstuck: Enhancing Designer & Developer collaboration for mutual success

Plenty of others but those stand out amongst the rest right now.

If you did not get the chance to register, you still have a few more days to submit an entry to the REMIX contest to win a ticket. The contest has definitely been heating up, though, here's two recent kick ass entries:

QuadriColor Mix

Horror Flick 2

MIX07 Blog Bling/UnBling

Adam Kinney — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 04:08:00 GMT

So we've had the MIX07 blog bling ("flair" is out for now, "bling" is in, "badges" is up next I believe) up there for a little while now. You could win posters and just generally show your support and/or your excitement for the whole event.

Well a little while ago we stumbled on Jon Galloway's rendition of of MIX blog badges and I loved them. Irrelevant pictures (Abe Lincoln, Horses with pink stars, etc.) set against a softened MIX logo and Jon had a winner. I've known Jon for a while now and have always found his blog interesting, like interesting in the "unique content that's interesting" way. I'm happy to help push a little bit of that unique content on the intArweb. The bling or unbling if you may is now on the official MIX07 blog bling page.

Expression Studio for all MIX07 attendees

Adam Kinney — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 03:30:00 GMT

All MIX07 attendees will receive a Commemorative Edition of Expression Studio, that combined with receiving a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate and you're ready set up a fresh new pc for designing your WPF and WPF/E apps. Very nice. I used to go to a fair amount of conferences and I don't remember getting any kind of offer like that.

On a side note, we have the first couple of REMIXes published. There's Binary Haze, Licorice and my favorite so far Army Men.

REMIX contest is live, win a free MIX07 ticket

Adam Kinney — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 01:03:00 GMT

The REMIX Contest is live. This is your chance to show off your CSS and design skills and win yourself free admission to MIX07. Admission is awarded to the top three winners, and we are handing out Zunes with Accessory Packs to the top 10 honorable mentions.

Mmm, Zune, I just got one today actually, I'm really digging the big screen. And, no, this is not one of the prize Zunes. So don't worry about winning a used Zune. Before I get myself into any trouble, here's the official rules for the contest.

So enjoy the submissions (none at this time of posting) and submit your remix. I am one of the judges and will be looking forward to seeing your submissions.

Free MIX07 tangible posters

Adam Kinney — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 23:52:00 GMT

Yes, I used the word "tangible" because these are the real kind of posters made from paper not just pixels. And you can get them free for posting MIX07 blog bling on your blog and then sending your URL to us.

If you want to post them in your office before you get them in the mail, you can download the posters from the VisitMIX site or you can download the wallpapers I've created from the posters, shown below.

1600 x 1200 | 1024 x 768 1600 x 1200 | 1024 x 768 1600 x 1200 | 1024 x 768

MIX07, if I was a conference

Adam Kinney — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 10:12:00 GMT

One topic I have been wanting to talk about since my blog was down, is MIX07.

Although I've always been a fan of PDC and Tech-Ed, MIX is what I would want to be if I were a conference. Add one part Web Designer, one part Web Developer (we already went through that mashup here) and one part Web Businessperson and you have a good mix (that was too easy, and don't worry I am not going to try and use the word "devbizigner" anytime soon). Although, designing and developing is my core, I do enjoy reading about business especially fast and 2.0 versions of business.

For developers, the conference covers Ajax, Live, XNA and Windows Media Center. For designers, WPF/E, the Expression suite and how IE7 is a good thing. For business people, better experiences for customers and online media.

To see how all these topics will be covered, you can view the MIX sessions online. After looking at the list, the first three sessions that stand out include:

Designing Stunning Sites with "WPF/E" - Stunning people sounds good.
First Look at the Future of IE - I really enjoyed the IE panel last year, and am looking forward to finding out more about the next steps for IE.
Gazing into the Future of Web Development - the title says it all
High-Speed Development with the AJAX Control Toolkit -I actually first used this toolkit this past weekend on this blog, check out the Archives listing in the right side bar. Now check out the rest of the controls. Nice!
Rich Media, Low Cost - Very applicable for the work we do, we're thinking through how to improve our media experience on Channel 9 and 10 and how we can innovate there.

So that's more than three like I was shooting for, but there are a lot of promising sessions available. If you're planning to go let me know and I'll bring a Channel 9 guy for you or maybe even a Channel 9 or 10 laptop sticker.