Mix 2008... just over a week to go

Mix 2008 is less than two weeks away. I missed it last year and reading the post event blogs etc, kicked myself for not attending. This year I made no such mistake and registered early to avoid the inevitable sell out (last year various Microsoft employees themselves were not allowed past the entrance, having failed to register in time... "your name's not down you're not coming in"...).

Choosing which conference(s) to attend each year is often a difficult call. I usually allocate myself one "attend only" conference plus a "speak at" conf if I have something useful (rare I know) to talk about. This is separate from the single day seminar stuff we often attend during the year. One conference a year seems reasonable from a budget, time, family commitments, ROI etc point of view.

So, if you are attending only one, which one should it be? I try to vary it. Obvious candidates for me are the US based PDC and Tech·Ed along with the UK based SPA. SPA I've been to before a number of times, with PDC and Tech·Ed on my "must go there sometime if I can justify it" list.

This year, Mix was at the top of the list. When choosing, I often go out of my comfort zone to learn new stuff and being a day-to-day techy server-side kind of a guy rather than a whizzy flash, silverlight, wpf type of soul, Mix fits the bill nicely.  Mix will be an ideal opportunity to dedicate some time to acquiring new techniques and technologies (albeit at surface level), being a Web conference biased toward creativity, media, design,[hopefully] usability and rich client-side UIs - I'm especially interested in seeing where "we are up to" with Silverlight 2, WPF, .Net 3.5, Expression Blend, XAML, Web 2 (i dislike that phrase) and generally where the Web interface is heading (see the full session list here, which includes keynotes by CEO Steve Ballmer and .Net Framework team founder Scott Guthrie). I'm also especially interested in chatting with fellow delegates to see what they are up to.

The conference looks set to be entertaining too, with some non-developer focused events such as:

• Tue eve: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (movie screening and Q&A with Steve Weibe, one of the stars of the movie, Ed Cunningham the producer, and Twin Galaxies referee Walter Day).
• Wed eve: Party at club TAO
• Thu eve: RockBand tournament, on a real stage, massive sound system and huge plasmas!

Glitzy Vegas is of course another attractor...