Yesterday I attended the ReMIX08 mini-conference at Microsoft’s Mountain View campus, which is organized every year by Dan’l Lewin’s Emerging Business Team. Due to travel plans, I missed the increasingly popular MIX08 event in Vegas this year, so I was looking forward to a condensed recap led by Scott Guthrie.
The agenda never drifted very far from Silverlight 2 (4.38MB download) which has just been released in Beta 1 (stay awake now, this stuff changes in the blink of an eye). Scott Guthrie’s keynote was the usual mix of grounded enthusiasm delivered by a guy who clearly stays VERY close to the products under his remit. Despite the Corporate VP title and all that must bring at Microsoft, I can picture Scott nosing around his team’s research labs in the wee hours tweaking every product feature and pending release. Well, either that’s the case or he’d make a very good poker player…
We were treated to a really entertaining demo of a working Silverlight application courtesy of Scott Stanfield, CEO of Vertigo Software. Scott’s presentation of the superb work completed by his team at Vertigo showcased Silverlight’s amazing “deep zoom” feature, which sounds cool enough but wait until you see it in action. Hop over to the Vertigo site for a project description, which provides fine-grained access to The Hard Rock Cafe’s varied collection of rock and roll memorabilia. The online collection includes 55GB of raw images comprising 250+ pieces of valuable music history, including sarcastic letters from Paul McCartney, guitars worth more than a 3 bedroom house in San Francisco, and other examples of stunning visual detail. Absolutely brilliant…
Another highlight of the ReMIX08 conference was the panel discussion about what “open” really means to developers, software companies, and entrepreneurs. Moderated with insight by our old friend Sam Ramji who runs Microsoft’s open source and Linux team for kicks and giggles, this was an excellent session with some very clued-in contributors. In particular, I thought Anil Dash from Six Apart and Jeff Attwood of Coding Horror fame had much to say about what defines open source development, community participation, and the messy tangle of software patents and copyright limits.
Apart from learning that Jeff’s developer centric blog has over 100,000 subscribers (and tasteful ads, mind you), he made the excellent point that developers today need to educate themselves on the basics of software licensing and patent laws in order to protect themselves and their work. Like the IRS model of personal responsibility, “Eh, I didn’t know that” isn’t much of a defense when the proverbial knock comes at the door on copyright or patent infringement. Not one to leave the audience hanging, Jeff kindly suggested that every developer should read Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor who talks about the intellectual power grab of large corporations while creative types plead ignorance and stand in the sidelines. Lessig’s published work includes The Future of Ideas and Code: Version 2.0, hardly light reading but ignorance is not bliss when it comes to protecting yourself and your work.
Lastly, the day closed with a very lively and entertaining panel on the future of social networking — lots of raucous comments about how Plaxo burned their users’ trust only to regain it, rampant disagreements about how important profile portability is to the average user, and the stupidity of big companies who came late to the social networking game. If it was a title bout, I’d call it a split decision on points between Dalton Caldwell of imeem, Joseph Smarr of Plaxo, and Dave McClure of 500 Hats (who kept stirring the pot with relish). I had to leave before cocktail hour in order to brave the traffic and collect my son, but I’m hoping that I didn’t miss an old fashioned bar fight between the panelists. I would have volunteered to hold someone’s coat near the portable bar, of course!
What can I say? The feedback has been absolutely tremendous, both on the core message and delivery style. I knew I had prepared something good, but boy, the response went far beyond my best expectations. I will follow 
