[MIX06] Final thoughts
I write this a little late, limited or no hotspots at the hotel ment when I left the show that getting net access was a little tricky. I actually type this on Thursday morning sat in StarBucks drinking a brew (the queue for the morning coffee is huge, the americans _like_ their morning coffee) and watching the hotspot fall over (someone has already asked me if its working for me). In some respects the final day was the busiest and best, the sessions were not great with the exception of the InfoCard session in the morning. I attended the future of media and the web session but split to chat in the sandbox. I was getting a little tired of Marc Canter at this point, he was leading this session and while I do have respect for Marc he can become a bit much :)
Later on I will be starting the journey home, this is my first time in America. What do I take from my couple of days here, Vegas is an amazing place, bright, bold and always alive. Americans in person are warm and friendly people, I already know this from my many net friendships but come away with a renewed feeling of freindship from meeting them in person. They are also generous and the best hosts a person could wish for, I look forward to coming back to the USA in the future. A little "fun poking" :) american geeks (well ok mainly Microsoft) start every sentence with the word so. So they also end every sentence with an implied question? (ok thats hard to come accross in writing but next time you talk to an american, listen and you will see what I mean). I am pretty sure that americans think us "limeys" have some funny things about us :).
So :) the final day at Mix, it was a great day of mainly chatting to folks. I talked to loads of Microsoft folks and have made many connections. I enjoyed in particular talking to Andrew Whiddett, head dude at REZN8. After the amazing NASCAR demo I learned he also created the PDC NetFlix demo and has more to come. In the WPF world they don't come much more guru than this guy so it was good to talk with him. I also hugely enjoyed talking to Cheryl Wise, FrontPage MVP to the stars and a really friendly person. We talked about expression and EWD, frontpage and communties and I will be defenitaly dropping her an email to stay in touch.
The end of the show resulted in a massive end of show networking session, split into topical tables you could sit down with your lunch and chat to the folks around you. I hung out with Wayne, discussing expression and EWD with the folks around me. It was good to hang out near the WPF tables to chat with folks around their about their experinces and pains, and to communicate that to the Microsoft folks. My final night here I spent dining at the Baliago, the fountain is much, much better than the film let me tell you, if you ever come to vegas, see that. On a final note, I did't attend any MS geek dinners of any kind, the networking I did do was much more informal and any MS geek dinners that did occur were invite only (if you a no-one your not coming, I have no time for that).
Well my brews drunk (actually a while ago, keep prentending to drink so I can keep my table ;-), better go get some things to take home and finish up my packing, see you on the other side.