What I’ll be doing at MIX10 – sessions, events and Channel 9 Live!

Packing now, flight takes off in 8 hours and MIX10 starts tomorrow!

I’ve posted this on twitter, but I believe this is going to be the best MIX ever.  Windows Phone is already huge, keynote demos are rocking and there are a ton of interesting sessions.  And a lot of those are coming from external speakers, which is a great way to learn from those who do the design work and use the tools in the real world.

My schedule is packed and I thought I’d share some of the sessions and events I’m looking forward to:

Sunday

09:00 – Microsoft Silverlight 4 Boot Camp
John Papa and Mike Taulty share their immense Silverlight knowledge and teach of the Silverlight Fu.

09:00 –Design Fundamentals for Developers (and Other Non-Designers)
Robby Ingebretsen provides an encore presentation of his wildly popular session to help others learn about user-centric design, whitespace, color theory & other important concepts

13:30 – Design Tools and Techniques
Arturo Toledo and the good people from Archetype will be sharing lessons learned from doing amazing design work with Silverlight and Expression Blend.

22:00 – MIX10 Tweetup
Early birds will enjoy free drinks (until the tab runs out) and an unlimited character conversation with other MIX10 attendees. Non-attendee guests and significant others are welcome.

 

Monday

09:00 – Day 1 Keynote
Streamed live at http://live.visitmix.com, definitely not one you want to miss!

10:30 – MIX10 Day 1 Keynote After Party – (live stream)
Recapping the announcements and answering all your questions from the Day 1 Keynote
Who: John Papa, Adam Kinney, Loke Uei Tan and Nic Fillingham
Ask questions via @ch9live

11:30 – Syncing Audio, Video and Animations in Microsoft Silverlight Applications
Silverlight MVP Dan Wahlin discusses an animation project created for a Fortune 500 company and demonstrates tips and tricks that can be used to keep various assets synced so that audio and video clips can be started at specific times as a storyboard plays.

12:05 – Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications
Come hear Ken Azuma discuss how to design better experiences for data-centric applications from someone that has designed and developed many successful business applications using an array of UX technologies.

14:00 – Authoring for Microsoft Silverlight 4 with Microsoft Expression Blend
Christian Schormann and Peter Blois explore how Expression Blend lets you design and build rich, vibrant Silverlight 4 applications.

15:30 – Windows Phone UI and Design Language
Windows Phone constitutes a dramatic new user experience paradigm. This session will provide prescriptive guidance, tips, and techniques on how designers & developers can build beautiful, compelling user experiences that are consistent with the built-in Windows Phone 7 Series experiences

16:00 – UI Design with Expression Blend for the Windows Phone 7 Series – (live stream)
Who: Christian Schormann, John Papa, Adam Kinney
Ask questions via @ch9live

17:00 – MIX10 Day 1 Wrap Up Edition – (live stream)
Who: Adam Kinney, John Papa, Jeff Sandquist and Dan Fernandez
Ask questions via @ch9live

17:00 – Ask the Experts
MIX speakers, Microsoft team members and members of the web community will be available to answer your questions and take your feedback at this informal reception.
I’ll be by the Silverlight and Expression tables with the rest of the crew.

 

Tuesday

 

09:00 – Day 2 Keynote
Streamed live at http://live.visitmix.com

10:30 – MIX10 Day 2 Keynote After Party – (live stream)
Recapping the announcements and answering all your questions from the Day 1 Keynote
Who: Scott Hanselman, Giorgio Sardo, Adam Kinney and Nic Fillingham
Ask questions via @ch9live

11:30 – Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks and Architectural Experiences
Multi-touch capabilities in Windows 7 have a vast array of possible applications. However, the design considerations for creating desktop applications that utilize these capabilities are somewhat different than designing for multi-touch applications in public installations, such as kiosks and architectural interfaces

15:00 – The Elephant in the Room
Do you want to learn why the process of designing software always reveals our humanness – our biases and prejudices, quiet agendas, irrational actions, and diverse portfolio of imperfections – in full effect.

16:30 – Principles of Microsoft Silverlight Graphics and Animation
Come and learn how to breathe life into your designs by learning the fundamentals of Silverlight graphics and animation. We take a look at the types of graphical assets Silverlight and Microsoft Expression Blend support, where they come from, and how to leverage them in your applications.

17:00 – MIX10 Day 2 Wrap Up Edition – (live stream)
Who: Adam Kinney, John Papa, Jeff Sandquist and Dan Fernandez
Ask questions via @ch9live

21:00 – Attendee Party!

 

Wednesday

09:00 – Developing Multiplayer Games with Microsoft Silverlight 4
Come learn from world-renowned interactive developer Grant Skinner about the opportunities, challenges, and processes for developing successful games using Silverlight. Hear about key Silverlight animation topics from many angles including business, technical, tools, workflow and design integration.

10:30 – Flash Skills Applied to Silverlight Design and Development – (my session!)
If you know how to design and develop Flash applications, you are more than half the way there to creating Silverlight applications. Similar languages, graphic and animation features and skinnable controls, ease the training between the two technologies. Listen and learn how to add a new skill to your skillset and expand your opportunities.

11:05 – Dynamic Layout and Transitions for Microsoft Silverlight 4 with Microsoft Expression Blend
Learn to create applications that change layout and visual appearance using smooth, dynamic and visually rich transitions without writing code. Come see new features in Expression Blend that raise the bar, making it even easier to create amazing applications that will delight users.

12:00 – Prototyping Rich Microsoft Silverlight 4 Applications with Microsoft Expression SketchFlow
SketchFlow is the prototyping environment in Microsoft Expression Blend. See how to use SketchFlow to collaboratively design, evolve, explore and review user experiences and interactive content.

13:30 – Creating Effective Info Viz in Microsoft Silverlight
So much information and so little time. Matthias Shapiro, contributing author for "Beautiful Visualization", talks about how to create information visualizations in Silverlight that bring both beauty and insight to the data. He covers different methods for portraying data, in which cases different methods should be used, and how Silverlight can inform the process and speed up a visualization project.

 

There’s plenty more than that going on, so check out the site: http://live.visitmix.com and keep on eye on @ch9live for live coverage.

Now, my flight takes off in 7 hours… need to pack!