Day two of the conference was one with many small highlights. The action was in the many breakout sessions, impossible to summarize in one post.
Mix07 has also prove to be a good way to get into contact with people within Microsoft and discuss how we can work together to make all of this new technology work for our customers. That is what we did most of the afternoon, thanks Geert.
The official part of the day ended with a plenary sessions where we got some more impressive demo's of Silverlight (or Sliverstring as we've come to call it after a few drinks) and it's off-line counterpart (which has a abbreviated name I can't remember). Online video and all kinds of interactive layers on top of video is for sure the number one subject here, but an interesting number two is for sure radio. We saw the demo of the interactive player from the BBC and I can tell you ... radio is going to move into the 2.0 era BIG TIME over the coming months.
Next there was a panel discussion about interactive marketing with Winston Binch (Crispin Porter + Bogusky), Carol Kruse (Coca Cola), Andrew Rashbass (The Economist) and Gayle Troberman (Microsoft). The guy from The Economist was great, he had a critical view on everything which gave the whole discussion a lot of dynamism. However, there was nothing much to learn really, good entertainment though.
http://images.soapbox.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf
Video: View from the PURE terrace during Mix07
"PURE" - the nightclub was the location for the big evening party. Imagine 1500 nerds (Microsoft T-shirt, too short pants) and 500 geeks (fiddling around with their smartphone) in the hippest place in town. It's a strange sight for sure. But the view over the strip from the terrace was impressive (see movie), great food and drinks and 'charming' waitresses. At 10pm the club opened to the general public, which meant we were no longer treated as VIP's but as weirdos not having to pay for their drinks as opposed to idiot's spending $350 usd to be able to sit down with a bottle of something. So we moved back to 'our' Venetian hotel for some gambling ... lost $100 in 20 minutes, no more gambling for me :(
