I just got back from the Mix ’09 conference in Las Vegas, and it was so much better than I expected! For being a Microsoft sponsored conference mostly focusing on .NET and other MS technologies, there was about 50% Mac users there and most of these people were designers. It was a really nice mix (haha?) of designers and developers. I’ve got some photos from my trip up here on Flickr.
I think one of the best things they do is put up ALL the session videos online for free! There’s some really valuable information in these!
http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09 (also you can view past years MIX sessions at http://videos.visitmix.com )
Here’s some highlights I’m going to recommend:
- Web Form Design – absolutely one of the best sessions I attended. Watch this video! He talks about why forms suck and what we as designers can do to help the process along. Very very well done and extremely informative. As soon as this session was over I went and bought the speakers book.
- The Way of the Whiteboard: Persuading with Pictures – Anotehr great session, but not necessarily directly related to web design. It’s on how to get ideas out of your head and communicate them properly to people via a whiteboard of napkin.
- Measuring Social Media Marketing – If you or your company does any kind of social media marketing, this is a great one.
The following sessions I did not attend, but they seem great:
- Copyright Law for Web Designers and Developers
- Wireframes That Work: Designing (Rich Internet) Applications
- Using Total Experience Design to Transform the Digital Building
- Go Beyond Best Practices: Evolving Next Practices to Prosper in the 21st Century
- Design Prototyping: Bringing Wireframes to Life
And finally, for any other ASP.NET or Visual Studio users, These are somre great previews of what’s coming soon!
- Web Development Using Microsoft Visual Studio: Now and in the Future – A preview build of Visual Studio 2010 is shown. Looks amazing!
- Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0 : What’s Next? – awesome new features is ASP.NET 4