Some events are just better than others.  This one was top-notch and I can unequivocally say I thought it was better than last year. And I loved last year. 

It started right.  I think everyone was blown away by the CLR integration in Silverlight and the fantastic first-day keynote where that was announced set a tone for the rest of the (half) week.  The energy was amazing.  I came home exhausted and not because I had been living la vida vegas.  I couldn’t help but give whatever discretionary time I had to Silverlight.  I had to.  The excitement was contagious and it wore me out.

My favorite moment in the keynote–maybe at the event–was when Scott Guthrie showed C# bulldozing JavaScript through a game of chess.  You can actually see this yourself here.  That was the moment when I knew something important had happened.  CLR in the browser actually meant what it said–the power of a compiled, sophisticated language like C# actually running right in the browser.  I was blown away.

Other favorite moments were:

1. A great conversation I had with Lee Brimelow about animation in which he introduced me to Robert Penner’s killer easing equations for Flash.

2. The session I did with Nathan about the Comic Reader we created for WPF.   This project was so much fun.  We put it together in about 10 days.  It was a pretty intense effort, but it flew by because were were having so much fun!  The session turned out great and I got to imagine what I might look like as a super hero.

3. The IdentiyMine dinner at Zeffirino.  When I called my wife that night to tell her about the dinner, the only way I could think to describe it was to say it felt like eating at the cool kids table.  Thanks to everyone who joined us.  It was a blast.

4. This one isn’t so much a moment as a feeling.  When I was at Microsoft I used to go to a lot of Flash conferences and when I did, I could sense the comradery of that community.  You could tell that the it was a really positive thing.  As Microsoft guy, though, I wasn’t really setup to be a part of it.  MIX this year had that vibe, though.  It was awesome!  WPF seemed all grown up.  The conversations were about what were doing with WPF, not what we could or wanted to do.  And with real projects came real challenges and, overall, the conversations were interesting, hands on and real.  It was great.

5. Okay, one last Silverlight plug.  The final great moment I read came Wednesday morning when I started to catch up on the buzz outside of the conference.  I was blown away when I read this.  And then this.  Wow!  If you read the comments, Michael took a lot of flack for endorsing Silverlight.  I know he’s genuine though.  I spent 30 min. in an anaylst meeting with Scott Guthrie and I got 10 min. of Scott’s vision and his committment is obvious.  If Michael spent 10 hours with those guys like he mentions, then he I don’t see how he could have been anything other than blown away. 

There are many more favorite moments I’m sure.  It would probably be easier to start enumerating the moments where I wasn’t having a blast.  Great job Microsoft and and especially big congrats to the Silverlight team!