MIX 06

Am I the only one unimpressed with this conference so far?  It all seems really fluffy and glossy with no real deep content.  The keynotes are all Microsoft propoganda, and every session I’ve been to about Atlas/AJAX has presented me the same things over and over again.  How many times do I need to see how to add an UpdatePanel and an UpdateProgress control to an ASP.NET page?

All of the WPF sessions have been pretty lame, too.  Great, we’ve got the layout panels, we can zoom graphics, write XAML, etc.  Show us how we can use it to achieve a real-world objective.  Not that I’m fully convinced WPF has a real-world function as of yet.  It’s pretty, but where do I use that in my patient tracking healthcare application or accounting-type app?  Or perhaps I’m just not the target audience for that.

On the upside, one session today was really informative, and that was one on AJAX.  Lots of good content there, especially dealing with navigation and how to handle forward/back buttons in the AJAX world.  Additionally, I got to play with some Origami devices today.  I wasn’t overly impressed, but they were prototype devices.  I thought they were a bit heavy and awkward and I don’t see the benefit over a small form-factor tablet PC.  I can see a 2nd generation of that being small and light enough to be useful, though.

One more day….let’s hope it improves…