Last week saw the second Microsoft MIX event in the UK and this time it went to Brighton. I must admit I preferred this year's event to last year's possibly because it was in Brighton instead of London or possibly because it seemed somehow more relevant to me this year. There were some good sessions again. I enjoyed the design sessions as us developers don't often get much insight into this world. I especially enjoyed the Designing With Microsoft Expression session by Arturo Toledo - although this must have been a bit basic for designers it was a good tutorial into how to use Expression tools with more than the tragic plodding and fumbling around that developers such as myself can manage. I also attended the 20/20 talks (micro-presentations or Pecha Kucha) like last year and the bar was definately raised this year. They were all great and Richard Costall provided another classic performance but the outright winner had to be Sara Ford with her 20 Visual Studio Tips (that's one tip every 20 seconds). What an incredible performance. You can only do something like this if you've written a whole book on the subject and Sara's comes out shortly before PDC. No slides but worth every second. You should take 6 minutes 40 seconds out of your life to watch this when the videos are released.

Another highlight for me was Ready, Steady, Speak where I got to reprise my role as judge again. All of the 8 speakers were new to speaking and they gave great first time performances. Richie Allen (co-host of the Southampton Next Generation User Group) won with an excellent demonstration of how much you can improve in the space of just 24 hours with a few tips. Well done, Richie and well done to everyone who took part - I really hope we'll be seeing you guys again.

For my part I presented Internationalizing WPF And Silverlight for the first time and was quite happy with it considering it was the first outing for this one. Sadly I got the first session immediately after the event night again. Someone somewhere really hates me.

Other stuff to note: IE8, Silverlight 2 and ASP.NET MVC will all be released before the end of the year. Microsoft Surface will be available for purchase in the UK next year. There are no pricing details yet but it is $12,000 in the US at the moment. Sadly although the Surface SDK is free it is only available to purchasers of Surface so that puts it beyond most developers' reach. Still it is all WPF-based so that's a great place to start.

Roll on ReMix UK 09.

If you're going to ReMix next week you might like to know that the "Ready, Steady, Speak" presentation competition pioneered at the Visual Studio 2008 Launch earlier this year in Birmingham will be held again. "Ready, Steady, Speak" is very similar to the Speaker Idol competition held at TechEd Europe each year and gives you a chance to give a 5 minute presentation and win significant prizes. Here's the official information:-

Contestants will present a 5 min session on a subject of their choice relating to Web Development or Web Design.  They will present in front of the REMIX audience and in front of a panel of judges.  If there are more than a  certain number of contestants (TBD), there will be ‘heats’ earlier in the day with the winners of the heats in a ‘speak-off’ in the evening session.  The ‘speak-off’ will take place as stated in the evening of the first day of MIX and the first prize is an XBox 360 + Goodies!  Mandatory Prerequisites:Speakers must NOT have previously presented ‘full sessions’ at DDD, TechEd, DevWeek, SDN, SQLBITS, VBUG Conference, NxtGenUG FEST or any similar such conferences.

·         Speakers must create a new session of their own with new material which can be based on existing material but cannot be a simple copy of it.

·         Speakers must limit their session to as close to 5 mins as possible (overrunning time will cause the speaker to be marked down.)

·         Speakers must not have previously won Speaker Idol or “Ready Steady Speak” UK Launch – Sorry to James Coulter J!

·         Speakers must state their desire to enter the competition by no later than COP Monday 15^th September 2008.

Desirable Prerequisites:-

·         Speakers should provide if at all possible their own laptop, but one can be provided if necessary.  The speaker should notify the organisers of any software prerequisites.

·         Speakers should have spoken previously at a User Group meeting even if only for a 10 min mini-session or ‘nugget’.  This is NOT mandatory.

Remeber, the closing date is next Monday so you need to be quick. To enter email either Dave McMahon or anyone involved with ReMix UK and they will connect you with Dave.