MIX06 Virtual Web has videos of the keynotes and (some/all?) of the presentations here.   MS is spending a fortune to have high quality displays.   The session rooms each have 2 large presentation screens.  There seems to be dozens of MS people in charge of cameras and the presentations, microphones and such.    Even so Joe Belfiore’s tablet didn’t seem to work right during this morning’s presentation.  That’s OK – makes me feel better about my own tech presentations when things went wrong… and I didn’t even have the benefit of a multi billion dollar corporate infrastructure in a billion dollar hotel behind me!     There is a moral there – it’s early in the big picture and I think MS may be jumping the gun on some of this in an effort to “be there” when we get there.   But knowing where it’s all going is not possible so …..

I can see more clearly now that I’ve had a chance to talk with a lot of the folks here at MIX and some of the very impressive MS talent working on MS’s next generation of internet tools. The focus here is much more on broadband high impact media experiences than, for example, the elegant but simple type of applications coming from the Mashup Community. The great thing is that there is room for everybody in the online ecosystem, and I think many of the things we are seeing here will find their way into mashups…..within days. I’m impressed with the extensions of the notion that what is now an experience mostly confined to the desktop will become a multi gadget, multi user, highly interactive environment. However I’m not convinced that you need the complexity of design and high level media elements to make a compelling presentation. This “hollywood” factor may distort some of how MS sees where this is all going. I’d suggest that for at least another few years people will want information rich applications more than fancy stuff.