Like every year, and probably like thousands other .NET/Silverlight developers around the world, I was very thrilled when this year's MIX conference was about to start. But this time it was different for me. I had won free admittance with my entry for the 2011 Eco Contest; instead of sitting in front of my PC at home, staring at a streaming video, I actually was in this huge ballroom of the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino in Las Vegas to wait for the keynote. Overwhelming! Two weeks have passed since then, and I've read quite some interesting reviews on the event as well as talked to others about it. But none of them brought up an important message I personally took from this conference, so when I was asked whether I want to write a round-up, I happily agreed.
Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that the following is my personal opinion and informal view on things, which you might or might not agree with. It is not supposed to provide an accurate and comprehensive reflection of the conference content, but rather subjective and emotional impressions. I don't speak for Silverlight Show or any other of the involved parties.
The first keynote
When I was waiting in that ballroom, I started talking with the developer to my right. It was his first MIX too, and he had come all the way from South Carolina to Las Vegas because he was planning on bringing his mapping solutions to Windows Phone 7. He didn't know very much about the platform itself nor about Silverlight and was eager to learn about both. Can you imagine his reaction after that first keynote?
When I walked out of the ballroom, I stopped at a few conversations on the way and in the hallways, and it quickly occurred to me that a lot of people were talking about a topic I thought we were done with by now: Silverlight's death. I also thought that I was prepared for something like this. A few days earlier, an announcement had been published, signed by even three important people at Microsoft, which in my eyes had made it totally clear that Silverlight still plays the primary role when it comes to plug-in based experiences on the web, and that the upcoming emphasis on HTML5 for MIX and the following weeks is not to be interpreted as a general recommendation and especially not as a turning point with regards to Silverlight. I myself had fought off "Silverlight is dead" posts in the forums that surfaced after this announcement only days before. And if I didn't have a strong believe in Silverlight I would, after all, not spend hour after hour supporting its community. And yet, as I was picking up all these doubts around me, seemingly confirmed by what I've just experienced myself, I felt downhearted.
There were other things that added to this feeling. Like many others, I refuse to be a "Silverlight developer". I am creating web applications, and in that role I choose the right tools for the job – which inevitably leads to me using other web technologies too, in particular ASP.NET. I don't want to be one or the other, I want to use the best of both worlds, and as long as I'm able to keep a sufficient level of knowledge for both, I'll continue doing so. As much as I love Silverlight, I have never recommended it to anybody just for the sake of it. If you follow my posts you know I'm always trying to balance pros and cons and stress that requirements should drive a technology decision, not the other way round. That said, I naturally am also very thrilled by Internet Explorer 9 and the progress Microsoft has made in that area over the last years. I have been and will be a person that willingly embraces these things, that downloads and works with the technical previews early on, loves to test new frameworks and technologies, and more than ever in these times I like what I see.
However, the way Microsoft pushes Internet Explorer 9 at the moment is something I dislike. I completely understand the motivation behind this, and for the marketing guys the current situation with the huge advantage of IE in various areas like hardware accelerated rendering compared to the competition must feel like El Dorado to them. However, from a developer's point of view, this is scary. I usually have no control over the operating system and/or browser my customers are using. So what are my options? I can either go without these fancy new features that only work well in IE9, or I can try to force my users to switch over to Microsoft's browser... to every web developer who has survived the late '90s "optimized for" times, this should ring an alarm bell. The message is that the future is here, that I can start building great web applications that make use of all the new glamour right away. But can I? Instead of bashing its competitors, I would have very much welcomed a different strategy. Instead of emphasizing that IE is the only browser that is capable of handling things, it would have been equally sufficient to tell people it's the first one. That Microsoft once again has gained the role of the technical leader, but other will follow and adapt. This seems like an insignificant distinction to many, but for me there is a great difference in the intention behind that message.
The second keynote
Fortunately word spread quickly in the conference hallways that the keynote of the second day will be about Silverlight and Windows Phone 7, and I was very much looking forward to finally get my hands on that Silverlight 5 beta. That second day surely started with pure excitement. In these one and a half hours of talk about the upcoming Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" update I felt like someone from Microsoft had sat down with me and discussed all the flaws of the device I have criticized so far, just to tell me all of them will be fixed in the near future. This part of the keynote not only lived up to my expectations, but very well exceeded them, and it was pure fun to watch and listen.
The following part about Silverlight, not so much. At least that was my first impression, which once again was shared by many others. In retrospective though, there really wasn't any reason to be disappointed by it. Let's look at some of the points of criticism people brought up. A lot of developers complained about the fact that the part on Silverlight was really short (< 20 minutes). However, the truth is that the Firestarter event at the end of last year revealed Silverlight 5 and what to expect from it already, so unlike with Windows Phone 7, there wasn't really anything new to announce regarding Silverlight at MIX (except the beta release itself). Consequently, the granted time frame for Silverlight was short. Another complain involved the real-world sample shown at the beginning – the web site of the Blue Angels. In my opinion this dissatisfaction partly was caused by the fact that the speaker unfortunately didn't manage to make clear where the HTML5 part of the web site ended and where Silverlight kicked in. I fell for that myself, but I very much encourage people to actually visit the site and explore it themselves. You will realize that not only the multi-angle videos on the page are created in Silverlight, but also some of the menus and in particular the whole 3D experience of the jets. This was far from obvious in the presentation, and with the explicit mentioning of HTML5 at the beginning, a lot of people apparently missed that. In my eyes this site is a not too bad example for a useful coexistence of current (and future) web standards in conjunction with plug-in based technologies like Silverlight.
The remaining keynote showed some more, solid samples for the 3D features of Silverlight 5, and then was all about Kinect. I had not followed the development of the latter very closely before, so it was actually pretty interesting to learn more about it and the plans for the upcoming SDK.
... and the rest
Instead of talking about the individual sessions (some of which indeed were really inspiring and professional), I'm going to discuss a different aspect of the conference now. I quickly learned that my physical presence is an opportunity to finally talk to all these people in person that I've only got to known on the internet, and to meet new people altogether. For me, this eventually was the decisive part that turned the conference into an outstanding experience.
Speaking face to face with MVPs and session speakers, company representatives and in particular program managers and other Microsoft employees was a truly sensational experience. All of a sudden you are able to connect faces with names, you are able to get personal opinions from those people and discuss things in a way that simply is not and will never be possible in blogs or on Twitter. Regarding Microsoft; after years of being part of the community and carefully observing that anonymous blob it often seems to be, it was pleasant to learn how they see us, how drifts and evolution of the community and their projects are perceived on the other side of the fence. And it was great to see the effort and interest those people display, the heart's blood they put into their products.
For example, on the second day, when I ran into a bug with Silverlight 5 Beta and the Expression Preview right away, both people from the Expression as well as the Silverlight team were very eager to learn about this and help with workarounds. The same is true for every other single person I've met at the booths. RIA Services, Entity Framework, Azure, you name it. Every one of the team members present there not only showed the kind of enthusiasm you'd expect from real tech leaders, they also willingly and curiously discussed and showed interest in your projects, problems, scenarios and wishes for future versions.
This "72 hour conversation" helped me understand a lot of things, provided valuable insights and played a great role in my overall very positive summary of the conference. Even though it started out bewildering on the first day, in the end I walked away from MIX strengthened and with a stronger believe in Silverlight and its surrounding and complementing technologies than ever before. For that and for this great experience I'd like to once again thank everybody I've talked to, and everyone who contributed to make this conference possible.
What about you?
Back home, I used the past week to talk to half a dozen developers who followed MIX only besides their normal job. Some of them didn't have much time to watch any of the sessions yet and only knew the keynotes. Although I hadn't really thought about this, it wasn't very surprising that those people developed similar feelings when they were watching these videos. A few frankly expressed their disappointment on some parts, and once again the "fading out Silverlight" theory came up for discussion.
And that made me think. How would I feel if I only watched those videos and didn't have that personal experience? If I wasn't a person who reads all the announcements and surrounding statements in blogs and on Twitter? How did you feel?
So I hope I could spark some of the enthusiasm and motivation I took from this event in you too. Like I said, it's hard to transport some things across blogs, articles, video streams and web casts. But at least I wanted to try and share my personal opinion and experience on this, and what amount of reassurance in Silverlight and my personal investment in this technology I gained during these days. The message I took from this conference is, that even if I can't see them right now, there are thousands like me; developers and enthusiasts both inside and outside of Microsoft, who all put blood and sweat into this technology to keep it successful, and to transform and boost it for future requirements. We have the tools; it's up to us what we do with them.
If you ever have the chance to attend an event like this yourself, take it. I'm sure you won't regret it, even if your favorite technology only makes a marginal appearance. You can watch the videos online all around the globe, but you cannot live that experience over the web.
About the author
Peter Kuhn aka "Mister Goodcat" has been working in the IT industry for more than ten years. After being a project lead and technical director for several years, developing database and device controlling applications in the field of medical software and bioinformatics as well as for knowledge management solutions, he founded his own business in 2010. Starting in 2001 he jumped onto the .NET wagon very early, and has also used Silverlight for business application development since version 2. Today he uses Silverlight, .NET and ASP.NET as his preferred development platforms and offers training and consulting around these technologies and general software design and development process questions.
He created his first game at the age of 11 on the Commodore 64 of his father and has finished several hobby and also commercial game projects since then. His last commercial project was the development of Painkiller:Resurrection, a game published in late 2009, which he supervised and contributed to as technical director in his free time. You can find his tech blog here: http://www.pitorque.de/MisterGoodcat/