MIX 2011: register with early bird and vote for Belgian sessions

In just over two months the biggest Microsoft web and UX conference is taking place in Las Vegas: MIX 2011 from April 12 to 14. We have just announced the keynote speakers, first pre-conference boot camps and opened up registration, so now is the time to register!

What is MIX 2011?
MIX is a gathering of developers, designers, UX experts and business professionals creating the most innovative and profitable consumer sites on the web. Sessions range from technical, code-based topics to expert advice on content strategy, usability and design. Explore the future of the standards-based web: join the conversation at MIX11.

Register today for an early bird discount of $500

Registration is now open, with a special early bird pricing until February 11th 2011. The current promotion includes a $500 discount for the conference (pre-conference is separate), and a free hotel night at the Mandalay Bay.

Open call: vote for the Belgian speakers proposing sessions

The open call contains great session proposals by international speakers. While I encourage you to vote for your favorite sessions I want to make sure we highlight the Belgian selected speakers as well. They will appreciate your vote, please vote before February 4th!
(All in the order as they appear on the open call page)

 

 

The session where Hello World is forbidden: Advanced Silverlight
Gill Cleeren
Byebye 'Hello World'. We've all had the time to play with Silverlight by now so it's time to switch gears. In this advanced Silverlight session, Gill Cleeren will show you advanced topics in Silverlight, such as unit testing, profiling, MEF, security and authentication, advanced printing scenarios, sockets etc... You'll learn stuff that you were afraid to ask about before!
Level 400 /  Silverlight experience required / Technologies: Silverlight 4

Building custom controls in Silverlight 4
Gill Cleeren
While Silverlight has a rich set of controls on board, sometimes you still need a control that does not exist. In Silverlight, there are more options than you ever considered possible to do this. Varying from templating a control to building a control from scratch, we'll cover it all. We'll also look at building a container from scratch!
Level 300 / Technologies: Silverlight 4

Planning is for Dummies; Coordinating Global Communities is for Leaders
Dries Buytaert
Project managing tens of thousands of developers scattered around the globe is an insurmountable task - destined for failure. A new approach to leadership & coordination is required to achieve great things, particularly on the Web. In this session, Drupal project lead and Acquia co-founder and CTO Dries Buytaert will share his secrets for building a thriving global community with more than 500,000 members and over 5000 active contributors worldwide. He'll describe the mind set and mechanisms that are essential for large-scale community growth and share insights from both success and shared failures that he's directly experienced while leading the Drupal project. He will discuss how to turn a developer-centric community into a healthy open source ecosystem, which includes designers and developers, as well as some of the largest corporations around the globe.

Windows Phone 7 Integration; Dynamics CRM, SharePoint, Cloud, On-Premise
Sandrino Di Mattia
This session will show how a Windows Phone 7 developer can leverage the Azure AppFabric Service Bus to achieve integration with existing platforms.Be it Dynamics CRM 2011 (Online), SharePoint 2010, Applications running in the Cloud, Applications running On-Premise… each integration scenario can be achieved using the Service Bus.The goal of this session is to prove that the Azure platform provides much more than infrastructure in the cloud, it also allows you to make your current infrastructure part of the cloud.Most of this session will be done in Visual Studio; building a Windows Phone 7 application that interacts with all these platforms.

Advanced WCF RIA Services
Gill Cleeren
Since Silverlight 4, WCF RIA Services has been part of the platform. We all had some time to experiment with RIA Services a bit, didn't we? So now it's time for the serious work. In this session, we won't be creating your basic "Hello RIA Services" application! Instead, we'll take a deeper look at RIA services by answering questions such as:How should we architect our applications around them?What patterns and best practices can be applied? How can RIA Services be used in an MVVM scenario?How can I do validation with RIA services?And much more!
Level 300Technologies: Silverlight 4, WCF RIA Services

Fun with ASP.NET MVC 3 and MEF
Maarten Balliauw
So you have a team of developers… And a nice architecture to build on… How about making that architecture easy for everyone and getting developers up to speed quickly? Learn all about integrating the managed extensibility framework and ASP.NET MVC for creating loosely coupled, easy to use architectures that anyone can grasp.

Data access from Windows Phone 7
Gill Cleeren
Windows Phone 7 apps need access to data, that's a sure thing. In this session, we'll look at what of our knowledge from Silverlight we can leverage into the Windows Phone platform. We'll look at what we need to keep track of on the service side and what actions we need to do on the phone platform itself.Level 300Technology: Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, Services

Finding your way around HTML5
Peter Elst
This session gives an overview of interesting features available in HTML5 with a particular focus on implementing geolocation in web applications. We'll cover best practices and deconstruct various examples to give an in depth look at the functionality as well as highlight several tips and tricks. You'll walk away knowing everything you need to support geolocation in your own web and mobile applications and what are some good use cases for the technology.

Silverlight, MVVM & WCF RIA Services: an architectural story
Kevin Dockx
At the start of each project, you’ll have to lay out your solution architecture - and it’s very important to “get this right”. Silverlight, MVVM & WCF RIA Services work nicely together, but as with each architecture, the best solution depends on your application requirements. What are your options in this case? What are the pitfalls? How can you tie these technologies together to provide you with a solid foundation for your projects? This is an in-depth session, based on real-life experience.

Agenda

Full agenda will be posted online soon, however today you can already review the list of top pre-conference boot camps on Silverlight, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, Cloud, Windows Phone 7 and more. In-depth and delivered by top speakers.

Keynote speakers

As the tradition dictates, Scott Guthrie will again be keynoting this year’s event. He will be joined by Joe Belfiore, who oversees Windows Phone Program Management, and is responsible for the design and software product definition of forthcoming generations of Windows phones and Zune devices.

Belgian twist: a MIX 2011 keynote live stream event

Mark your calendar: on April 12th 2011 you will be able to join us in Belgium to attend the keynote live stream and socialize. Keep an eye on MSDN and this blog for more information soon.