With 10 other belgians, I was invited to Mix07 by Microsoft in Las Vegas. The sessions were really interesting, the people very nice and the location absolutely great.

Here is a good summary to what was launched by Microsoft during that huge event.

Silverlight (WPF/E), Expression Suite, Visual Studio ‘Orca’, Live services, free video hosting (WMV only), … a lot of things at once. Some said that the web would change forever.

As a geek I will of course test the DLR and try to code some ruby/python snippets generating Silverlight eye candy (as soon as we get some doc 😉 It’s all simple XML files, better than generating binary flash files… unless you get Flex (now open source version) or OpenLaszlo.

As head of R&D at Emakina I may launch a few “proof of concept” projects for daring customers or internal tests. We have a dozen of .net developpers that will love having the opportunity to code interfaces (they are jalous of our Action Script developpers in the studio) instead of boring reliable server side applications. We will probably develop a few intranet applications for our Windows only customers, aggregating RSS, Virtual Earth, or building beautifull charts and more…

I may even develop a Silverlight version of VW Escape TV just for fun. The Expression suite seems all very playfull and cool …

… but just as even MTV gave up with full flash sites and roll back to HTML, will the market adopt another multimedia delivery platform ? Which may lock them with Microsoft software to edit their web content (unless able to write XAML by hand).

Will web agencies forget soon about 30 years of war for getting at least a few working standard ?

Will the Unix world surrender and install Vista ?

Will Macintosh users with a PowerPC processor upgrade to an Intel Mac to visit Silverlight enhanced websites ?

Let me know your opinion in comments.

Today Emakina is launching the first “meta campaign” as an interactive marketing campaign for Gottabet, a startup specialized in social betting. The “meta campaign” is a contest for viral and buzz campaigns. It is targeted especially to Emakina’ competition : interactive agencies and their creative teams from all over the world. And we have a real million dollars to give away!

So if you are a creative person, enjoy stunt, buzz, viral or guerilla marketing, win a MILLION DOLLARS now !