I’m a Google search user, have been since it was first released. I like the simplicity and the format. I have nothing against other search providers, but I’m comfortable with Google and until something more compelling comes along, I’ll stick with it. I’m a middle aged Englishman, so by nature change doesn’t come easily.

This morning I received an email (which Outlook identified as junk mail – oh how I laughed) from the Live Search Team, offering perks if I use Live Search; ooh, swag I though. Just a small download and it’ll track my searches. Wait, a download? Maybe not then. It doesn’t matter anyway, since the offer only applies to “legal residents of the 50 United States and Washington DC”. Illegal residents, no. The rest of the world, no. US citizens who use Firefox, also no; you have to use IE.

I may be out of touch, but I thought the best way to get people to use your product was to make a better product.

Disclaimer: I’m not a member of the Church of MVC. But there are bits I really like and there is a huge amount of confusion over, well, just about everything really; what it is, why it’s here', when it should be used, and so on. There is a trend, good or bad, towards REST based architectures and certainly URL rewriting is common, especially in content management systems and anywhere ID values are used in URLs. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could use the cool URL Routing features of MVC in WebForm applications? Well, you can, and it’s actually pretty easy.

Rather than me tell you how, here’s Wally, with a podcast and code showing how easy it is. After all, if Wally can manage it, so can you.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the videos for ReMix UK are now up on the agenda page. Slides are available for most sessions and you can watch the slide/audio presentation inline. You might have to turn up the volume for some of them as the audio is a little quiet. We’re planning to get the 20/20 session split into the individual talks, to make linking to each one easier.

One of the things I was hoping for at ReMix was a podcast interview with Scott Guthrie and Bill Buxton. I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask him, but otherwise had no plan and since it was while the sessions were going on, I groveled to the NxtGenUG boys to record it. So it’s now in two parts as part of their once regular, but now sporadic, podcasts. This was just Scott, Bill, Dave, Rich, Chris and myself, sitting in a quietish area with a cuppa. It was also videoed, but since it was Rich’s new HD camera we might have to wait for him to buy more disc space before he can process it.

ReMix was a blast, I had such a fun time. Phil & I arrived around 6pm on Wednesday night to a venue that was a building site. Literally. Walls were going up, stages being built, curtains draped; by the morning the transformation was amazing. People from the Brighton Centre itself were taking pictures so they could prove to others how possible it is to change the space of a large area. We had a great community room, open and welcoming and right opposite the main vender and food area, where there was constant music from the VJs, except when interrupted by the gameshows hosted by the NxtGenUG boys.

We started on Thursday morning with the keynote split between Bill Buxton and Scott Guthrie. I’m a fan of Bill’s book and really enjoyed his talk; I really like talks that make me think about usability, the design process, how things get created. Scott was, as usual, great too. Then the sessions started and I spent nearly all of my time in the community track, watching the sessions we’d invested time and effort into bringing to the show.

For me the top session was Robin Christopherson from AbilityNet, who stepped in to fill the entire session when Julie at the last minute announced she was ill and wouldn’t be able to make it. Robin was, quite honestly, amazing; it was humbling to see the problems a blind person experiences when using web sites, but he didn’t stop with the blind and also covered problems experienced by people with other forms of disabilities and cognitive disorders; it' really was enlightening.

The most fun was Sara’s 20/20; normally these are 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide, but Sara thought it would be good to do 20 Visual Studio Tips and Tricks, each 20 seconds long. So off she set, with me shouting “Next” every 20 seconds; it was fast, furious, educational and highly entertaining.

All other sessions were great too. We deliberately had a mix of topics and styles, from technical to creative, fun to serious; all were well attended and seemed to be received well. In fact, the whole conference had a great vibe to it, with many people feeling it really wasn’t a Microsoft conference at all. So goal achieved. I’m now really looking forward to next year and to seeing if we can bring some of the fun community aspects for the main Mix  conference.

If you’re going to be at ReMix UK and have a cool project using Microsoft technologies, especially if it’s based around the digital home, gaming or robotics, or even that use multiple technologies, then please come and let us know. There will be a film crew on Friday keen to record community stories, so if you’ve something great then come find us – any of the people in charge around the community room: myself, Phil, or Kat, and we’ll try and hook you up for an interview.

I’m just waiting for Phil and then we’ll be heading off to Brighton.

So here's the list of stuff you'll get if you attend ReMix UK. Each delegate will receive a Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription worth over £650 which contains;

• Expression® Studio
• (Expression Web, Expression Design, Expression Encoder, Expression Blend, Expression Media)
  Visual Studio® Standard Edition
• Office Standard Edition
• Office Visio® Professional
• Windows® XP
• Windows Vista® Business Edition
• Virtual PC
• Parallels Desktop for Mac  (so Mac developers can install Windows Vista in a virtual machine on their Mac and run all the other software included)
• Pre-configured virtualized server environments

See http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/purchase.aspx?key=professional for details.

Pretty sweet huh? So book your place if you haven't already.

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Since one of the key phrases of Mix is “a 48 hour conversation”, speaking is in the forefront of our minds. We’re always keen to encourage new speakers and to build people’s confidence in speaker to large audiences. As such, the NxtGen User Group boys are running a Speaker Idol competition, along the lines seen at TechEd and the UK Launch. Yes “Ready Steady Speak” is back for ReMix UK 08.

For those of you not familiar with it, the format is as so:

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 UK 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! 

Prerequisites:

Mandatory

• 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

• 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.

If you’d like to take part then mail dave@nxtgenug.net with your interest, no later that the 15th September.

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Want to get more of a feeling for what’s going to happen at ReMik UK? The On Show section on the home page has some video interviews with those involved. Yes, yours truly is one of them. I didn’t have time to get to Microsoft UK for the interview, so they came to me, so yes, that’s  a corner of my office. I’ve done podcasts before, but this was the first interview to camera, with a boom mic just above my head, of which I was very aware. I had to force myself not to look up at this large furry thing hanging just about my head, as though it was about to pounce.

In other news, we’re scheduling Scott Guthrie and Bill Buxton into some community time, perhaps for interviews, perhaps some open questions, more informal than a panel. This will hopefully happen on one of the smaller community stages and while other sessions are going on, since their time is being scheduled down to the last minute. Phil, in his quest for tea and biscuits, has named them “Chill with Bill” and “Brew with Gu”. We’re not sure if this will actually take place, where and in what format, but if it does, we’ll make sure it gets recorded somehow. If you’ve questions, I’ve started another thread on the backnetwork, so feel free to drop them there.

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On day 2 at ReMix the community room is hosting a panel with Scott Guthrie and Travis Leithead, a Program Manager on the IE team. We’re going to be taking questions from the floor, as well as providing a way to submit questions during the conference, but if you’ve something pressing you want to ask and don’t fancy standing up in front of a crowd, then I’ve set up a thread on the backnetwork forum where you can post your questions.

Tea and biscuits may also be involved.

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