I'd say pretty good so far, the keynoters (not quite speakers - but I'll explain) were excellent.
- Mr Percival is a wizard of sound, not my kind of music but very superbly performed and very entertaining. Not sure how to explain this, but he used real-time recording and playback, then sang to the playback. A few iterations of this and his track is sounding like it's recorded by a half-dozen people at once. My guess is excellent use of a shotgun microphone and/or some great software and hardware behind the scenes.
- Dan Ilic, self-styled hypocrite (working in network television); of Hungry Beast fame is predicting that TV will be dead by 2013 due to the rise and rise of internet TV with companies like Next New Networks.
- Gordon Bell of Microsoft Research gave a presentation on his fascinating MyLifeBits project - could you record everything a human being has ever experienced? I got the impression he was predicting that by 2020, it may even be the norm.
- And well it wouldn't be a Microsoft event without some Windows Phone 7 and Kinect goodness. Looks like some really cool stuff coming down the pipe - there was a hybrid dancer / musician who performed on a good dozen instruments for our pleasure, and a tech demo of a high quality CAD of a Toyota concept car, running in real-time, e.g. the demo guy changed the colour, rotated at will and what looks like exploded the car...by which I mean the car parts flew out in several directions so you could see how they fit together. There was also a Qantas WP7 app which really reminded me of Paul Thurott on Windows Weekly - the phone is really designed around the user more than the corporate brand. It's looking like it will be more and more difficult for me when my Android phone contract comes up for renewal soon enough.
I'm happy I decided to go after all, and hey - free food, drinks and networking is always good as well!
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