Hi, I'm Joshua Allen, a Technical Evangelist on the MIX team. I've recently been helping to organize the breakout sessions and discussions for the “Beyond the Browser” track at MIX06. As I've filtered through the mountains of session proposals from industry partners and internal teams, I'm increasingly looking forward to attending. This conference is shaping up to be rather different from the typical Microsoft conference (and different from most industry conferences, for that matter). Most of the scenarios we'll be covering at this conference involve technologies where Microsoft is not calling the shots, and where we need to partner and showcase companies who might also compete with us. It's a rapidly changing problem space, so there are plenty of unresolved challenges and room for discussion. And we're focused much more on user experience design, and on specific, real-world business models that are relevant today.

At other conferences, we tend to focus on platforms, server products, and traditional mainstays of Windows and Office. We don't normally talk about UX design. We don't usually explain how we can help you extend your user experience into the living room. And we don't often talk about new ways to extend your content and services to the billion mobile users who may or may not be using Microsoft software. People know that we participate in the large consumer web space (think Hotmail, MSN Messenger), but not that we help other people participate. I believe that this conference is going to surprise a lot of people, and shine the light on an area of Microsoft's business that many people don't know about.

Tags: MIX06