For those who are interested, here are the Top 11 MIX 11 Open Call sessions that I want to see.
Designing for WP7: Metro and Beyond
Guido Rosso
MVVM in Action: Deep Dive into AP and Fandango WP7 applications
Luigi Rosso
Guido Rosso and Luigi Rosso of Archetype gave an amazing boot camp presentation at MIX 10 on designer/developer workflow. It ended up being one of the big highlights for me last year. They’re amazing designer/developers and they have a really fantastic presentation style. As such, I’m excited to see how Guido translates the Metro style. I’m also curious enough about the functionality of the AP app and the Fandango app that I’d like to see some of the inner workings of those applications.
The Cynergy Trifecta (Wolf, Barraza, Alderman)
Designer Developer Group Therapy
Michael Wolf
Few people get designer/developer workflow like Michael Wolf. He not only has an excellent eye for design, but he does a lot of the heavy lifting of making sure that the technology implements the design that the project needs. I always love to hear his perspective on designer/developer workflow.
Coding Animation Across Silverlight, WPF, XNA and HTML5
Rick Barraza
Rick Barraza, Michael Wolf and Jose Fajardo did a MIX 09 boot camp on designer developer workflow (with Scott Barnes providing color commentary). It was fantastic. But even that can’t compare with the many, many amazing projects that Rick has been a part of. He was the first person I saw use WPF with the Wiimote, he’s a Surface MVP, he wrote a freaking animated genetic algorithmic calculator in less than 10K for one of the 10K challenges (he was absolutely robbed of that prize). But Rick has always been focused primarily on the users and always focuses his amazing talents on bring the users better and better experiences. Very much looking forward to this talk.
Winning Hearts & Minds: A Field Manual To Guerrilla User Research
Jason Alderman
I’ve been to a dozen or so UX and user research talks and they have ranged from almost useless to changing the way I design and develop software. Jason Alderman is the kind of user researcher that is delighted pare down his research methodology to get right at the core of the problem and find ways to bring better experiences to his users. His talk will realign how you look at user research, guaranteed
Exploring a Blendable Windows Phone 7 Application
Laurent Bugnion
One of the best ways to smooth the designer/developer workflow on any project is to let the designers do as much of their work in Blend as possible. Laurent Bugnion is one of the kings of Blendability. If it gets in, this will probably be one of the talks that I go back to several times over the next year in order to smooth out any issues with Blendability that I run into.
Animation in Silverlight and WP7
Jeff Paries
Author of Foundation Silverlight 3 Animation, Jeff has been one of my go-to authors for working through Silverlight animations in the last two years. Honestly, I feel a little silly since I have an Open Call session on animation (although I’m aiming for a holistic “motion design” approach) and Jeff would completely school me on the topic. If you had to pick between the two, though, pick Jeff’s.
What software can learn from the world of magic
Sean Gerety
I love software and I love magic. And I’d really love to see where Sean is going with this, although I think I have an idea. As a guy passionate about UX, I’m keenly aware that frequently our software is more about how people perceive it than it is about the reality. If people feel that your software is easy to use, than it is. If they think it is fast, than it is fast. This isn’t to say that we should spend more time trying to fool the user… just that it’s easy to forget that the buck ultimately stops with user perception.
This, of course, isn’t to say that I know how Sean is actually going to tackle this talk. But I think it says something that just the title gets my mind churning.
Optimizing Data Intensive Windows Phone 7 Applications
Shawn Wildermuth
It’s like he’s reading my mind. Him and the incredibly creepy moving portrait image on his blog. The thing gives me the willies.
But that aside, a lot of the Windows Phone 7 applications I’m writing are pretty data intensive and I struggle with optimization constantly. I would be delighted to learn even more from Shawn on bringing that extra performance edge to my data-heavy applications.
Fluid Silverlight UIs using Visual State Manager and MVVM
Tim Miller
Visual State Manager is one of those incredibly important things that I only really “get” when I study it closely and do a bunch of tutorials. It seems insanely powerful, but I have yet to really grasp how to harness that power and pull it into my applications. Plus the concept of Fluid UI is something I really like, so I’m curious to see where this goes.
Understanding the Metro design language – from Zune to mobile to Microsoft Surface and beyond
Nathan Moody
Yes, I’m on a Metro kick. But that is largely because I think the Metro design style is a really elegant one and a design style I’d like to emulate. As a result, I’m on a mission to learn as much as I can about it. I’m hoping for more color theory, more font design, more motion design, and more user experience.
So that’s it. Go vote for these guys! I’ll see you at MIX 11!