MIX 11 and NAB–It’s a Wrap!

Last week a group of Southies converged in Las Vegas to support several deliverables for both MIX 11 and NAB. Held at the Las Vegas Convention Center, NAB draws more than 90,000+ media and entertainment professionals from over 150 countries.

The Microsoft NAB booth was impressive as always, and as an IIS  Media Services Partner, our logo was listed on their partner wall. We’ve been fortunate to contribute software to support live and on-demand streaming of events such as the Vancouver Winter Olympics, Sunday Night Football, and last Fall’s PDC, with more to come.

Over at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Microsoft introduced the umbrella brand Microsoft Media Platform. This umbrella encompasses many of the technologies Microsoft offers to support the encoding, editing, delivering and watching of media. In his session, Jason Suess gave a brief overview of the Microsoft Media Platform Video Editor (formerly known as the Rough Cut Editor or RCE), and mentioned that we are now working together on the next version, with updates that will support the London Summer Olympics.

We frequently deliver software for large, public events, where our clients’ put their reputations on the line and in plain sight. But we are there to support them in their efforts, as you can see Johnny and Diego looking after things at a customer booth. Together with Dario, they helped create an amazing Silverlight dashboard app that hosts graphical widgets that consume OData services for business intelligence.

At MIX Steven Woodward demoed the Microsoft Media Platform Content Manager, a SharePoint-based application we helped create that supports live and on-demand scheduling, control of encoders, transcoding for VOD, management of metadata, video editing and ad insertion. The source code will be available soon on CodePlex, and will make it much easier for small enterprises to manage live events and video content.

At conferences things are pretty dynamic, with each day bringing something new, and schedules frequently adjusted. But it’s great to be able to connect with people and spend time together, even in unexpected places. Here we see EZ brainstorming with Owen Allen about the next phase of development for an Online Video Platform customer. The view from the 58th floor of the Wynn is, well, spectacular.

It’s common for presenters to be nervous during demos, and many of us have experienced the wrath of technology gremlins getting in the way of our plans. Imagine the increased pressure when presenting during a keynote speech, showing off just-released bits.

Phil Haack’s recent post describes some of the measures that Microsoft takes to mock dependencies for big events, but who can be really sure that nothing unexpected will happen? Our friend Drew Robbins had nothing to worry about during the MIX keynote, as he did a great job presenting work we did with him for the creation of the Amazon WebMatrix Helpers.

In parallel with the event, we had many people working to help deliver great samples and guidance materials to be released with the announcement of ACS 2, many of them inspired, lead, driven and summarized by Vittorio.

Long days, intense moments, adrenaline-filled customers, and an ever increasing email backlog piling up. But it’s all worth when we hear, as one customer shared with me, "Thank you for making my job so easy."

And it never hurts to take the team out for some fine Vegas food, either. With that, roll the credits. We’ll see you next year!