ReMIX: what it was, with pictures
On Friday, May 23, the Moscow House of Unions opened its doors to several hundred web designers and developers gathered at the ReMIX conference held by the Russian office of Microsoft. The event was the equivalent of a large conference MIX , which has been held in Las Vegas for 3 years in a row. The purpose of the event: to tell the professionals of the Internet industry about the company's news and its vision of its place on the Web, receiving feedback from them. In addition, Microsoft Executive Director Steve Ballmer, who drove to Moscow after a week-long tour of Eastern Europe, became the highlight of the event. About what was the background of ReMIX'a, about its essence, content and response of the public, and of course, Microsoft kip web expert Peter Didenko told us about Steve Balmer.
But first, a little general impressions. The House of Unions is a masterpiece of architecture, in which for more than 200 years life has been in full swing in all its diversity: from invited balls to fiery political speeches, from the famous nomenclature “Christmas Tree” to the fire of 1812. The mixen proposal by Mikhail Chernomordikov’s “to remove American cities ... and insert Russians in their place” sounded more interesting. True, it concerned only the editing of the travel route calculation program code during the presentation of Silverlight platform features.
Dmitry Sotnikov made a loud statement in the spirit of the modern political era. He urged the audience "do not click." The truth again was meant only to seriously expanded the functionality of the PowerShell administration tool, which has become so good that you no longer want to manage the server on the Win-platform using the graphical interface. By the way, PS is now able to mimic Unix console.
Just beautiful (provocative, but beautiful) said Alexei Mogilevsky, who for a long time speaks at various conferences in Russia with announcements of Internet Explorer 8 presentations. When he asked if the IE code would ever be open, Alex said, “No, because will it continue to work on Firefox? ” And Microsoft likes competitors (“and knows how to cook them,” flashed through the hall).
We did not speak with Peter for long, but he managed to tell something.
Peter, do you think Microsoft needs a leader like Steve Ballmer? Expressive personality, even eccentric, what role does he play in the life of the company?
After Steve's speech in Kiev, a blogger wrote that, they say, “Ballmer chatted, incendiary, interesting, but so what - he doesn’t solve anything.” So I want to say that it is not. Two months later, Bill Gates will leave the Microsoft leadership (as far as I know, he now barely participates in management), and then Ballmer will become the head of the company.
')
He, for example, not so long ago called Windows Vista "unfinished work." Has this changed something in the company? Is it even possible to say that the word Balmer is the law?
Opinions and comments about this his statements have been published many times already. Actually, absolutely anyone could say that. But I've been a Vista user for a long time. And I'm fine, ready to swear on anything. The point is simply that I have a standard laptop - Lenovo. The only thing is that he has 4 GB of memory, this is true ( smiles ).
Well, the word Ballmer is certainly not the law. He, I think, will not interfere in the decisions of professionals who know what they are doing.
Who came up with the idea to organize MIX in Russia?
When we were in Las Vegas with Anton Nosik, and watched the interview that Steve Ballmer gave on the stage of MIX'a Guy Kawasaki, I had a desire to do something similar in Russia. At this time, and here came the idea to make a Russian MIX. As a result, we had the opportunity, organizational and financial, to do something similar at this time in Moscow.
We had a WebDevCon conference. But in recent years we have not carried it out, but here everything coincided - an opportunity, a desire to make a conference, and Ballmer arrived.
And where does this name come from? Why not RuMIX, for example?
In general, we even have an internal distribution group called RuMIX. But we decided to use the brand ReMIX, under which such conferences are held in many countries around the world.
And there were no difficulties with the acquisition of such a "delicious" domain - remix.ru?
We were able to negotiate ( laughs ).
Interest in the conference turned out the way you expected?
Yes. It was several hundred more people than we had planned at first (a little more than 1 thousand people visited ReMIX - Tigger note ). We still do not know the figures for the number of people who watched our broadcast online, but when I last found out, it was about 10 thousand people. I was still looking for partners, asked around - they are very satisfied. A huge number of people came to them who they would like to see on their stands.
Do you plan to hold such events regularly in the future?
Yes, we like to hold big conferences. ( Later, at the Round Table, Peter asked to raise the hands of those participants in the hall who attended at least one major specialized event, where Microsoft speakers would not speak. Of course, there were none ) And as for ReMIX, then same time in a year we will repeat it. The idea here is that on MIX all the product divisions show their new products. Accordingly, you can already take ready and show - it will be relevant. Well, there are ready-made reports!
The idea of ​​inviting celebrities will live on?
Yes. We wanted to invite Redmond speakers to this ReMIX, but they are now in great demand. And Ballmer: I will be glad if he comes back. I really liked him. On the stage, he is certainly very incendiary, but I now saw him behind the scenes - and he ... cannot be said to be modest, because he has been traveling around Eastern Europe for five days, where eggs are thrown at him ( several eggs flew to the head of MS during his speech in front of students in Hungary ). I think he was just tired.
What program does he have in Russia?
He speaks at two large conferences - ReMIX and “The State in the 21st Century” ( which was held on the same day at the Ritz Carlton Hotel ). In the evening, he meets with members of the Government and businessmen.
Has cooperation with Zend started with such a delay for some technical reasons or is there really a lot of politics in this issue?
Well, of course, a lot has changed in our worldview, which is why we started cooperation with Zend. It began a year and a half ago. Then they had a module for IIS, which they almost sold for money. Well, and then we did together what really works now. And then we will continue to work with Apache.
Now people have the impression that Silverlight is “such a flash from Microsoft”. What do you think of it?
I do not think about it - it will be the answer to your question. What is Silverlight - we took such a serious thing as the .Net Framework, made it a microversion (in which, however, you can fully write in several languages), and stuffed it all into a tiny plugin. Thanks to it, you can write programs that work in the client browser. And to write not in some scripting language that can do little. And the programs at the same time work with a performance that is hundreds of times more than that of the same JavaScript.
And there is another very interesting community project called the Phalanger Project . This is essentially "PHP.NET". And, perhaps, someday right in Silverlight you can write in PHP.
And about the comparison with Flash - you can compare. Something will not be in our favor, something is not in them. But we only released the plugin in September, we have already released a beta of the second version, let's see what happens. But we are very glad that there is Adobe and there is competition, we stimulate each other.
But there is no open competition between Silverlight and Flash yet. And we know how Microsoft is able to conduct open competition, to take at least the “Get the Facts” campaign. Why are things so far?
We have no official position on this issue, but my personal opinion is that you first need to accumulate muscles, implementation experience, some kind of community. We have several hundreds of beautiful Silverlight applications on the site. We are preparing: create development tools, get our army of developers.
Does the community warmly accept Silverlight?
I can not say the numbers, but in general people are very interested. In general, fanatics are much less than pragmatists. But pragmatists are interested to see everything, especially if it is easy to see. And Silverlight is a simple technology. They watch, they ask questions, they enjoy watching webcasts on the same Habré. Well, from time to time we distribute development tools free of charge in order to be even more interested ( smiles ).
In conclusion, I would like to recall a couple of moments from the speech of Ballmer. First, what many have already mentioned, this person believes that the level of piracy at 25% for our country will be acceptable (by the way, by excluding business and government structures in which piracy, according to Balmer, is not the place, private users can sins and release ). Steve thinks that the most promising niches for start-ups are services for small businesses and healthcare (which, unfortunately, is not so relevant for Russia so far). And they are competing with Flash, and so far there is no discussion about interoperability with Adobe (apparently, the moment when Steve will paint his face with martial colors and lead his people to attack is not so far away).
In general - long live, ReMIX!
But first, a little general impressions. The House of Unions is a masterpiece of architecture, in which for more than 200 years life has been in full swing in all its diversity: from invited balls to fiery political speeches, from the famous nomenclature “Christmas Tree” to the fire of 1812. The mixen proposal by Mikhail Chernomordikov’s “to remove American cities ... and insert Russians in their place” sounded more interesting. True, it concerned only the editing of the travel route calculation program code during the presentation of Silverlight platform features.
Dmitry Sotnikov made a loud statement in the spirit of the modern political era. He urged the audience "do not click." The truth again was meant only to seriously expanded the functionality of the PowerShell administration tool, which has become so good that you no longer want to manage the server on the Win-platform using the graphical interface. By the way, PS is now able to mimic Unix console.
Just beautiful (provocative, but beautiful) said Alexei Mogilevsky, who for a long time speaks at various conferences in Russia with announcements of Internet Explorer 8 presentations. When he asked if the IE code would ever be open, Alex said, “No, because will it continue to work on Firefox? ” And Microsoft likes competitors (“and knows how to cook them,” flashed through the hall).
We did not speak with Peter for long, but he managed to tell something.
Peter, do you think Microsoft needs a leader like Steve Ballmer? Expressive personality, even eccentric, what role does he play in the life of the company?
After Steve's speech in Kiev, a blogger wrote that, they say, “Ballmer chatted, incendiary, interesting, but so what - he doesn’t solve anything.” So I want to say that it is not. Two months later, Bill Gates will leave the Microsoft leadership (as far as I know, he now barely participates in management), and then Ballmer will become the head of the company.
')
He, for example, not so long ago called Windows Vista "unfinished work." Has this changed something in the company? Is it even possible to say that the word Balmer is the law?Opinions and comments about this his statements have been published many times already. Actually, absolutely anyone could say that. But I've been a Vista user for a long time. And I'm fine, ready to swear on anything. The point is simply that I have a standard laptop - Lenovo. The only thing is that he has 4 GB of memory, this is true ( smiles ).
Well, the word Ballmer is certainly not the law. He, I think, will not interfere in the decisions of professionals who know what they are doing.
Who came up with the idea to organize MIX in Russia?
When we were in Las Vegas with Anton Nosik, and watched the interview that Steve Ballmer gave on the stage of MIX'a Guy Kawasaki, I had a desire to do something similar in Russia. At this time, and here came the idea to make a Russian MIX. As a result, we had the opportunity, organizational and financial, to do something similar at this time in Moscow.
We had a WebDevCon conference. But in recent years we have not carried it out, but here everything coincided - an opportunity, a desire to make a conference, and Ballmer arrived.
And where does this name come from? Why not RuMIX, for example?
In general, we even have an internal distribution group called RuMIX. But we decided to use the brand ReMIX, under which such conferences are held in many countries around the world.
And there were no difficulties with the acquisition of such a "delicious" domain - remix.ru?
We were able to negotiate ( laughs ).
Interest in the conference turned out the way you expected?
Yes. It was several hundred more people than we had planned at first (a little more than 1 thousand people visited ReMIX - Tigger note ). We still do not know the figures for the number of people who watched our broadcast online, but when I last found out, it was about 10 thousand people. I was still looking for partners, asked around - they are very satisfied. A huge number of people came to them who they would like to see on their stands.
Do you plan to hold such events regularly in the future?
Yes, we like to hold big conferences. ( Later, at the Round Table, Peter asked to raise the hands of those participants in the hall who attended at least one major specialized event, where Microsoft speakers would not speak. Of course, there were none ) And as for ReMIX, then same time in a year we will repeat it. The idea here is that on MIX all the product divisions show their new products. Accordingly, you can already take ready and show - it will be relevant. Well, there are ready-made reports!
The idea of ​​inviting celebrities will live on?
Yes. We wanted to invite Redmond speakers to this ReMIX, but they are now in great demand. And Ballmer: I will be glad if he comes back. I really liked him. On the stage, he is certainly very incendiary, but I now saw him behind the scenes - and he ... cannot be said to be modest, because he has been traveling around Eastern Europe for five days, where eggs are thrown at him ( several eggs flew to the head of MS during his speech in front of students in Hungary ). I think he was just tired.
What program does he have in Russia?
He speaks at two large conferences - ReMIX and “The State in the 21st Century” ( which was held on the same day at the Ritz Carlton Hotel ). In the evening, he meets with members of the Government and businessmen.
Has cooperation with Zend started with such a delay for some technical reasons or is there really a lot of politics in this issue?
Well, of course, a lot has changed in our worldview, which is why we started cooperation with Zend. It began a year and a half ago. Then they had a module for IIS, which they almost sold for money. Well, and then we did together what really works now. And then we will continue to work with Apache.
Now people have the impression that Silverlight is “such a flash from Microsoft”. What do you think of it?
I do not think about it - it will be the answer to your question. What is Silverlight - we took such a serious thing as the .Net Framework, made it a microversion (in which, however, you can fully write in several languages), and stuffed it all into a tiny plugin. Thanks to it, you can write programs that work in the client browser. And to write not in some scripting language that can do little. And the programs at the same time work with a performance that is hundreds of times more than that of the same JavaScript.
And there is another very interesting community project called the Phalanger Project . This is essentially "PHP.NET". And, perhaps, someday right in Silverlight you can write in PHP.
And about the comparison with Flash - you can compare. Something will not be in our favor, something is not in them. But we only released the plugin in September, we have already released a beta of the second version, let's see what happens. But we are very glad that there is Adobe and there is competition, we stimulate each other.
But there is no open competition between Silverlight and Flash yet. And we know how Microsoft is able to conduct open competition, to take at least the “Get the Facts” campaign. Why are things so far?
We have no official position on this issue, but my personal opinion is that you first need to accumulate muscles, implementation experience, some kind of community. We have several hundreds of beautiful Silverlight applications on the site. We are preparing: create development tools, get our army of developers.
Does the community warmly accept Silverlight?
I can not say the numbers, but in general people are very interested. In general, fanatics are much less than pragmatists. But pragmatists are interested to see everything, especially if it is easy to see. And Silverlight is a simple technology. They watch, they ask questions, they enjoy watching webcasts on the same Habré. Well, from time to time we distribute development tools free of charge in order to be even more interested ( smiles ).
In conclusion, I would like to recall a couple of moments from the speech of Ballmer. First, what many have already mentioned, this person believes that the level of piracy at 25% for our country will be acceptable (by the way, by excluding business and government structures in which piracy, according to Balmer, is not the place, private users can sins and release ). Steve thinks that the most promising niches for start-ups are services for small businesses and healthcare (which, unfortunately, is not so relevant for Russia so far). And they are competing with Flash, and so far there is no discussion about interoperability with Adobe (apparently, the moment when Steve will paint his face with martial colors and lead his people to attack is not so far away).
In general - long live, ReMIX!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/26276/
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