Design is Back!! Are you there!

Design is Back was the punch line of the Microsoft Expression around the Clock, Global Designer Conference at Bangalore. For a detailed account of what happened check out techbangalore (aka. Prashant). In this post I will talk about Expression, and some of the people I met at this conference.

The number of people who attended the event were far more than the place could accommodate. Not surprisingly it was cramped to the hilt.
The logistics guys have done a very bad job.After a wait which seemed like an eternity, we were introduced to Shelly Armstrong, a vivacious lady, she presented on how Microsoft cares for design and what designers should do to have more impact in their organization. I would have loved to put the presentation here for all of you (will do it, if I can get it).

Next it was the turn of Supreet Singh and Pandurang Nayak, most of the presentation was similar to the stuff I saw at dCamp. The different part was a typical designer- developer tuff on stage. What came out of it was a showcase of Expression's ability to integrate with VS. I was impressed with the way the design and development could be done so independently. The live application that they made in less than ten minutes was really impressive.If you or your company has something to with developing applications for the end user, you cannot ignore this new way of doing things.

I met some familiar faces Hrish, Harish, Param. There was a lot to learn from the interaction between Param and Harish. Finally, my wish to meet Umesh Gopinath came true. There were Vinod and Upma from Aditi, these folks are interested in UX and have a blog uxunleashed (I have some company!!). I gave Harish and Upma earful of the story behind why my blog is named sodidi ;). Will share with you in the next post. There was a lot of interesting gyan from Umesh on how one should blog about usability.

Coming back to Microsoft and Expression, in my latest project, I use Expression Blend and am impressed with how we can do things much better and faster. I always wanted to nominated an MVP but never was impressed enough to develop my expertise in any of the MS technologies, Now I see an option, let me and the one above (god) decide on Expression's fate in my hands!

About the Event:
Umesh
Vinod

Links:
Expression Blog
Expression Web Team Blog

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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ram... nice round of the event...

Unknown said...

hey man you are making me feel like a celebrity or something. anyway its a feel good factor, loved it. I'm so wicked coz i left out ur name on my post, dont know how. but better late than never, i have updated my post. sorry.

Unknown said...

@Vinod,
Thanks, look fwd. to reading more posts on uxunleashed.com

@Umesh,
When I started reading about Usability and was looking out for people in this area, your name/blog stood out. For me you are a celebrity!!

Anonymous said...

Hi Ram, it was nice meeting up with you. Nice coverage of the event btw

Anonymous said...

Hey!
Nice coverage man...
I thought u was just eating out & having drinks ;)

Unknown said...

@sangfroid
good meeting you. Hope to run into again in the future...

@techbangalore (i like to address you like this.. hope u don't mind ;).
i was eating and having drinks.. and in between managed to hang on to some words ;)!

Unknown said...

Hmm Regarding Design / Usablity... I got a new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet some time back... check out how the menus were designed or how easy stuff can be done on it... at the same time i compared the same with apple ipod touch... even though it has less features and more expensive... the menus / design / simplicity simply blows a user off...!