No Mr. Ballmer, You Cannot Have the Web
For the past couple of months, I have been heads-down organizing content for MIX06, a new conference to be held approximately 8 weeks from now.
People might have rightly seen some indicators of a larger trend in deals with content owners like MTV, and carriers like Verizon. People might have seen the numbers showing how installed base of Media Centers connected to Cable/Sattelite compares to TiVo. People might have started to realize that there is a vast fabric that can be used to extend web services out to people who might not be sitting at a PC. And people may have begun to grasp the way that gadgets platforms create opportunity and level the playing field.
But I don’t think many people realize all the ways that they can participate in these things. Just like RSS made it possible for everyone to participate in publishing on equal technological footing with NYT, the new networks are creating new opportunities that level the playing field for smaller content and service providers, and create new opportunities for the bigcos.
One thing that will come across loud and clear is that Microsoft isn’t about to 0wn the web. We’re featuring sessions owned by some of the biggest web companies on the planet, many of whom compete with us and use competitor platforms. We’ll be showing lots of Microsoft technologies, but we won’t be shy about showing scenarios where Firefox, Linux, PHP, or similar play a part. We’ll be focusing largely on user experience (which is technology agnostic), and specifically on what attendees can do today to get business value from the new models and technologies on the web.
Is this the kind of competition that Microsoft can win? As I opined before, this isn’t a “winner takes all” situation. We believe that we have a lot of strengths compared to companies where we directly compete, and are positioned well within the overall ecosystem. But Yahoo and Google have strengths too. If you want to understand the true lay of this exciting part of the industry — and better how we compare and complement the rest of this industry, MIX06 is the conference for you.