Okay that was fun. I was the third one to ask a question and about one minute before my time there were suddenly about 5000 in my head.

Each person asked a question and each question started him off on an interesting road.

There will be a transcript provided so I’m not going to bother trying to share the entire conversation.

When we first sat down, I feared that my pulse was racing, but then it was easy to get absorbed in what he was talking about.

Interesting to me was his discussion of vision – that a lot of the driving force is based on the dream of what computing should be able to achieve someday.

For me, however, the most exciting thing is that with all of the money and power that Bill Gates wields, he continues to change the world through the Gates Foundation.

I managed to suggest that if he ever wanted to open a Gates Foundation office in Vermont, to give me a call…

We had a group photo that we’ll get along with the transcript.

And no, we didn’t get a zune – but I’ve got my Nano.

I asked Scott Guthrie if there will be any new technologies shown at MIX 08 that NOBODY has ever seen before and his answer was “Yes”. Not just announcements of when something will RTM, but actual new capabilities… can’t wait!

I was invited by the DPE team (Developer Platform Evanglism) along with 9 other people to attend the Mix n Mash 08 event where the MIX team is picking our brains while they formulate Mix08. Right now we are talking wiht Scott Guthrie about where Microsoft is headed with development tools.

Here is the list of people who are attending:

Kip Kniskern – www.liveside.net

Molly Holzschlag – www.molly.com

Jesse Warden – www.jessewarden.com

Jonathan Snook – www.snook.ca/jonathan

Keith Peters – www.bit-101.com

Kelly Goto – www.gotomobile.com

Erik Natzke – http://jot.eriknatzke.com

Julie Lerman – www.thedatafarm.com/blog

Rob Howard – http://weblogs.asp.net/rhoward

At the end of the day, we get to spend an hour with Bill Gates. I’m definitely excited about this. My husband has ben making a list of everything worng with his computer and his user experience for the past two months with the hope that I will present it to Bill. But, that’s not going to happen.

Last year, attendees came clean with the admission that they had been given the gift of a Zune for attending. This year, as a joking nod to that, we got cookies that were decorated to look like a Zune. Photo later.

Discussions right now are focused on Microsoft in the mobile space. I also asked about the whole firehose problem – of SOOOO many technologies coming at us. The only way to deal with it of course is to ignore most of it and focus on what you are best at – but man that’s is ONE hard bit of guidance to follow.

With my own focus on data access right now, it means that I’ll be able to get you data but might not be able to help you get it on your form.