1. The Cirque du Soleil keynote demo, the most engaging articulation of WPF’s “richer, smarter, more productive line-of-business app” message since Avalon Healthcare.

2. More Microsoft Research innovation sees the light of day in the product groups and for developers at large. Deep Zoom becomes available to developers through Silverlight and demoed by the Hard Rock Cafe, and Surface makes an eye-catching if early-days appearance in the Mix Sandbox.

3. The designer message gets taken seriously by attendees, perhaps motivated by the increasing maturity of nascent designer tools like Expression Blend. Although this year’s keynote term “dev-igner” chafes me, unlike in previous years, the MIX08 crowd spoke with their feet, packing dev-design crossover talks like The Human Brain Relationship and Nerd + Art.