Today I find myself at the Expression launch event in Chicago. It’s being held in the “trendy” Warehouse districton the west side. The venue is actually pretty cool.Exposed brick walls, concrete floors, wood plank ceilings, etc. I’m not quite sure what this particular warehouse used to house but it is now one of the venues of the Museum of Contempory Art and today the Expression launch.

It’s amazing to see the applications that companies such as Electric Rain, Metaliq and Identity Mine have created utilizing the Expression tool suite and technologies like WPF. Applications are finally catching up to the 21st century and it’s going to be a fun ride to see what type of creativity fosters itself now that the technology is available.

There seems to be a pretty positive vibe among the attendees on Microsoft’s first foray into first class tools for designers and interactive designers. Caleb Jenkins is running around here with his video cameratrying to capture that vibe for his upcoming vidcast, communitycast.tv.

One of my fellow evangelism cohorts, Chris Benard, is leading up a few of the sessions today and is one the planners for these series of events (San Francisco and New York, being the other events). I know Chris has been working his butt off putting these together and all I can say is “Great Job”!

I’m really digging the event. It’s not too big and over bearing, but simple and clean (if that makes sense).They have somenice, comfy couches and ottoman’s to chill out on, there’s a DJ on hand (for tonight’s cocktail party),awesome demo stations, and it’s by far the best “event” food I’ve had in a long time. The beef tenderloin sandwich was scrumptous! Not to mention Coca Cola - in a bottle! As one of the attendees said, “Now that’s User Expereience!” Most important of all for this event, the Wireless access is rock solid!