Are you going to PhizzPop? 

In a nutshell: five interactive teams compete in each of the six cities where the PhizzPop Tour stops and the winning team goes onto the national competition that will take place in Austin at a SXSW event.  Interested team register online, five are chosen, trained in the latest Microsoft technologies and then are given a creative brief.The teams pitch their work at an event where the winner is chosen by a mix of professional judges and audience members who are invited to text in their choices.

The next event is in Chicago on November 20^th at the Chicago Cultural Center from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. PhizzPop is coming to Chicago after its round in New York back on Tuesday, November 4^th.

PhizzPop is an event created by Microsoft to engage designers and promote their interactive design software. I first heard about it last year at the Future of Web Design conference  in NYC when Sean Seibel, a User Experience Evangelist (yes that is his title, listen to the video, he explains) spoke. The crowd of interactive design professionals where less then warm when he started and coolly polite as he explained that Microsoft is working hard to reach out to creatives and to make Microsoft Expression Studio, Silverlight, and other products the best design tools around. It is not the easiest sell. Sean also announced the first PhizzPop challenge in which teams would be given the opportunity to use those technologies in a design competition setting.

Last year was their first year and the hosts were adamant that they wanted honest feedback and encouraged criticism on the products. It was impressive to see that the sort of dialog Microsoft said they wanted with creatives was actually encouraged. The comments made it clear that designers where not going to be seduced away from their Adobe products just yet (especially not by Microsoft) but programmers generally had very positive thing to say.

This event promises to be very exciting!