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After a few years in San Francisco, Microsoft’s annual Build developers conference is moving closer to its Redmond, Wash. headquarters.
Chris Capossela, executive vice president and Microsoft’s chief marketing officer, announced this week that Build 2017 will take place in Seattle, Wash. next spring. “Once again, developers can hear from Microsoft engineering leaders and learn about the latest tools and technologies to boost creativity and productivity,” Capossela stated in a Dec. 7 blog post.
The conference is scheduled to take place over three days (May 10–12, 2017) in a downtown Seattle venue.
In recent years, Microsoft has used the event to make major announcements affecting its software and cloud services ecosystem. During this year’s conference, the company officially announced that it was adding the Bash Unix shell to the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, enabling developers and power users to work with popular open-source command-line tools to manage their projects. True to its word, Bash support was included in the Aug. 2 release of the update.
Microsoft also made a splash this year by making Xamarin, a cross-platform software development platform, a free part of Visual Studio and open-sourcing its software development kit (SDK). Microsoft acquired Xamarin earlier in 2016 for an undisclosed amount. Last year, the company used Build to deliver Visual Studio Code, which runs on Mac OS, Linux and Windows. It also unveiled a suite of Azure SQL-backed big data services.
Build isn’t the only Microsoft conference undergoing changes in 2017.
Capossela also announced that the Worldwide Partner Conference (WWPC) is being renamed Microsoft Inspire. “This new name reflects how Microsoft and our partner community inspire each other to innovate and deliver powerful new solutions to customers.” Inspire will take place in Washington, D.C., July 9–13, 2017.
Finally, Microsoft’s CxO-focused Envision conference is being folded into next fall’s Ignite event. The move reflects the importance of “the partnership between business and IT leaders,” said Capossela. This year, the software giant launched Windows Server 2016 during the conference and announced that Adobe had chosen Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platform. Ignite 2017 is being held Sept. 25-29 in Orlando, Fla.
It’s not the first time Microsoft has trimmed its event calendar. Two years ago, the company gathered its Microsoft Management Summit, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project and TechEd conferences into what it now known as Ignite.
Meanwhile, the tech industry is gearing up for the CES 2017 in Las Vegas, Jan. 5-8, 2017.
In its 50th year, the tradeshow is expected to stretch well beyond its consumer electronics roots and make more room for automotive tech on the show floor. This year, Nissan chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn is scheduled to deliver an opening-day keynote where he will discuss an innovation that may one day lead to zero-emissions and perhaps zero-fatality motoring.
Mark Fields, Ford Motor Co. president and CEO, will speak during the event’s annual Leaders in Technology dinner and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is reportedly bucking tradition by unveiling a new car model at CES instead of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.