eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
With the Windows 8 release date set as Oct. 26, Microsoft has just announced that the next Windows developer conference, BUILD 2012, will be held Oct. 30 through Nov. 2 on the companys Redmond, Wash., campus.
In a July 25 blog post, Tim OBrien, general manager of platform strategy in the Developer and Platform Evangelism group at Microsoft said the next BUILD will be held the week after Windows 8 becomes generally available and will focus primarily on Windows 8. However, Windows 8 will not be the only topic of conversation at BUILD 2012.
Our next developer conference will be this fall, and it’s (again) called BUILD, OBrien said. And in addition to Windows 8, we will have lots of other stuff to talk about, too: Windows Azure, Windows Phone 8, Windows Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012 and much more.
Back in January, in a post entitled Thinking About Developer Events, OBrien announced that Microsoft would not be holding a MIX developer event in 2012. The MIX events focused primarily on Web development, to which OBrien explained: Firstly, the notion that the ‘Web community’ is somehow separate and distinct from the community of developers we care about no longer makes any sense. Some had even called out the existence of a separate Web event as proof that we dont ‘get’ the Web ¦ its a fair point ¦ when we get developers together to talk about what were doing in the platform, the Web discussion should be part and parcel to everything we talk about.
And, at the time, asking what happens going forward, OBrien countered: As we look ahead to 2012 and beyond, the goal is to ensure that global Microsoft developer events are of the caliber that many of you experienced at BUILD last September, in addition to the thousands of online and local developer events we host around the world to support communities and connect directly with developers. We will share more details of our next developer event later this year. In the meantime, know that we are we are hard at work and will look forward to seeing many of you there.
So Microsoft will be hosting BUILD 2012, or as some are already calling it, BUILD 2.0, on its campus. But dont expect BUILD 2012 to be any less of an event than last years BUILDwhere Microsoft initially trotted out Windows 8 in Anaheim, Calif.
BUILD 2012 will be on the Microsoft campus, and I know what you’re thinking … if it’s not in some cavernous convention hall, then it must be a dialed-down version of last year’s event, etc. … but don’t be confused: this will be unlike anything we’ve held on our corporate campus in a long time, OBrien said. More details to come. And as we talked about in the January post, if you’ve gone to a Microsoft developer event, you know that most of the speakers and participants are from our engineering teams, so a campus event puts you in the thick of things along with the engineers directly responsible for our products and the platform opportunities they represent. This one’s not to be missed.
To make Windows 8 the success it hopes it will be, Microsoft knows it needs developers in line with all the benefits the product can offer. The next BUILD event will attempt to arm developers will everything they need to build apps that run on Windows 8 and take full advantage of all the new aspects of the platform.
Registration for BUILD will open Aug. 8. At 8 a.m. Pacific time on 8.8 (see what we just did there?), we will open registration for BUILD 2012 at www.buildwindows.com, OBrien said. At that point, we’ll start sharing details over time about keynoters, sessions, content and more, but for the time being, set a reminder for Aug. 8.