Microsoft Corp. has canceled its Professional Developer Conference that was scheduled for this fall.
The PDC 07 event was slated to run Oct. 2-5 in Los Angeles, but Microsoft has decided to scratch the event.
The company cited the fact that so many new technologies are just beginning to get into developers hands as one reason the event is being “re-scheduled,” as the PDC is a future-looking event.
“We are currently in the process of rescheduling this falls Professional Developer Conference,” said a notice on Microsofts MSDN site. “As the PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform, we try to align it to be in front of major platform milestones.”
Further, the notice said: “By this fall, however, upcoming platform technologies including Windows Server 2008, SQL Server codenamed “Katmai,” Visual Studio codenamed “Orcas” and Silverlight will already be in developers hands and approaching launch, which is where well focus our developer engagement in the near term. We will update this site when we have a new date for the PDC that is better timed with the next wave of platform technologies.”
The PDC has typically been held every two years. At the PDC 03, Microsoft introduced key foundational technologies that make up the .Net Framework 3.0, including WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). At the PDC 05, Microsoft expanded on those technologies and announced Windows Workflow Foundation and introduced its Expression family of tools for designers.
Meanwhile, as Microsoft has recently delivered well-received, developer-oriented technologies such as Silverlight and Popfly, one source close to the company said part of the reason for scrapping the PDC has something to do with Microsoft not yet having a coherent Windows Live developer strategy to talk to developers about.
Andrew Brust, chief of new technology at Twenty-six New York, a New York consultancy, said, “between MIX, the BI [business intelligence] conference [at which they announced Katmai] and TechEd Orlando and Barcelona, they have already [or will soon have] presented so much new technology that they dont see a value-add for having a PDC in October.”
