I replied to a Customer today who asked about the major Microsoft technical events (TechEd, specifically) in 2007, and thought the information may be useful for others as well.
Microsoft Mix07 event
April 30 – May 2, The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas
Brief: MIX is Microsoft’s conference for Web designers, developers and decision makers who make their living at the forefront of the consumer web. Join the conversation with Microsoft and others on how to harness the latest technologies, unlock new revenue opportunities, reduce development costs and improve customer experience. MIX is for cutting-edge Web professionals designing and building next-generation experiences.
Speakers this time round include Ray Ozzie (Chief Software Architect) and Scott Guthrie (General Manager in Developer's Division for user-experience technologies / products team such as ASP.NET, Atlas, WPF, etc.)
More info (including online registration) available at VistMIX site.
Pricing: USD $1195 (15% off if you register before March 15)
To have an idea of what event may cover, look at the MIX06 content now available online here. (I recommend looking at Bill Gate’s keynote presentation and the overview videos)
Microsoft Tech-Ed 2007
June 4 – June 8, Orange County Convention Center (OCCC) at Orlando
Brief: Tech-Ed is Microsoft’s deep technical sharing / training sessions with our customers, with technical sessions and hands-on labs presented by Microsoft product teams, partners and leading industry experts. There are also vertical industry solutions virtual track, and Microsoft IT Virtual Track. A wide range of topics is usually covered – from Smart Client to security to high-performance computing. So this should be useful for the Board’s IT teams as well.
More info at Microsoft Tech-Ed site (registration opens on week of January 15);
Content from previous Tech-Ed sessions can be found here.
Microsoft PDC 2007
October 2 – October 5 (Pre-conference September 30 – October 1), Los Angeles, California
Brief: PDC is yet another exciting annual event where Microsoft typically announces upcoming technologies & products. From Somasegar's blog entry -- "PDC focuses on the strategic vision for the Microsoft platform over the course of the next couple of years or so, and we emphasize technology capabilities and architecture more than training at this premier conference." You can read the rest of the entry here.
In the past, cool stuffs such as Windows Communications Foundation (WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Office 2007 were first unveiled in the PDC. Will be exciting to see what'll happen this year.
The current placeholder site is at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc.
Start marking the calendars!
