It’s early May and that means it’s time for all the big developer conferences. After Facebook F8 last week, this week, it’s Microsoft’s and Google’s turn, with Microsoft going first. The company is hosting its annual Build developer conference in Seattle this week, with about 6,000 developers in attendance. As far as we can tell, the event didn’t sell out but Microsoft still expects about 6,000 attendees to be in Seattle.
Likely because Google scheduled its I/O keynotes for tomorrow, when Microsoft would traditionally hold its more technical Day 2 keynotes, Microsoft actually went ahead and announced virtually all of its cloud news at the rather odd time of2pm PT last Thursday (including a minor HoloLens update). This means that today’s festivities will likely focus on the company’s other platforms, including Windows, Office 365, Microsoft 365 and others.
The event will kick off at 8:00am PT/17:00 CET with the finals of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup student competition, which are happening at Build for the very first time. Satya Nadell will then take the stage at 8:30am PT/17:30 CET for his ‘vision keynote.’ This part of the event will likely be less technical and focus more on Microsoft’s overall vision for the future of work. This should last for about an hour and a half.
Later in the morning, at 11am/20:00 CET Microsoft is splitting the keynote into two, with simultaneous technical keynotes by Scott Guthrie and Rajesh Jha.
The company also promises a physical setup for the keynote, which could easily turn out to be a weird gimmick that takes away from the content of the event.