Developer Conference Cancelled

A Professional Developer Conference (PDC) scheduled for Oct. 2007 has been postponed to an unspecified date, although the lead time required for an event like this means it is unlikely to occur until mid-2008 at the earliest. According to an announcement on the MSDN Web site, the PDC is being cancelled because the timing of the event didn’t line up well with the schedules for products such as Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio “Orcas.” But the timing of both the event and the announcement suggests that other planned technologies may not be coming together as quickly as Microsoft expected.

PDCs Focus on New Platforms

PDCs are not held on a regular schedule. Instead, they are held when Microsoft has major news about its developer platforms and has made enough technical progress to provide developers with preview releases or an SDK that they can use to begin development. The purpose of a PDC is to provide senior developers and architects with early access to key technologies that aren’t due to ship for 12 to 24 months and to galvanize developer support. Past PDCs have focused on Windows Vista, the .NET Framework, the ill-fated HailStorm or .NET My Services initiative, and Win32, among others.