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Developers Weigh in on PDC Delay
Microsoft PDC is back on the schedule.
When Microsoft postponed the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in June, it knocked some developers for a loop. PDC was initially planned for October 2007, but was recently re-set for Oct. 27-30, 2008.
For some developers, it was an annoyance. Juan Foguen, a developer for a midwestern company, says the change messed up his training schedule.
"If I had known PDC wasn't going to be held in the fall, I would've gone to MEDC [Mobile and Embedded Development Conference] in May. Now I might not go to MEDC again because of PDC," Foguen says.
Others find that PDC has lost much of its luster.
"If you're a developer and already involved with MSDN, etc., those shows are now just bling. It's not like it was 10 years ago when they popped out a beta that only a few people had heard of. PDC's becoming much more like TecháEd, you go to learn stuff. I don't know of anyone in the development community who looks forward to PDC anymore," says Michael Drips, a Folsom, Calif., independent developer.
Andrew Brust, chief of new technologies at twentysix New York, says the PDC postponement made sense. "Microsoft was busy shipping [products at the time], and PDC is about emerging technologies, not ones that are near release."
PDC wasn't the only re-do. WinHEC, the hardware engineering conference, was pushed back from the spring of 2008 to October and will be held at a yet-to-be-determined location on the West Coast.
About the Author
Barbara Darrow is Industry Editor for Redmond Developer News, Redmond magazine and Redmond Channel Partner. She has covered technology and business issues for 20 years.