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PDC: Incoming!

We just put to bed the Nov. 1 issue of Redmond Developer News, and I couldn't help but notice something funny: The news section of that issue is absolutely jammed with Microsoft-specific news.

OK, that's not surprising for a publication that's tasked with covering Microsoft- and .NET-based development technologies and issues. What is surprising, though, is the sheer volume of product news coming out of Microsoft just weeks ahead of its biggest developer event in three years.

The 2008 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles kicks off on Monday and it will highlight strategically vital technologies coming out of Redmond over the next two to three years. Windows 7 and cloud computing figure prominently, but there's a host of other efforts that will get important attention from the developer community next week.

So honestly, I expected Microsoft to go into a mini-quiet period ahead of the PDC. Instead, we were inundated with news over the past three weeks. In the latest issue of RDN, we cover the release of Silverlight 2, next-generation SQL Server offerings, the new MVC beta, Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and the Web App Installer (Web AI) package. More than 80 percent of our news pages in the Nov. 1 issue are dedicated to news coming directly out of Redmond.

What's more, in the issue prior we covered the "Dublin" distributed app server, as well as details on "Oslo," .NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio and Visual Studio Team System 2010.

So much for that quiet period, eh?

Next week, our staff will be at PDC 2008 to cover the conference and provide first-hand accounts of what Microsoft and the Microsoft development community are up to. In addition to online coverage in the form of frequent Web articles and show blogs, we'll also be publishing the RedDevNews newsletter on a daily basis next week. We'll kick off with a pre-show installment on Sunday and conclude with a Friday post-show wrap-up.

There's a lot to cover and a lot to learn. We're also anxious to hear from you. What issues or questions would you like us to pursue during the conference? Send me an e-mail at [email protected] and we'll work to add your thoughts to our agenda.

Posted by Michael Desmond on 10/23/2008


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