Professional Developers Conference
Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) is a conference for software developers, normally Windows developers.
It covers new and upcoming technology from Microsoft, and so only occurs in the years when there is something new to talk about. The conference is typically hosted by the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. In 2011 it was named BUILD.
Events
1992-1999
- July 1992 - Moscone Center in San Francisco, California
- Known as Win32 Professional Developers Conference
- First demonstration of the Win32 API and first mention of "Chicago", which would eventually become Windows 95
- Estimated attendance of over 5,000 developers[1]
- Windows NT 3.1 Preliminary Release for Developers (build 297) was sent to all conference attendees
- December 1993 - Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California[2]
- Windows "Chicago"
- Win32 and Object Linking and Embedding version 2
- Estimated attendance of over 8,000
- Cairo public demonstration, including the Object File System
- March 1996 - Moscone Center in San Francisco, California[3]
- Microsoft demonstrated the power of new tools, renamed ActiveX
- The ActiveX demos were impressive despite occasional technical difficulties. Microsoft and other industry leaders presented VBScript, an implementation of OLE Scripting; ActiveX Controls, for embedding OLE Controls into HTML documents; ActiveX Conferencing, which enables sharing data as well as applications over TCP/IP; the Internet Control Pack, allowing developers to make their applications Internet aware; and numerous other ActiveX technologies.
- September 1997 - San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California[1]
- First demonstrations of Windows NT 5.0, release of Beta 1 to developers
- Estimated attendance of 6,200
- October 11–15, 1998 - Colorado Convention Center, Denver, Colorado[4]
- Windows NT 5.0, the release of Beta 2 to developers.
- Windows DNA technology announced, including COM+
2000-2009
- July 11–14, 2000 - Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida[5]
- .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET announced, initial beta release given to attendees
- C# programming language announced and demonstrated
- ASP+, the successor to Active Server Pages was announced; this was renamed ASP.NET later in the year
- Announcement of the end of the Windows 9x line, culminating with a planned 2002 release of a new operating system, "Whistler"
- Internet Explorer 5.5 was released
- Estimated attendance of 6,000 developers
- October 22–26, 2001 - Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California[6]
- Release candidates of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET were announced during Bill Gates' keynote.
- Windows XP was officially released.
- Introduction of Tablet PCs, including a software development kit.
- .NET My Services (codenamed HailStorm) announced.
- .NET Compact Framework introduced.
- First discussions of Internet Information Services version 6.
- The Counting Crows performed at the PDC party at the Staples Center.
- October 27–30, 2003 - Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California
- Windows Longhorn revealed - Avalon, Aero, Indigo, WinFS
- September 13–16, 2005 - Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California
- Windows Vista build 5219 handed out to attendees
- Internet Explorer 7 demoed
- Office 12 demoed with ribbon bar
- .NET 2.0
- October 27–30, 2008 - Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California[7]..
- First demonstration of Windows 7 as well as Office 14 for the Web .
- Introduction of Windows Azure, Microsoft's data center hosting platform.
- Outlook to .NET 4.0, Visual Studio 2010 and a new .NET Application Server (codenamed "Dublin").
- Release of Microsoft Surface SDK and first demonstration of SecondLight, a next generation Surface prototype.
- November 17–20, 2009 - Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California[8]
- Vision of Three Screens and a Cloud
- Emergence of Windows Azure with billed, commercial service to begin in February 2010.
- Many back-end announcements:
- Microsoft AppFabric, based on the earlier .NET Application Server and the caching technology (formerly codenamed "Velocity").
- Microsoft SQL Server Modeling Services (SSModS) released (formerly codenamed "Oslo")
- BizTalk Server 2009 R2 announced with new features like an improved mapper for early 2010 release
- Many front-end announcements:
- Release of first public betas for Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Silverlight 4
- Early revelations about Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 and its objective of better Acid3 performance and HTML5/CSS3 compliance.
- A special "PDC 2009" Acer 1420p Multi-touch Tablet PC was given out to all attendees (the BIOS referencing MSFT in the 'about' information.)
2010-Current
- October 28–29, 2010 - Microsoft Campus in Redmond, Washington[9]
- Announced new Platform Features for Cloud Computing
- VmRoles announced to port existing on-premise Applications to the Cloud
- Microsoft "Dallas" renamed to Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket
- Windows Azure Marketplace Applications announced
- An unlocked Windows Phone 7 smartphone was given out to all attendees
- Microsoft limited the number of attendees to 1,000
- Many public viewing events all over the globe (e.g. Tokyo, London, Cologne, Vienna)
- September 13-16, 2011 - Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, California[10]
- Windows 8 preview
- Visual Studio 2012 preview
- Attendees received a Samsung tablet with the Windows 8 Developer Preview
- October 30– November 2, 2012 - Microsoft Campus in Redmond, Washington[11]
- Attendees received 32GB-equipped Windows RT Surface tablet with Touch Cover, Nokia Lumia 920 and 100GB of free SkyDrive storage.[12]
Other Microsoft developer conferences
- Microsoft Tech Ed
- VSLive!
- Dev Connections
- Mix
- PASS
See also
References
- ^ a b "Speech Transcript - Jim Allchin, Microsoft Professional Developers Conference". September 24, 1997.
- ^ Brockschmidt, Craig. "Chapter 11 - Name, Fame, and Guru Game". Mystic Microsoft.
- ^ "Activating the Internet". March 24, 1996.
- ^ "Microsoft Systems Journal: Editor's Notes, December 1998".
- ^ "Themes: Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2000".
- ^ Guy Barrette (2001). "Microsoft PDC 2001 Review". Universal Thread Magazine. Retrieved 2006-05-22.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Jritz (2007). "PDC08 Is Here!". PDC Blog. Retrieved 2008-05-26.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|month=ignored (help) - ^ Long Zheng. "Announcing PDC09". Retrieved 2008-10-30.
- ^ "Announcing PDC10". Retrieved 2010-07-12.
- ^ "Start Building on Windows 8". Retrieved 2012-06-13.
- ^ Build 2012 Microsoft Channel 9
- ^ Build Conference 2012 Giveaway
