Microsoft nukes PDC 2007

Microsoft TechEd, the company’s top training event for developers and systems administrators, is coming up in a few weeks: June 4-8, in Orlando. TechEd is focused tightly on currently shipping Microsoft tools, platforms and applications, so you’ll see lots of classes on things like Windows Vista, Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, Office 2007 and so-on.

TechEd is great educational, but it doesn’t show you what’s coming down the road. That’s where Microsoft PDC comes in. The Professional Developer Conference focuses on next-general platforms: think Windows Server 2008, the “Katmai” version of SQL Server, Visual Studio “Orcas,” Silverlight, and so-on. PDC had been scheduled for October 2-5, 2007 in Los Angeles — dates that I had confirmed just last week.

However, sometime in the last 24 hours Microsoft quietly canceled or postponed PDC 2007, saying,

We are currently in the process of rescheduling this fall’s Professional Developer Conference. As the PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future of the Microsoft platform, we try to align it to be in front of major platform milestones.

By this fall, however, upcoming platform technologies including Windows Server 2008, SQL Server codenamed “Katmai,” Visual Studio codenamed “Orcas” and Silverlight will already be in developers’ hands and approaching launch, which is where we’ll focus our developer engagement in the near term.

We will update this site when we have a new date for the PDC that is better timed with the next wave of platform technologies.

I’d been looking forward to attending PDC, even though it conflicts with our own Software Test & Performance Conference Fall 2007 in Boston. (Creative flight arrangements would allow me to attend both events.) Thus, from a personal standpoint, this date change is good news. Still, this move by Microsoft is surprising: When do they intend to teach developers in depth about these new technologies?