Ah, Fall, the time of year when a young man’s thoughts turn to code. This week, I’m one of 7000 code monkeys enjoying Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) here in Los Angeles.


The brown tint from the photo is from the smoke in the air.

Microsoft only holds these conferences when it has a major release, so this is the first PDC in three years. The conference is centered around Windows “Longhorn” which is the next release of the Windows platform. All I can say is that Microsoft is certainly getting the job done with this new version that looks spectacular and more importantly, really unifies all the data on your computer and network into data that is so easy to find that it almost finds you! Of course, these were controlled demos.


How many people can we fit in one room? All of them.

The 3 ½ hour keynote presentation was long, but it was packed with great information. One highlight was a very well produced “Behind the Technology” video ala VH1. Microsoft really poked fun at themselves and Apple and Oracle in the video, and it included humorous interviews with Bill Clinton, Warren Buffet and P. Diddy.


The Uber-Geek, Mr. Bill.

Bill Gates spoke to the attendees for about 45 minutes and gave an overview of Microsoft’s direction of the various new initiatives within the company. Gates is a very good speaker, and I especially appreciate his no nonsense approach to delivering the details to the developers. Other conferences that I attend tend to get too wrapped up in their own hype, but this one so far has set a very cautious and realistic tone with an underlying current of excitement.

The biggest surprise was rifling through the myriad of junk given in my conference materials to find a full version of Microsoft Office Professional 2003. That’s right, a full version. Schwing! We also received the latest build of Windows Longhorn, which I may get around to running if I can find some time.

I’m looking forward to the next 3 days!