Microsoft’s big developer conference returns to San Francisco in June

Microsoft is moving its annual developer conference, Build, from Seattle to San Francisco and making some changes along the way. This year, the event will be held at Fort Mason, a former U.S. Army post located in the San Francisco Bay Area, rather than bustling downtown Seattle. Microsoft is moving Build to this location to capture the AI ​​buzz in San Francisco and to make the event more intimate.

“There are great conferences that are massive, in part just because of their breadth and size, and there are great conferences that are very small and are a really personal experience,” Kyle Daigle, chief operating officer at GitHub, said in an interview with GitHub. Edge. “I think we’re trying to be in the middle of it where meeting with the people attending is part of the actual conference content, announcements, and use of technology.”

Microsoft invites 2,500 developers to Sign up for Build This year, it will be held from June 2 to 3 instead of the usual May time. That’s down from the approximately 3,000 to 5,000 people who previously attended the event. “I think this venue forces people like us to think about attendance and really focus on those developers coming to the event,” Daigle says. “They’ll be able to go see the keynote, get into the room and touch the demo, and have more interaction with each other.”

The move to San Francisco is part of some “larger shifts” to change Build into a more developer-focused event. Over the years, Build has hosted many Windows-related announcements or news that aren’t always strictly developer-related. “We just need to show you what we were doing, what we were building on top of it, and how you can use it,” says Daigle. “We don’t offer you our vision and the third party’s vision over and over again.”

Microsoft is also inviting more external speakers to create, and some of these speakers will also appear in the sessions. Datasette founder Simon Willison will be speaking at Build this year, as will Thiink’s Priyanka Sharma, AI engineer Shawn Wang, and many more. Speakers at Microsoft will include Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, GitHub SVP Jared Ballmer, and Scott Hanselman, VP of Developer Communities.

“[Attendees]will be able to access what we’re advertising, as developers in a room with your laptop outside,” says Daigle. “It should feel like a community-centric developer experience where we learn from and with each other.”

the Stay away from Seattle That doesn’t necessarily mean Microsoft won’t return to its home city later, especially since Build originally moved from San Francisco to Seattle in 2017. Daigle denied reports that the decision to move was related to negative attendee experiences in downtown Seattle. “Build has been in a lot of different locations over the years, but it obviously has a Seattle-area identity, but as with everything in software, it takes a little bit of learning,” says Daigle. “Let’s ship it to San Francisco and see what we learn this year with this audience that can come and join us, and see what happens in the following years.”