For a few days this week, the legions of lanyard-wearing techies blanketing downtown Seattle at lunchtime won’t all work for Amazon.com. Some are here to see Microsoft.
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The most important technology show on Microsoft’s calendar — the Build developer expo — comes to Seattle this week, drawing an expected 5,500 technologists to the city. It’s the first time the event will be held in Microsoft’s backyard since 2012.
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Microsoft has changed a lot in that span.
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The Redmond company spent much of the last decade courting Silicon Valley, an effort to get the people who develop consumer applications to bet on Windows, a tougher sell as the likes of Google, Apple and Facebook were winning the battle for consumer eyeballs on the web and in the smartphone market.
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But in the last few years, Microsoft has refocused its efforts to be a builder of business technology, targeting in particular the fast-growing realm of cloud computing.
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The concentration of cloud-computing expertise has been a driver of the Seattle-area’s recent high-technology industry growth, with startups and giants like Google and Facebook setting up shop or expanding here to take advantage of the talent in the field.
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Seattle has grown a much fuller (technology) community in the last five, 10 years, said Alex Miller, who works with developers at online programming community Stack Overflow. Previously Seattle may have been a little more corporate — Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon. Now you’ve got a lot more variety in terms of the work that’s being done.
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Microsoft Build 2017
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Microsoft is expected to announce new features and planned capabilities for a range of products at its Build show, which runs Wednesday through Friday [May 10-12] at the Washington State Convention Center.
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The company uses the show to try to get the programmers who build software interested in developing applications for Microsoft products. The event typically features…