//Build this year is going to be big!

What’s this? Build this year is going to be big? What do you mean by big?

You’ll get a lot from the Windows Team and their accomplishments with Windows 8.1. Listen to the press and 8.1 is all about boot-to-the-desktop. Look a little closer and it’s developer love, including the XAML stack, with major OS enhancements.

Aside: I just had what might be my last official Windows 8.1 briefing before Build (yesterday) and this release has so much to keep developers happy. So many nods to developer requests. So much candy where we need them most. It’s great.

You’ll get a lot from the Windows Azure Team and their accomplishments in the cloud. Enhancements to the services you know and some treats. Did you know that 50% of Fortune 500 companies are using Azure now? Azure, Office 365, SkyDrive, Xbox Live, they are all Microsoft’s future.

You’ll get a lot from the Visual Studio team. The best part of Visual Studio 2012 is that we get regular updates. We’re on Update 3 right now! But Build is for developers. Sit back and let the architects and developers of our tooling walk you through their latest accomplishments.

You’ll get a lot from the SharePoint team. Ever look on a jobs board and notice just how many SharePoint gigs there are? It’s astonishing. SharePoint is a platform, pure and simple. Sit in on sessions by some of the brightest SharePoint and Yammer minds and soak in the goodness.

The Hack-a-thon

Oh, and the hack-a-thon. Almost all day every day, the Build hack-a-thon is on. The best part? A beautiful facility, a groovy environment, and access to real Microsoft resources while you code. Who’ll be there with bells on? Who’ll be there answering your XAML questions? You guessed it, me. Check out the schedule above to see when I will be there!

Come get some prizes!

See you there!

What did //Build/ attendees get?

Well, if you watched the Keynote(s), you saw it. Every attendee at //Build/ received some great swag today from Microsoft!

Here’s what they got:

1. 100 GB storage on SkyDrive
2. A Microsoft Surface RT 32GB w/Touch Cover
3. Windows Phone Developer Account for $8
4. A Nokia Lumia 920

Not bad.

Watch it yourself: http://www.buildwindows.com/

Best quote this morning

“We don’t know what will happen with the trajectory in the next year of the PC market. I think with the addition of Windows 8, with these incredible new form factors that are tablets and PCs, I think we are going to see a lot of growth and vitality and explosion in the PC market. But if the PC market just stayed relatively flat to current expectations, [next year] there will be 400 million new Windows devices that you can target with your applications.” – Steve Balmer, Keynote @ //Build/ 2012