Earlier this week, Microsoft startled the embedded community by canceling its 2008 Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference (MEDC), to have been held this May in Las Vegas. An email sent to those who attended MEDC 2007 said, "As the industry continues to change and evolve, so does our focus on events. For 2008, we would like to inform you that we will no longer be hosting MEDC. Instead, we will be focusing our participation on embedded industry conferences and larger Microsoft events."

Those events, the email added, will primarily include the upcoming Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) West, scheduled for April 14-18 in San Jose, and the TechEd 2008 Developer Conference, scheduled for June 3-6 in Orlando, Florida.

So now, members of Microsoft's embedded teams, some of whom have described the MEDC cancellation as "sad," are working to beef up content at these two conferences.

Program Manager Lynda Allen said, "Currently we are brainstorming on what topics we can include for ESC West and TechEd US." Posting on the Embedded Windows team blog, she added, "If you have any ideas of areas that you would like to see covered at these events send them my way. We obviously want to target our sessions around the information that you want and need to know."

Posting on the Windows Embedded blog -- similar to the above, but more oriented toward Windows CE -- software architect Mike Hall referenced TechEd 2008 and said, "We're taking submissions for all content related to embedded development, which could include robotics." There will be a limited number of sessions, so ensuring the right content will likely include "triage," he added.

In addition to its June 3-6 component aimed at developers, TechEd includes a June 10-13 conference, TechEd IT Pro, aimed at IT professionals. That event will include embedded content as well, though mostly dealing with device management, according to Hall.

The 2007 MEDC included a keynote by Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, a transcript of which is available, here. It also offered a demonstration of Microsoft's Robotics Studio via a Sumo robotics competition.

Further information

Registration for ESC West is open now, with a variety of pricing plans, on the event website, here. An "All Access Pass" that will cost $2,695 on site currently has an "early-bird" price of $2,095.

Registration for Tech-Ed 2008 will open next week on January 22nd, according to Microsoft. More information is available from the event website, here.

To read the postings mentioned above on the Embedded Windows and Windows Embedded blogs and make comments, visit the MSDN-hosted sites, here and here.

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