Microsoft Is Bringing Back WinHEC, But It's Not The Same

In 1992, Microsoft began holding an annual conference for Microsoft hardware partners called the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, aka WinHEC. This convention saw its last show at the Los Angeles Convention Center in 2008. Now it's back, but it won't be the annual event attendees remember.

According to Microsoft's Matt Perry, WinHEC will include technical conferences and topic-focused workshops that are smaller, more frequent and tailored to the local hardware community. WinHEC is also getting a name change to 'Windows Hardware Engineering Community.'

'WinHEC will bring the hardware engineering community together in one place, providing a unique opportunity to interact with technical and business experts from Microsoft, other partners, and customers, facilitating exchange of ideas, best practices, and opportunities,' Perry said.

Perry reassured Microsoft partners in his blog post that WinHEC will continue to stick with its 'strong' technical roots. Included will be technical training sessions, hands-on labs, executive keynotes and Windows-based hardware Q&A opportunities.

The target audience for WinHEC includes executives, engineering managers, engineers and technical product managers who work for hardware companies who are already working on or plan to work with Microsoft technologies, Perry said.

The first WinHEC will take place in Shenzhen, China on March 18 and March 19. Microsoft chose this area for the WinHEC reboot because of the Shenzhen ecosystem, which consists of a 'diverse community of hardware companies covering electrical design, software engineering, integration, manufacturing and all other aspects of the computing-device supply chain.'

Perry said that based on early feedback from Microsoft hardware customers, there's lots of anticipation and high expectations for WinHEC. Individuals and companies interested in attending WinHEC can head here to sign up for notifications and additional details.