I’m off for the week to LA for the Microsoft Professional Developer’s 2005 conference. From the buzz that preceded this event, I hope to come away quite impressed and excited about Microsoft’s development platforms and strategies. Join in the opening session with bill gates here.

My plan is to post about the interesting stuff that happens. I’ve got my camera packed this time to capture the event more visually than in the past. I haven’t decided if I want to tote my laptop around during the day … it gets heavy ….

The ongoing question around the office has been why upgrade to Windows Vista? If this question isn’t answered this week, Microsoft will have missed the boat entirely (it needs to be at least partially answered with promises to finish answering very soon). I need to be able to convince my customers that Vista is the platform they need to be on in the next 3 to 5 years. Right now, our customers have a healthy dose of skepticism that I share. With Microsoft porting the Windows Presentation Framework (AKA Avalon) back to Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server, the clear “must have” upgrade path became quite hazy, almost muddy in fact.

I want to use the new technologies Microsoft is developing … but there are hundreds of millions of desktops and servers that need to be upgraded. Please Microsoft, help us communicate your direction with our customers. We cannot be expected to do this on our own. Your evangelists need to help us (like Tim Sneath, Robert Scoble and many others are but a few examples). Produce good REALISTIC upgrade scenarios (with costs for software and hardware carefully considered), with honest and truthful benefits (and never leave out the negatives, otherwise it’s just another lame sales pitch!). The better the material you produce, the more empowered we become to help sell your plans to our mutual customers.

If you don’t know why someone should buy a copy of Windows Vista today yet … I’m very worried (especially for our large enterprise customers). The right answer for large enterprise customers cannot be, “but look at that cool fade effect and animation there!”