Microsoft’s Windows 8 Love-fest feels less like a traditional technical conference and more like a backyard camp out with 2500 of your nerdiest friends.  The Day 1 keynote featured CEO Steve Ballmer doing a good job of showing the consistency of experience across a range of form factors from an 80 inch touch screen to the latest Windows Phones 8 devices.  He was followed by various Microsoft executives showing the latest in Windows 8 (desktop and phone) apps as well as some brief and not particularly convincing demos of how easy it is to develop for either platform. But the packed crowd left happy with news that each attendee would receive a new 32G Surface tablet and a new Nokia Lumia 920 phone in return for their promise to fill the Windows App Store.

It would be impossible to describe this event without talking about the logistics.  Hosted on the Microsoft campus, the keynotes are being delivered in a gigantic tent erected on what was the athletic fields complete with stage, projection screens, and thankfully heaters.  The rest of the event is being held in two parts of the campus separated by a mere mile including a major interstate.  Shuttles run between the two locations during the breaks between sessions.  The atmosphere is then made even even more Redmond-like by a constant rain fall which was held off by hundreds of community umbrellas bearing bright orange Build logos.  Perhaps the intent was to have shared inconvenience bring the crowd closer together or maybe it was just some incredibly poor planning.

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