Next month is the Office Developer Conference (ODC 2008). It will take place February 10 through 13 in San Jose, California. This annual event is directed towards programmers who wish to develop for Microsoft Office. The event will help developers learn how to create applications built on top of Microsoft Office using many other technologies as well, including Open XML, Silverlight, and even VOIP.

The conference includes five tracks:

• Architecture, including such sessions as “Building Collaborative BPM Solutions,” “Building Composite Business Solutions on the Office Platform,” and others.
• Client, including sessions such as “Developing and Deploying Smart Clients for Office” and “Developing Custom Office Business Applications: From the Client to SharePoint and Beyond.”
• Real World, which will feature sessions such as “Office System 2007 – Making Smart Design Choices - Navigating the Office System Extensibility Stack - Notes from the Field,” and “Building a next Generation Travel Booking Portal using Microsoft services.”
• Server, including such session as, “Deep dive into the world of SharePoint Community Kit with Forms Based Authentication, Enhanced Blogs, and Enhanced Wikis,” and “Customizing SharePoint’s Content Management System.”
• Services, with sessions such as, “Building Mashups with Office Live Small Business,” and “Programming Conferencing Solutions with the Live Meeting Service XML API.”
• Executive, which is a special track devoted to decision makers, with talks from top Microsoft executives.

Bill Gates will provide the opening keynote address, and other keynote speakers will include Chris Capossela, Kurt DelBene, Rajesh Jha, Richard McAniff, and Gurdeep Singh Pall.

For more information, visit ODC 2008.