October 2 Microsoft Event: Surface, Windows, Office, Mixed Reality and Gaming

October 2 Microsoft Event: Surface, Windows, Office, Mixed Reality and Gaming

Microsoft will host an event on October 2 and make some announcements. In such recent events, the company showcased new hardware as well as announced Windows updates. I’m not expecting this format to change even though Microsoft will mix things up.

The company sent out a “save the date” invite. With details being only date; 10.02.2019, venue; New York, NY and hashtag #MicrosoftEvent.

October 2

A mobile-first, cloud-first strategy
this is our focus for every device and every service that we launch at Microsoft.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO

Last year the company announced a refresh of the family of devices and new accessories. The Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 2, Surface Studio and Surface Headphones.

October 2, 2019, Microsoft Event

I’m expecting Microsoft to announce new devices. A refresh of the Surface Pro, Laptop, Book and Surface Go devices to meet the latest hardware specifications. Fully adopting USB C as many have called for and expanding to new markets.

You will expect Microsoft to brief the media on what’s happening with HoloLens and the world of mixed reality.

Windows and Office will as in the past also get time to share new product updates and cross-device features.

You can also read what other Microsoft watchers think will happen at the event. Read what Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet and the guys at Windows Central have shared.

Let’s know what you think. What are you looking forward to seeing or hearing?

Microsoft is opening a Mixed Reality and AI engineering office in Lagos, Nigeria

Microsoft is opening a Mixed Reality and AI engineering office in Lagos, Nigeria

engineering office

Microsoft is opening an engineering office to build Mixed Reality Cloud Services in Lagos, Nigeria.

UPDATE: Microsoft announces software engineering team at its Africa Development Center site in Lagos will develop Azure services that power new Augmented Reality.

Microsoft is increasing its investments on African soil. It is launching two development centers in Africa. With offices in Kenya and Nigeria. Early this month Microsoft’s planned Africa datacenters became a reality and went live in South Africa.
Last year in partnership with Techno Brain Limited Microsoft opened Africa’s first Software Testing Centre in Kenya. It also opened its first Africa customer service support center in Lagos, Nigeria in partnership with Tek Experts.

The latest announcement was highlighted by Alex Kipman, Microsoft’s technical fellow for AI and Mixed Reality. Alex is known as the man behind Microsoft HoloLens. A software engineering job posting on Microsoft’s career page gives more details about this.

The role description says Microsoft is launching a “Cognition Africa engineering team to build Mixed Reality Cloud Services”. And asks software engineers who meet the qualifications to apply.

Here’s what the job posting tells us about the Mixed reality and AI engineering office in Lagos.

We are launching a Cognition Africa engineering team to build Mixed Reality Cloud Services that bring those technologies to a wider range of devices. Do you want to join us on this journey? We are offering opportunities for passionate Software Engineers to help us build the team and suite of cloud services which bring these capabilities to the cloud“.

Alex Kipman in his tweet also says “looking forward to my first visit soon“. I want to believe we might have a HoloLens 2 showcase event in town soon. Microsoft unveiled the HoloLens 2 recently at the 2019 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.