What Happened? (Premium)

Yesterday’s Build 2023 keynote appearance by Windows lead Panos Panay was surprisingly flat, but it wasn’t entirely his fault. And while I know some of what happened, what I don’t know is why.

Of course, that could be said for a lot of what happens these days with Windows. But this event was different, weird. And to describe it accurately, I have to unfortunately get into some opinions about the people involved. I do so with trepidation because public speaking is hard—I’m terrible at it—and because I want to be fair. I’m not here to hurt anyone.

But I also care deeply about Windows and the people who use it. And it is an unfortunate fact that the part of Microsoft that oversees this product has done poorly by its customers in recent years. And that the performance we witnessed yesterday rates almost as lowly as what we saw during the dark years of Steven Sinofsky and Julie Larson Green. At the very least, it needs to be discussed.

Microsoft’s developer show used to focus on Windows, just as the company did, but with its transition to the cloud, things quickly shifted, and starting in 2015, Microsoft’s cloud efforts became the focus, with Windows relegated to a day two keynote. This year, the focus shifted yet again, to AI, and the day one keynote was hosted by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, though Yusuf Mehdi, recently thrust into the spotlight again because of Bing AI, got lots of stage time as well. They then transitioned into a segment with Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, a rare on-stage personality, who interviewed OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, and then the AI story for developers with Scott Guthrie.

Yesterday, Microsoft hosted its second full day of Build 2023 with a second keynote titled Shaping the future of work with AI. It opened with a segment hosted by the bland Rajesh Jha, who spent about 45 minutes recapping the week’s news about the Microsoft 365 Copilot and related AI-based productivity tools with the help of Yina Arenas (the “mother of the Microsoft Graph”), Wamwitha Love, and Archana Saseetharan, all of whom were better on-stage presences. And then it moved onto a similar-length segment with Windows chief Panos Panay, where things really went off the rails.

Panay is awkward on stage at the best of times. But he was off, spectacularly off, on Wednesday. And it was clear why: he had nothing new to tell us because Microsoft had opted to announce all of its Windows-focused news—the Windows Copilot, Dev Home, GitHub Copilot X integration in Windows Terminal, and changes coming to Windows 11, most likely in version 23H2, key among them—the previous day alongside its cloud-based AI announcements. This didn’t just take the steam out of Panay’s talk, it obliterated it.

Fortunately, Panay was also helped by better, more confident speakers like Shilpa Ranganathan, Pavan Davuluri, and, especially, Steven Bathiche, who was the real highlight of this keynote: seriously, go watch his part of the presentation. It wasn’t just clear and concise, it was inspiring. Perhaps he should handle the Windows segments of keynotes in future years.

Panay’s incredible fumbling was partially just who this guy is—he walked down into the audience at one point, forcing attendees nearby to pay attention instead of just nodding off in the dark as they would have assuredly done otherwise—but, as noted, it was also partially not his fault. And that’s because, at one point, Panay was going to announce all the Windows news on day 2. And if you go back and rewatch his bit with that knowledge, you can see the impact his talk was meant to have. But in changing its plans, Microsoft gutted that impact. Panay’s talk was nothing more than a boring recap of what Microsoft had announced the day before.

I know this because Microsoft briefs journalists, bloggers, and the like ahead of time. And I don’t think I’m betraying any confidence to describe now, after the fact, the timing of the various communications we received.

On April 27, Microsoft PR reached out to us to invite us to the Build 2023 news preview, which would arrive on May 18. At that time, there was one news embargo, for May 23 (Build day 1) at 8 am PT. Two weeks later, on May 10, however, we got an update: now, there would be a second embargo, for “Windows news,” on May 24, at 10 am PT. This was obviously exciting to me as the Windows news was apparently so strong that they would need a second day, and a second embargo for it. Excellent.

On May 17, we were told the exact timing for the news preview, most of which we’d receive the next morning at 8 am PT via a private SharePoint site. But the embargo timing had changed again: now, there was only one embargo again, so we could publish anything and everything about Build 2023 on Tuesday, May 23 at 8 am PT. Including the Windows news. PR apologized for the inconvenience this change might cause.

May 17 was less than one week before that embargo, and I was curious if the Panay stuff would be moved into the day one keynote. But it was not, and instead, the schedule remained as-is. And so Panay went on stage at the expected time. He just had nothing to say that we all hadn’t heard the day before. It’s not surprising that he stumbled through his talk.

I don’t know why Microsoft changed the schedule so late in the game. I just know that it did. And that this change was unfair to Panos, and to the audience who gathered to see the keynote.

And that’s too bad: after years of playing second fiddle at Build, Microsoft finally has a good message for Windows, and it can now make a solid case for why developers should choose its client platform over Linux or the Mac. This keynote should have been a victory lap. And Panay should have been leading the conga line.

Ah well.