Microsoft Build 2018: Livestream, start time, what to expect

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at the company's education-focused event. As usual, he'll be doing the Vision keynote on day 1.
Sarah Tew/CNET

Developers' conference season is upon us. Facebook's F8 kicked it off last week with dating, the Oculus Go and AI, AI, AI. Microsoft's Build 2018 is up next, starting Monday, May 7 at 8:30 AM PT (11:30 AM ET, 16:30 in the UK and 1:30 AM Tuesday Sydney time) with its typical two-day keynotes; you can catch Tuesday's stream at the same time, same place, or jump to Google I/O, which starts that day.

You can watch the keynote livestreams here or on MIcrosoft's site (requires registration).

Last year's Build had some notable announcements for non-developers, and while we don't anticipate a lot of it this go-round, we do expect a dose of Microsoft's version of AI-in-everything and more about its Timeline cross-device handoff, which finally rolled out in the April 2018 update.

We might hear progress reports on capabilities announced last year, such as its gradual rollout of the Fluent Design interface. Or its Windows Sets feature for grouping apps, data and sites in tabs that's been in beta since last year and was recently expanded in the latest Redstone 5 release of an upcoming version of Windows 10. And possibly about the delay of the long-awaited integration between Cortana and Amazon Alexa.

There have also been rumors about a Cloud Clipboard for cutting and pasting across devices spotted in that build, so perhaps we'll hear about that as well. But we doubt there will be any new Surface hardware.

The bulk of Build will really focus on Microsoft's tools for building business applications using its Azure cloud-computing platform and the whizzy new features Microsoft would like developers to take advantage of. If that's what floats your boat, our colleagues at ZDNet.com are all over it.

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