Intel has decided to end their annual Intel Developer Forum, including IDF 17 expected in August this year.
Intel posted the following on their webpage;
“Intel has evolved its event portfolio and decided to retire the IDF program moving forward. Thank you for nearly 20 great years with the Intel Developer Forum! Intel has a number of resources available on intel.com, including a Resource and Design Center with documentation, software, and tools for designers, engineers, and developers. As always, our customers, partners, and developers should reach out to their Intel representative with questions.”
Intel announced earlier that they would not be sponsoring an IDF event in China this year. It was still expected in the US with a “new format.” Prior to today’s announcement, Intel’s IDF page stated;
“We are making changes to the Intel Developer Forum. This fall the event in San Francisco will have a new format and we will not be hosting an event in China. More details to come soon.”
It added to “keep checking this page in the middle of March for updates.” No update was made in the middle of March; in fact, “keep checking this page” disappeared with today’s announcement permanently cancelling IDF.
IDF was nearly 20 years old and had its origins in the early 1990’s as a quarterly update as a service to their PC customers run by sales staff until 1995 when Intel Corporate decided to pick up the venue as an annual industry wide event.
Intel’s business has grown into separate and distinct segments whose management felt that IDF no longer served them as a direct means of communicating their message. The rise of AI, FPGAs, Optane, automotive, IoT, and wireless communications diminished the delivery of any direct message emanating from any one group.
Intel is now deciding how to find new ways of disseminating information to their respective audiences (media, developers and customers). How the company works through this process is still to be determined.
Techeye Take
The fact that Intel’s Data Center Group was not happy over the amount of support they provided to other disparate groups at Intel has been an open secret for a least the last couple of years. It is somewhat a surprise that the separation did not occur sooner.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that much of what made up IDF is considered to be necessary for the industry financial and strategic technology analysts to understand the company’s Data Center Group’s direction in the Enterprise and Cloud Market segments. But that’s Diane Bryant’s problem now.
What is not clear is what Intel has planned to replace something that was working but not in all the right ways to satisfy certain marketing types in messaging their customers, their investors and the industry at large. Now the entire world et al is left in the lurch of the wonder gap of what will happen next…,
