Microsoft did a great job over the last year, providing Windows Mobile developers with many different Webcasts, hosted on MSDN. They had a great 24 part series, covering lots of different topics that are useful for managed application developers targeting Windows Mobile Devices. I am not even sure if the series was entirely completed or if they just stopped it. As a matter of facts, it has been unbelievably quiet since at least a month right now as far as Webcast are regarded. Of course all Webcasts that were aired in the past are still available for on-demand viewing, but I have not seen any new Webcasts being announced since May 12th. One of the cool things about Webcasts, especially in hard economic times, is that you can watch them from anywhere and that they are free to attend. You will get a conference like experience when attending a live Webcast, because you can actually ask questions to a real person, the presenter, who will give you answers. So in my opinion, Webcasts are very powerful and a great way to share knowledge between developers. This brings me back to the title of this column. What happened to Webcasts? It is so quiet these days. Sure: Summer has begun so people might have their minds on traveling, not on developing software for Windows Mobile devices. However, after releasing the Developer Toolkit for Windows Mobile 6.5 devices, and with not that much documentation available for that particular toolkit, organizing a few Webcasts on how to use the Windows Mobile 6.5 DTK would definitely help developers making a quick start to get productive using new functionality of these devices inside their own applications. It is my honest opinion that you must evangelize a platform amongst developers to make it successful. Without people creating great applications for a particular platform, end users might choose a competitive platform because it offers more applications. Especially in the smart phone arena there is a lot of competition. In other words, if I would have anything to say at a strategic level at Microsoft, I would demand Webcasts around this topic. Of course I would not limit knowledge sharing through Webcasts alone. I think there is a big demand for more technical documentation, whitepapers, blog entries and sample code as well. Windows Mobile 6.5 is a great platform that has potential to become successful. However, developers are needed to create fantastic applications to really bring added value to the platform. Hopefully Microsoft realizes this as well and starts educating developers today. One of the ways to share information is through Webcasts. I can’t wait to see announcements for some cool Webcasts around Windows Mobile 6.5 application development.