Microsoft Announces an Education Related Event in New York City for Early May

The rumors of an early spring event in New York City for Microsoft was floated in the clouds yesterday thanks to an article from ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley.

Foley speculated that the code name for the event, Bespin - a planet that was home to a location in Star Wars lore called Cloud City, was an indication that this event might be related to Windows 10 Cloud. You might recall that this name for a version of the Windows 10 Creators Update surfaced during testing late last year of Redstone 2.

Well no need for speculation anymore because today Microsoft began sending out emails to journalists inviting them to Learn what's next in New York City on the 2nd of May.

While there are no other details included in the invite they do use one hashtag on the graphic - #MicrosoftEDU.

This apparent focus on education and the timing of Joe Belfiore's public return to Microsoft with new roles on the Windows Shell team, his commentary to Mashable about the progress with Microsoft Edge, and his new advocacy role as the education sponsor on the Windows team leads me to believe it is all tied together.

Whether or not any hardware will be announced at this event remains to be seen but the recent rumors about a clamshell based laptop being built by the company could also be tied into this event.

So with an operating system called Windows 10 Cloud, a classic laptop form factor device, and the education reference isn't it possible that Microsoft could reveal their own Chromebook competitor?

Yeah, I know I am stretching quite a bit here to make all the connections but like I said in my earlier piece about Joe Belfiore's return - there are just too many things here to be just a coincidence.

I guess we will find out in May and you can watch along with our coverage plus Microsoft's live stream on that day which will kick off at 9:30 AM Eastern/6:30 AM Pacific).

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