The clock has stopped for the annual AT&T Developer Summit.
After ten years of hosting the AT&T-centric developer fest in Las Vegas, the telecommunications giant has cashed in its chips and moved on to a new approach to their events.
Over the years at this event, AT&T has featured content tracks with developers in mind and hackathon coupled with giveaways, plus celebrity keynotes, parties and a concert. All of these ingredients together likely helped amplify the amplify the draw of the event in the shadow of the much larger Consumer Electronics Show. Recently, virtual reality, augmented reality, Internet of Things and artificial intelligence took the front stage at the AT&T Developer Summit, keeping up with the times.
Then, in 2016, AT&T kicked off their first SHAPE: AT&T Tech Expo, with a developer and technology enthusiast focus at — where else? — AT&T Park in San Francisco. With that shared focus on developers in mind, their 2017 developer summit followed less than six months later, just over four hundred miles away in Las Vegas. This year, SHAPE was hosted in Los Angeles, with no word heading into autumn about the AT&T Developer Summit.
Following an inquiry about the status of the Developer Summit that Events for Gamers made via Twitter earlier in November, AT&T Developer (@attdeveloper) replied in direct message:
“Thank you for your participation in our annual Developer Summit over the years.
This past summer, we hosted AT&T SHAPE in Los Angeles at Warner Bros. Studios. SHAPE will now be our annual signature event for developers and creators looking to explore the convergence of technology and entertainment. This shift will help us to better reflect AT&T’s evolution into an integrated media company. With SHAPE as our new focus, we will no longer host the AT&T Developer Summit in Las Vegas.”
The statement clearly suggests that AT&T has shuttered and replaced their Developer Summit, at least for now. In the meantime, however the telecom giant’s developer team is leveraging SHAPE event and their content creation-driven hackathons to lead their new developer messaging and outreach.
Below, through the magic of Twitter, you can get a very small taste of the past AT&T Developer Summit experience:
Final Summit Hackathon challenges, themes, and prizes revealed. Check it out: https://t.co/GhF23284N0 #ATTDevSummit pic.twitter.com/haFAgh3tWt
— AT&T Dev Program (@attdeveloper) December 26, 2015
Our sponsors will give away over $80K in swag at our #ATTDevSummit Welcome Party. Join us from 6-9PM TONIGHT! https://t.co/bfzSLTzerW pic.twitter.com/zb08h0BXGT
— AT&T Dev Program (@attdeveloper) January 3, 2017
Backstage passes to blink 182 concert. Not going to lie, it’s pretty nice up here. #ATTDevSummit pic.twitter.com/ZZsesL2K6Y
— Michael H (@Xiii_0ch0) January 5, 2017
