Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference 2006 kicked off this week in Boston, with more than 7,000 of the software giant's partners arriving in Boston to witness demonstrations of the company's hefty set of upcoming software releases. The event began Tuesday with a presentation by CEO Steve Ballmer, who outlined the new release schedule for the rest of the year, which includes Internet Explorer 7, Office 2007 and the Windows Vista operating system.

The conference continued Wednesday, following a Tuesday filled with informational sessions and partner presentations, as well as a vast exhibit hall sporting seemingly endless aisles of Microsoft software information. Wednesday's sessions revisited some of the material explored on Tuesday, and added to the parade of information on emerging markets surrounding existing Microsoft solutions, including the market for Windows Server tools, the company's emerging security offerings, its .NET application platform and its new Windows Live offerings.

Microsoft's Partner Conference was an impressive spectacle, but the elements relating to Web hosting were limited. Not so with next week's HostingCon, the second installment of the annual event tailored to the Web hosting business.

The lead-up to the hosting business's biggest generated a flurry of activity from Web hosts announcing their plans for the conference, including theWHIR itself. Our exciting program of events for HostingCon is available in detail at http://www.thewhir.com/hostingcon2006.cfm.

TheWHIR announced this week that it has planned a series of events and demonstrations for the hosting conference around our July issue on game hosting. By partnering with game hosting control panel developers TCAdmin, game hosting providers The Game Monsters and Spawnpoint and game network provider Latency Kills, we will operate an online gaming center at booth number 223. The exhibit will let visitors play online games Counter-Strike, Black Hawk Down, Joint Operations and Battlefield 2, as well as view demonstrations of game hosting technology and enter to win some amazing gaming prizes.

On Wednesday, investment banking firm DH Capital announced that it would sponsor the second-day conference luncheon at HostingCon. DH Capital managing director Paul Stapleton will speak at the luncheon, discussing "Building Value in the Hosting Ecosystem." He will explain how industry trends and products are increasing value, and report on metrics that are important to financiers and how to achieve "breakthrough" equity appreciation.

Also on Wednesday, HostingCon Gold Sponsor XRamp announced that it would launch a $100,000 SSL promotion at the conference, offering free XRamp Basic SSL certificates to cPanel customers, until August 31, or until it has given out $100,000 worth, whichever comes first. XRamp's display will be at booth 326, where the company will provide cPanel customers with free redemption cards that can be used at any time via an online form.

On Thursday, billing software provider ModernGigabyte announced that it will be hosting a series of presentations at its booth, number 311, at the HostingCon event. Presentations on Monday will include Jack Brandt of Register.com, Jay Schiavo of GeoTrust, SWsoft's Serguei Beloussov and The Planet's Julia Morgan. Tuesday presenters will include Sedo's Jude Augusta, Ensim's David Wippich, Hostopia's Dave Murphy and TCAdmin's Kevin O'Donnell. And on Wednesday, WebHost Automation's Adam Saunders, LayeredTech's Chris Murphy and ModernBill's Jon McCarrick will deliver presentations.

Also on Thursday, hosting provider Web.com announced that its CEO Jeff Stibel is scheduled to present on a keynote panel at HostingCon, entitled "Lessons from the Trenches - What Works Now" at 10 a.m., along with executives from EV1 Servers, FastServers and HostMySite.

While much of this week's news came from preparations for HostingCon 2006, it's safe to assume that next week will include even more. In fact, we at theWHIR have already been promised big announcements by several of the hosting and technology companies that will be in attendance.