Join us tonight for the premiere of 'Microsoft, Minecraft, and Libations' at 6 PM ET

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Today I am excited to announce a new Windows Central show hosted by me, Jez Corden, and Zac Bowden. The show will stream live on Beam every Friday starting at 6 PM ET (3 PM PT, 11 PM GMT) and you are of course encouraged to jump and join the conversation.

Here is what you need to know!

What it is

The Windows Central Podcast is not going away. That will still be hosted by Zac, Derek, and myself and be posted every Monday morning. That is our formal "newsy" podcast where we will continue to discuss recent events, rumors, and analyze Microsoft's strategy.

Microsoft, Minecraft, and Libations is a more laidback hangout show meant for the fans of Xbox, Microsoft, Minecraft, Windows, and more and where we can interact with our audience.

The concept is simple: Jez, Zac, and I will be hilariously building our own Windows Central Realm while we answer questions in the stream chat, discuss various aspects of Microsoft, and most importantly have fun.

The libations are because it's Friday, the work week is over, and we'll be imbibing a few drinks of choice. It's a celebration, after all!

And yes, we'll be discussing Minecraft on occasion too because, like many of you, I have no idea how it all works. This is likely where the humor will come in as we all try to figure out that crazy game.

There will be guests

We also plan to have guests! At least once a month we are planning to have people from the Xbox team, Microsoft, the Insider program, the folks behind Minecraft, other tech journalists, and maybe the head of Beam (who stopped by our test stream last Friday).

The idea is not to grill them on upcoming products or topics, but rather get to know them as people e.g. What their job is, what it's like, how did they get started, funny stories, etc.

We want a more personal show, not a stuffy newscast.

There will be prizes

Each stream we expect to give away prizes to those in the audience/Beam channel! Make sure to join in, participate, and maybe you'll grab a sweet new game code or more.

Can't watch the live stream?

If you can't watch the live stream, we'll be doing some minor edits and uploading the broadcast to YouTube.

Time, Place and How to join

The live stream should kick off at 6 PM ET (3 PM PT, 11 PM GMT). You can find the start time based on your location and time zone in our event announcer

We'll push a new article tonight with the embed in it on the front page. However, you can also just go to our main page on Beam and watch it there: beam.pro/windowscentral.

Signup at beam.pro if you want to participate in the chat for the stream. You do not have to join if you just want to watch the stream.

If you don't know what Beam is, you can read about how Microsoft recently just acquired the startup streaming service.

We're very excited to start this now show today. Of course, being the first show, we expect content and the format to evolve over time based on experience and your feedback, so let us know what you think!

Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.