[Reuters] The press release is a very good résumé discussing the message that you should not see the Office products anymore as only information worker productivity tools. It has become a platform that can be leveraged by for example ISVs. I have discussed this already plenty of times in previous postings.
The conference they talk about in the article is the Microsoft Office System Developer Conference 2005. It takes place on Feb 2-4 2005 in Redmond. I have seen the agenda and the content is very exciting. Note that the conference is not public and you should ask your local MS sub for a nomination to attend.
Update: Read more about the conference here.
If you want to view a number of presentations around the IW (e.g. one from Jeff Raikes himself), have a look at this site: http://www.iwproductivity.org/. There are also a good set of whitepapers to read from this site.