wwdc2009
Yeah, I know has been a long time since, but I thought I'd take a moment to share some of my thoughts about my first experience at Apple World Wide Developer Conference 2009. If you have been to WWDC, I doubt you'll find here something useful; if you've never been and you might think to go in the future, then read on.
The Keynote
The Keynote discusses a lot of new products and technologies, giving pretty much zero details. You get to see really nice videos, and you have fun, and everybody waits for Steve Jobs that will never arrive. Only one suggestion: don't waste your time in line for the keynote. Give yourself few more hours of sleep. Or better have a good breakfast and go somewhere. Most likely you will still get into the main hall. I went in line at 7.30 AM maybe, only because I saw people in line the whole night, and I ended up almost at the bottom of the main hall anyway, but very close to a wonderful big screen where I had a perfect view of the keynote. And if you don't make it in the main room, who cares? You'll get the same beautiful big screen in some of the overflow rooms.
The Sessions
The sessions are fake. I think Apple is taking good care of training all the speakers. And it works, their style is great. But a great performance doesn't ensure quality. That's it. I think all the sessions deserve a downgrade, Expert to Intermediate and Intermediate to Beginner. Too much trying to create 'wow' with something nice but not so cool, and too much hiding of details. And why the heck they can never answer when someone makes a smart question? But despite that, few sessions were really informative.
The Labs
Ok, last but not least. I'm gonna say something positive here. The labs are really really useful. I mean, you'll get to sit with the Apple's engineers who wrote the code that you are trying to use. I had a beautiful experience during the labs. I shared thoughts, code and business cards with some Apple's engineers. And I was happy that in most cases they were perfectly aware of the problem that I was trying to solve and they are trying to solve it too. Call it a bug, a missing feature, it doesn't matter. The discussion with them ended up with technical explanation or ideas for solutions.
The Night
Well, you don't need me to tell you that San Francisco is a beautiful city. Day and Night. WWDC 2009 had about 5000 attendees. And they are not only iPhone developers or Apple's fans. Lots of them share other interests (thanks God), so every night you have multiple options for interesting meetings. That's what I attended: I started with CPCoder night on Monday, where I met the Cappuccino folks. Here I had the chance to talk to them about Polish, I will follow up about that someday soon. Appcelerator presentation on Tuesday, together with two my work colleague. Cloudmade party on Wednesday. And the big Apple's event on Thursday night. And usually all those party end early, so you have still time to enjoy the city.
WWDC is a great event. Just don't burn yourself following all the sessions. Go to labs, talk directly to Apple's guy, socialize. Attendees are smart, nice and with tons of ideas to share. And remember, if you see a line of people the night before the event around the Moscone Center, don't be impressed, just go to sleep and don't think about them. Oh, I forgot to mention what they announced during the conference... well.. for sure you already know everything.