andymroczblogkowski

It’s been a full two days since WWDC ended, which I think is enough time for any residual effects of the Reality Distortion Field to subside. I thought I’d share a little bit about my first WWDC experience.

In summary, it was well worth it for me, and I’d go again. I can see how seasoned vets may tire of it eventually, but at this stage in my Cocoa (Touch) development career I felt it was invaluable. It was slightly different than I expected, but in a good ways:

Misconception 1:

The only first-hand account of previous WWDCs that I heard made it sound like it was an all-night turbo-nerd code-a-thon (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Also, every sort of conference I’ve been to in the past has been sorely lacking in the wall-socket department. I didn’t want to be the chump with the dead battery. Actually, I really didn’t want to be the chump with the dead battery.

(Idea Bubble!)

My attack to the potential power problem was three-pronged (subconsciously inspired by the male AC connector, perhaps).

• Carry a Power Squid. This way, if I found a socket, but all the plugs where taken, I could just attach my Squid, and then more power for everyone! Squid Boy will save us all!
• Bring a spare battery. I ordered one especially for the trip, and had it delivered to my hotel.
• The final contingency plan: a second laptop. That’s right I also lugged my I-can’t-believe-it-still-works 12″ PowerBook with me. Its unlikely that both my previous power access strategies would fail, but this also covered the catastrophic failure of my main laptop.

Misconception 2:

I bumped into a Cocoa programming glitterati and asked him what he thought of this WWDC. He said

There are big years, and little years. This is a little year. 

I didn’t agree. It was a little year for the Mac, but it was a huge year overall, thanks to, you guessed it, the iPhone. How often will an entirely new platform be launched? Not too often, I reckon. I guess it still wasn’t big in terms of unveiling new information since we’ve had the iPhone SDK for some months now, but this was the first time all these iPhone developers, new and old, got together.

In fact, I began to envision that in-progress iPhone apps would be everywhere. Developers would be skipping around the halls of Moscone, gleefully sprinkling beta versions and licenses. Although my own iPhone app experience was very limited (though non-zero), I didn’t want to be left out.

So around 11 PM the night before a 7AM flight, I decide that it would be a Good Idea to upgrade my iPhone to the latest development firmware. What could go wrong? Well apparently, enough to keep me up until almost 4 AM. Pro-tip: read instructions.

I was sleep deprived, but I was ready.

Reality

First, the power. There were power strips everywhere. There was one on every table in the lounge. They routed power into the main seating areas, so you could charge up during a session and not pay attention to the speakers. One day, I even found a power outlet in my soup. Just kidding.

Basically, you had to try to run out of juice. And if you did, they had a special battery charging station. The extra battery got zero use, though I did throw down Ole Squiddy once and made a friend in doing so.

Next, the ‘iPhone Apps For All!’ scenario didn’t pan out. Sure I saw a few demos here and there, and spent zero time in the iPhone lab, but in general, it didn’t seem like people were spending much time hocking their wares.

Nor did they seem to be huddled around furiously coding. In fact, most people, myself included, seemed to try to meet people, absorb information, get a few questions answered, and have fun doing it all. I thought it was great. For me, the best part was socializing with the community. I’m pretty new to the Cocoa scene, so it was really nice to meet all the people I’ve been twitter-stalking. Some where even nice enough to follow me back. I would go as far to say that I made a few new, hopefully lasting friends in the past week.

So as I indicated on my WWDC exit survey, the best thing about WWDC was meeting other Mac developers. The second and third were interacting with Apple engineers and the technical sessions.

Talking with the engineers in the labs was extremely valuable (thanks Image Capture team!), and chatting it up during the extra-ciricular activities was just fun. It made me realize that although Apple’s engineers are definitely smart, but they’re not arrogant, unapproachable, coding geniuses. In fact, they were extremely friendly, and basically, humans just like me. Stunning.

The technical sessions were good, but not great. I got what I expected for most of them, which is way better than I’ve done at any one sort of conference. Also, I was very impressed by the baseline public-speaking and presentation skills of the engineers. I don’t know if Apple just hires good communicators, or trains them, or what, but the quality of end result was high.

Oh, and the sleeper hit of WWDC 2008? The super-nice staff. They gave the whole experience a very pleasant, friendly feel. Bravo, you black-shirted army. Bravo.

WWDC also inspired me to kick it up a bit. Though its against my policy to comment on future blog postings, I can say that I hope more will be coming “soon”. And one more thing…

Save me a spot in line July 11th