WWDC: Putting polish on the Apple
I was lucky enough to go to Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco a few weeks ago. It was a great event, and I hope to make the trip to San Francisco again next year. I’ve been to a few other technical conferences, and some nice touches at WWDC that I’d like to see everywhere are:
- Power plugs in the presentation rooms. Seriously, people, this is the 21st century, and everyone has a laptop.
- Feed me. Constantly. A ready supply of juice and coffee will keep your conference attendees from getting crabby.
- Record the sessions and the Q-A at the end of each presentation. Apple will be making all of this available to attendees in a few weeks, which is great because I had to miss a few sessions.
- Open lab sessions with Apple developers, not just marketing mouthpieces. It’s a slick move and a show of confidence in your people to let attendees drop by with their source code and start asking questions.
Because of NDA stuff I can’t really divulge any details of the sessions, but I’m really excited to be working with OS X, and Apple did a lot to emphasize that we’re part of a development community. I think Apple’s approach of leveraging open standards (and open source) and controlling hardware has given them a real advantage with quality and user experience–I can’t wait to see what they come up with next!
