What a Week! WWDC 2012 Edition

This was my first WWDC, but it certainly won't be my last. It was a great experience and I'm going to try and share some of the things I learned over the last week. Nothing that's covered by the NDA of course.

1) It was great to finally meet some of the big wigs in the community. Drinking beer with Jeff LaMarche and the other MartianCraft guys. Hanging out with the Empirical Development guys that I've been working with for most of the last year was awesome. Getting to pitch Party Doodles to Eli Hodapp (of Touch Arcade) and Victor Agreda, Jr of (TUAW) in person was amazing. I'm sure it helped that Apple basically used Party Doodles as an example of how to do an AirPlay game correctly.

2) Probably the biggest shock to my system was the amount of walking involved. As someone who normally sits at a desk for 12+ hours a day, it was a major change to walk back and forth from my hotel 2 or 3 times each day. Why 2 or 3 times you ask, depending on whether or not I took my laptop to the sessions and wanted to drop it off at my hotel before dinner/socializing etc, or based on meetings with various people I had scheduled between sessions.

3) In most cases, you do not need to take your laptop with you to the sessions or labs. I had a completely incorrect assumption of what the labs were. Labs should be considered more like Q&A sessions with Apple engineers. They are not planned tutorials or anything scripted. They're just a chance to ask a question, sometimes with someone who may have helped build the system you have a question about. The only time having your laptop with you is probably if you need to show an engineer your code during your Q&A (lab) session.

4) For the labs, my own experience was pretty dismal in this regard. I had a few questions to ask about various topics, and each time, the engineer(s) I was talking to had no more information to provide on the issues. That being said, I heard of some people that had much more successful visits to the labs.

5) The actual sessions where amazing. Some covered brand new information about iOS 6 or Mountain Lion, while others covered older information that you might have missed. Sometimes you see something presented that's been available for a while that you just hadn't seen and you think "this will save me hours". When the session videos are released, make sure you watch as many as you can. Even if you think you already know about a topic. There are always extra little tips that are invaluable.

6) When you attend a session in person, please use some common decency and follow these four rules:

1. When sitting down, move to the center of the row, don't 'end cap' the row by sitting in the first seat. Most sessions fill the entire room and when everyone has to fill in rows by jumping over a person sitting in the first seat, it's pretty annoying.
2. Wait until the speaker has finished talking before running out to the next session. We all have to get to the next session at the same time, give the speaker the respect they deserve by letting them finish.
3. Do not use a MiFi device. They jam the provided WiFi and in some cases prevented even the presenters from being able to demonstrate what they had planned.
4. Take your trash with you. If you bring in a drink, lunch etc, just take the garbage with you when you leave and drop it in the garbage bin or recycling etc. I think they teach this in kindergarten but it appears some people missed that day.

7) Related to #2 above, the choice of hotel is important. The closer the better (or at least the less walking you have to do). But there are other issues. I only have experience with the one I stayed at this year, Parc 55 Wyndham, but I'm pretty sure I won't be staying there again next year. The room was nice, clean etc, most of the staff were nice and helpful. My issues with the hotel were

1. the network is awful. Wifi or wired, it wasn't strong enough to keep iChat connections alive. And they charge $15/day ($50/week).
2. the included breakfast only includes pastries, you can add eggs and bacon for $25!
3. the elevators are extremely slow, taking up to 10 minutes to go up and down.
4. the TVs are locked down and prevent you from adding your own input, no connecting Apple TV or your laptop for example. That made testing some changes to Party Doodles impossible.

8) Since I'm Canadian and our roaming fees are insane, I wanted to pick up a local SIM card in order to be able to use data whenever I needed. I have an unlocked phone so it should have been easy. Eventually I went AT&T, $50 for unlimited voice and text, and $25 for 1G that they said wouldn't work on an iPhone and that they wouldn't refund the cost if I couldn't get it to work. After putting in the SIM card, it took all of about 30 seconds to switch the APN using the site: http://www.unlockit.co.nz/. The AT&T network has been great the whole week (Keynote excluded, but nothing was working there).

9) J.J. Abrams. Wow. He was a guest speaker for the Friday lunch session. And boy was his talk amazing. For one, he was by far the most entertaining speaker of the week, granted his content makes it easier, blowing up stuff is more exciting by itself than NSManagedObjects being accessed by the wrong NSManagedObjectContext. But his way of presenting was great, it almost felt like it was just me and J.J. in the room and he was telling me stories from his life. It was very interesting to hear how certain ideas/shows came to be due to other events in his life, in much the same way we move from app to app where the first app may inspire the idea for the second app. I'd love to go into more detail here, but it seems even this talk is covered by the NDA. J.J., if you're reading this (maybe Google Alerts brought you here), I just want to say thanks for the awesome and inspiring presentation.

10) One last point. Since it was my first WWDC, I wasn't sure when I should be here, so booked my flight for Saturday to Sunday. Getting here on Saturday worked out well, gave me some time to get to know the area and meet up with people for drinks etc. But next year I'll leave Friday night or Saturday morning. There wasn't much happening on Saturday or Sunday as most people have already left.

I'd say WWDC (I'm not yet cool enough to be able to call it "dubdub") was a great success this year. I can't wait for next WWDC 2013! It'll sell out super fast again next year, so be prepared...

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