I was completely living off my savings when I first started out as an indie last year, trying to get FunkeeStory together, and I found it hard to justify blowing that much money away on attending WWDC 2006. I did not have FunkeeStory anywhere near shipping quality, so all that I could bring over there anyway was a bunch of incomplete, broken code. I wasn’t targeting FunkeeStory as a Leopard-only app either, so it didn’t make much sense to attend.

This year though is totally different.

As I continued working on FunkeeStory and getting it to release, I very quickly realised that there are literally hundreds of different ways that I can improve the app, and there’s also a list of things that came up over the past year that I would love to have Apple engineers help me out with in the labs.

I was a Select member last year, and as part of being a member, it came with two DTS technical support incidents. Those two DTS incidents were worth every cent, and without the help and advice that those DTS engineers gave me, FunkeeStory may have been released 2 months later than it did. That’s right, each DTS incident probably saved me a month of my time each.

So after that fantastic experience with DTS engineers at Apple, I knew that attending WWDC would provide a huge development boost for FunkeeStory. Spending a week at WWDC getting my problems solved right there with Apple engineers, might be equivalent to, oh I don’t know, perhaps saving 3 months of trial-and-error, doc reading, and who knows what else on my own. I can’t wait - this is going to be awesome!

But attending WWDC from Singapore isn’t cheap.

WWDC early-registration ticket - S$2,000
Air ticket to San Francisco - S$1,600
Living in a dorm during the week - S$300
Other expenses - S$300 (estimated - i’m going to try to reduce this amount as much as possible by trying to eat as many meals as I can at WWDC itself :-))

Total estimated cost: S$4,200 (around US$2,800)

Ouch. There’s no way I can afford to go just off my own efforts, time to look for some help!

I first approached MDA for funding under their Capability Development Scheme. I explained to them that my current work (and my future work for the Secret Next Big Project) falls under the definition of “new media” (which they’re trying to bolster development efforts for in Singapore), and WWDC is *the* event for people working on “new media” products on the Mac and the upcoming iPhone. Unfortunately, somehow the MDA doesn’t consider WWDC as an event that they’re willing to sponsor. Hmph, I wonder what kind of events the MDA are sponsoring instead of WWDC.

Thankfully, Apple was a lot more forthcoming with support for indie developers trying hard to make a difference, and I managed to get some assistance from them for attending WWDC. Together with ERS funds (that the Singapore government gave out a few years ago that i’ve got squirrelled away) and some money i’ve got saved up from sales of FunkeeStory, I have *just* about enough to attend without having to live on bread and water when I return.

So a big thanks goes out to Apple, and all the wonderful people who bought FunkeeStory for making this trip to WWDC possible. I won’t let your investment in me go to waste!