9 Tips for WWDC Attendees of the Future!
The last week at WWDC was AMAZING. I’m finally back home in Singapore where the weather is warm, and food doesn’t come in cold plastic boxes. I’m still feeling the buzz from attending WWDC and trying to catch my breath from all the excitement throughout the week. I’ve also recovered from the jet lag so I can finally post on this blog again.
I know, I know, WWDC concluded last week, and in Internet time, last week is like, oh… 10 years ago in Snail-World Time. But you are all nice people, and i’m sure you’ll forgive me for not posting last week.
Anyhoo.
Here’s my list of tips for future WWDC attendees - won from experience after attending WWDC 2007 - which was the first ever multiday conference i’ve ever attended.
1. Be prepared.
Bring a water bottle. The Odwalla juices on offer are *really* sweet and run out quickly, and there’s no way you are going to stay hydrated from drinking that and coffee/tea all day. There are plenty of water refill stations all over the Moscone.
Bring a jacket/jumper. Unless you come from Norway or Siberia, you’ll probably find the weather in San Francisco really chilly when the wind gets going. Dress in layers. Even if you don’t plan on getting out much, the labs and lunch areas are *really* cold at times too.
Bring extra cash for food. You would think that a conference that costs US$1,500 just for the ticket would serve better food. Unless you’re on a tight budget like me, bring extra cash for getting food outside of the Moscone if you want to keep your spirits up throughout the week. All food at the Moscone is cold, including breakfast. Lunch is served in plastic boxes.
Honestly, I had better food when I served in the Army. Although the Moscone Center food isn’t as bad as unheated combat field rations, it comes really close. Heated combat rations would beat the food at the Moscone hands down. Its scary to think that when it comes to serving hot food to lots of people, the catering people at the Moscone would actually *learn something* from the Army.
2. Get to San Francisco early.
You may have read about my jet lag. Even if you’re on a tight budget, make sure you get to San Francisco at least 3 - 4 days in advance. If you’re flying from halfway across the world, this rings especially true. Jet (or drive) lag will take out a lot of your energy.
If you plan on sightseeing around San Francisco, do it before WWDC instead of after. If you’re a developer, WWDC will give you a huge buzz and you won’t be able to resist quickly flying home after the conference is over to start working on the new stuff you’ve learned.
3. Have a blog or website? Put a picture of yourself or your team online.
There are loads of people who would love to talk to you about your product, your blog or your site during WWDC. The first step in making sure that people can even find you during the conference is to make sure they know what you look like in the first place. Should be pretty common sense eh? But even I neglected to do that (i’ll be fixing that soon).
If anyone at Apple Public Relations is reading this - you may even want to consider placing pictures of Apple engineers somewhere so WWDC attendees can easily track them down for questions. :-)
4. Don’t waste time planning your schedule far in advance.
The session and lab time-schedules change during the conference. You may also change your mind about attending certain sessions during the week itself, so don’t waste too much time planning your schedule too far in advance. Just plan a rough guide during the plane and you should be set.
5. Partition your laptop hard drive before you leave.
If Apple is going to give out a new developer seed during the conference, you won’t be able to resist installing it on your laptop. I’ve personally heard of two fellow attendees who, in the excitement of it all, installed the developer seed onto their existing Mac OS X installation without first backing up. Ouch.
Here’s the better way to do it (Disclaimer: if you lose your data following these steps, its not my fault).
1. Get Super Duper! or the backup utility of your choice and completely back up all the partitions on your laptop.
2. Repartition your laptop to include another empty partition (at least 14GB) for the developer seed installation.
3. Put Mac OS X and your data back onto your laptop again using the backup you created in step 1. If you don’t have sufficient space, try to exclude things that are not needed during the week of WWDC. You can always put all the pr0n back onto your laptop after you return from WWDC.
6. Live close to the Moscone.
Attending technical sessions and labs all day is tiring work. Commuting for a long time after each day at WWDC will quickly sap your energy. Do yourself a favour, and don’t bum off your friend’s apartment on the other side of the city to save a few bucks. Get yourself a room somewhere close to the Moscone and get a lot more energy throughout the conference.
7. Business cards.
Whenever you receive a business card, write a description about the person on the back of the card as soon as possible.
You’ll thank me later when you’re on the plane, sorting through the huge stack of business cards you’ve received, and you’re trying to recall whether “Johnny Foobar” was the guy you met during lunch with an awesome new idea for your app, or the guy that you’re supposed to send a review license to.
If you can control the formatting of your own namecard, you may even want to try placing a picture of your face on your namecard. I don’t know about all you other cats, but I remember faces a lot better than I remember names. Put a picture of yourself online somewhere if you can’t control the design of your own card.
8. Make use of the labs.
Your mileage may vary with the labs, but personally, i’ve got a huge amount of value out of the labs. Broken code got fixed, new features got implemented *on the spot* and magic developer dust was given out. Its been awesome.
If you’re going to the ever-popular UI design consulting lab, arm yourself with the following,
- Prepare a list of questions beforehand. Don’t try to “wing it” at session, you’re just going to waste your time.
- You are only going to be given half an hour with the Apple engineer. Keep questions short and specific.
- Bring a notepad and keep it ready to jot down ideas.
9. Talk to everyone around you.
The food at the Moscone may be tragic, but the lunchtime conversations are awesome when you manage to find the right group. If you’re an indie, you know how hard it can be to get a good technical discussion with anyone in real life, so you really owe it to yourself to find a good lunch group. The amount of energy and buzz you get out of it can carry you for a long way throughout the week.
Don’t limit yourself to lunch either. There’s great conversation to be found just standing in line. Just try not to do that at the long queues for the male restroom.
If you have more tips to share, feel free to leave them in the comments!
