Wow. I guess I'll be at home this year crying myself to sleep.
The quickness at which this sold out prompts a few questions:
1. I guess only small development houses are going this year because most big companies can't get purchasing approved that fast. I know mine wasn't able to.
2. Is it time for Apple to consider a format to allow more people to attend? Their platform has grown 10x in 5 years, but the conference is still in the same facility.
3. Did Apple release fewer tickets this year to hold more tickets for their partners? I know last year, the conference sold out quick, and that didn't allow big companies time to react. I question if even Apple's purchasing department could have made a purchase this quick if they were invited to attend such a popular conference.
4. Does this mean that people are now going to be scalping WWDC tickets? Their value is clearly much more than $1600.
Is it time for Apple to consider a format to allow more people to attend?
While undoubtedly not a perfect substitute for attending, they did take a big positive step last year by posting the session videos only a week after and eliminating additional fee for non-attendee access to them.
This is an excellent point. I remember last year thinking that the speed with which they did that was a giant 'FU' to all the devs who paid real $ to go to those sessions. However, given the lack of outrage, plus the speed with which it sold out this year, I guess the devs don't mind. Presumably they feel they're getting sufficient value from the other aspects of it.
Also, with respect to the 'allow more people to attend', I think that would wreck their 4:1 ratio of devs to Apple engineers which they seem quite proud of?
1. Maybe not. I've attended WWDC on behalf of small startups and for Yahoo. In both cases, my managers told me (and the other attendees) to go ahead and purchase a ticket with our personal credit cards as soon as registration opened. The company would then reimburse us later. There was just no other way to secure the needed tickets without charging $20k+ on a corporate card - which would have required weeks of approval first.
2. Is it time for Apple to consider a format to allow more people to attend? Their platform has grown 10x in 5 years, but the conference is still in the same facility.
I hope not. Currently, the presentations are done by Apple engineers -- who then typically go and spend the rest of the week in lab sessions to have one on one's with people.
If more presentations are needed, either the lab quality will go down (which is very bad as labs are the best part of WWDC) or the presentation quality will go down because they will no longer be given by the engineers that created the tech behind the presentations.
There's also the immense amount of time that is spent by presenters beforehand in preparing for a session. If you think that Steve Jobs is the only one at Apple who spend hours and hours perfecting his WWDC presentation, you'd be very wrong.
I purchased a ticket personally as it was worth attending from a personal stand point back in 2009 even coming from the UK.
You have to wonder whether the developer part of the conference should be ticketed separately from the keynote, as I would happily miss the keynote for access to the information. From what I heard in 2010 a lot of people only attended the first day to see what would be announced, you would think the price would be enough to deter bloggers etc but apparently not, the same goes for Google IO
The games pushing the graphics limits of the ios hardware mainly game from big dev houses (Think ID, Activision, etc)
The software pushing the limits of OSX mainly comes from big software house (Think Adobe or VMWare)
Despite it's success selling it's own software Apple would still have some massive problems if either Microsoft or Adobe announced that they were no longer developing for the Mac.
My knee-jerk reaction would be to agree, but I think it's also a matter of who can be helped the most. Smaller teams might not be able to afford extensive training from The Big Nerd Ranch or other outfits as much as larger corps might. So WWDC is certainly most useful to indie developers, but that doesn't mean Apple needs to market it expressly so.
Indeed. I think they are less important for WWDC as well. I've no doubt that the big companies can go visit the Apple Campus anytime they want and speak to the engineers as much as they want - they don't need WWDC
The people at WWDC used to be cool. The last couple of years they've been drowned out by masses of people trying to cash in on iOS fads.
A lot of companies didn't even send their programmers last year—they sent their managers instead. The idiot managers don't even know WTF is going on. These people aren't worth talking to.
Witnessing a Steve Jobs keynote in person appeals to a lot more people than chatting at one of Apple's developer labs.
That plus the usual large-company conference boondoggle explains why WWDC has a lot of non-developer attendees. To make the conference 100% developers, either Apple has to get a lot less cool or the keynote needs to be moved out. Put the thing in Pac Bell Park and sell keynote-only tickets, and you'll get what you want.
Since the session videos will be online after the conference for registered Apple developers (that's what they did last year - setting a new Google I/O-pressured precedent), I think that leaves the sessions you really want to go to, Labs, networking, socializing.
The sessions. All of them are top-notch. Learn how to write code like an Apple engineer or think like one. They all know how to present and they all are happy to be there.
The Labs are unbelievable. You come with your thorniest bug/problem to the appropriate section and an Apple engineer will sit down with you to figure it out. You might have to wait a while but they will bring in other team members, if you have a particularly thorny issue.
When it comes to networking/socializing - just waiting in line for sessions/talking to people next to me - I met people who had written top-selling iPad/iPhone and/or well-known apps.
Oh, and partying. That is almost like networking but with full bar service.
Good luck and congratulations to those going, it's like no other technical conference.
I don't know how long PDC has been doing this, but if it's quite a while now and Apple ignored them the whole time, then that makes it more likely that Google is the one putting pressure on Apple.
To that same note, I think there's probably quite a few developers (like myself) that were quite used to session videos from Microsoft conferences, that the lack of them when switching to Apple dev seemed like a big loss.
Perhaps they helped push Apple that way but as someone who went to WWDC10 with the expectation that I would unable to see the content otherwise as the videos were restricted to attendees (and or those who had an ADC Select/Premier account) it was kind of a shock they went that way finally. Especially because it was announced barely after the conference had exponentially faded from our memories.
Google I/O is pushing the boundaries of free again - live streaming to locally-organized developer parties in select Worldwide locations of major sessions and the keynotes.
Startup idea: allow people to share their conference badges during unused days (or during any non-use times). I often can't stay an entire conference, and usually ditch my badge. For a sold out show, would be nice to hand it to someone else. "The AirBnB of Conference Badges"
I'm sure this goes against the badge policies, however.
I don't know when the person you replied to last went, but I went to every WWDC since 2007 and the sessions have only gotten more and more packed and lab time for some popular topics even harder to come across. Granted there's always unpopular/niche sessions with half empty rooms, but I also went to sessions that were so packed all the available floor space that wasn't a fire hazard was occupied.
I understand the grumbling at the idiots that buy a $1600 ticket to watch the keynote, but I don't think there's that many people that truly impulse buy such a thing just to see the damn keynote. I've skipped out on half the keynotes so far to sleep in and eat breakfast and show up in time for the SOTUs in the afternoon instead, which are much more informational.
This is almost universally against convention rules. If it became popular, the conference organizers would just start making good on their threats and you'd see your name cursed across the Internet for getting your users' badges taken away.
Yeah this is something that happens a lot at WWDC. Every year Apple threatens to check IDs at the door, but they never do that I have seen besides at registration.
If you happened to have added a ticket in your cart on store.apple.com it might very well still be there (and be able to be purchased) after the conference is sold out.
That's how I got in last year after slow management approval nearly ruined it for me.
I lobbied extra hard for quick management approval (new company) this year. I'll see some of you there :)
Thanks for this, I fortunately added the ticket to my cart on my phone late last night (I'm in Australia) and woke up this morning to the sellout. Seems like check out all went well. Now processing so hopefully I'll be able to repay you with a drink there.
Just an update for anyone still reading this. Apple just rang me today to refund my money, they received the order after all tickets had already been allocated :-(.
Thanks for a great tip. I was waiting on wife approval, because I need to make sure it didn't conflict with our planned vacation. I might be unstuck now.
Damnit ... I really wanted to go but 1599 on my own dime was a bit too steep. I thought I'd sleep on it but it is like they say: you snooze you lose. Oh well .. I managed to go to PyCon and will hopefully be at Google IO.
#import "disclosure.h" I help run SecondConf, feel free to ask if you have any questions.
But, we're on the opposite end of the spectrum. We intentionally keep it small, so everyone can have a chance to talk with everyone else. We just announced our date for this year (9/23-25) and more details will be coming soon: http://www.secondconf.com/ if you're interested, you should follow @secondconf on twitter.
I hope Apple will repeat the same event at a venue in Asia Pacific to cater for the other half of the world. Maybe at Sydney, Shanghai, HongKong or Singapore.
I got scholarship on 2008 and 2010, i expect them to offer the same thing this year, just be patient and wait for a few days until the details come out =)
Google I/O got sold out because every body who got the ticket knew that they are going to get a latest android phone which is priced higher than the ticket price! Definitely a big motivational incentive to hit the buy button.
Not true for all attendees but probably for a good percentage.
To say that attendees know they will be getting the latest Android phone is a little presumptuous. That'd be like saying if I wanted a new car, all I need to do is be an audience member on Oprah.
It sure is a grand feat. Could you explain why you think that it isn’t?
In 2009 Google I/O was sold out only after ninety days and Apple’s WWDC was sold out only after more than thirty days. In 2010 both conferences sold out only after a few days.
That both conferences now sell out in substantially less than a day is newsworthy and a grand feat.
The quickness at which this sold out prompts a few questions:
1. I guess only small development houses are going this year because most big companies can't get purchasing approved that fast. I know mine wasn't able to.
2. Is it time for Apple to consider a format to allow more people to attend? Their platform has grown 10x in 5 years, but the conference is still in the same facility.
3. Did Apple release fewer tickets this year to hold more tickets for their partners? I know last year, the conference sold out quick, and that didn't allow big companies time to react. I question if even Apple's purchasing department could have made a purchase this quick if they were invited to attend such a popular conference.
4. Does this mean that people are now going to be scalping WWDC tickets? Their value is clearly much more than $1600.