[jamieorc]

I'm pondering going to the WWDC next month and I'm interested to hear what those of you who have been to one got out of it. What was good and what was bad?

Jamie

[wadesworld]

I've never been to one, but I have viewed the session videos. From doing that, I'd say it's well worth the time and money. You can view last years videos online now for free at developer.apple.com. (You'll need broadband)

But, I would imagine like most conferences, the real benefit is making new contacts and getting to interact with other developers.

Wade

[King Chung Huang]

I've been to WWDC the last two years (2000 & 2001), and I'll be there again this year. The one thing I'm most looking for to: Jamba Juice

[larkost]

Having been to a WWDC (two years ago), I can say that if you make you money either developing for or as a high-level support consultant in Apple products it si well worth it. You get to learn either the philosophy behind the products (in the overview tracks) or the nuts-and-bolts behind specific technologies (the in-depth tracks). This was very valuable to me, plus it was a whole lot of fun.

[reversi]

WWDC 2000 was really good. We had access to very interesting and new pieces of information on Mac OS X.

I didn't attend WWDC 2001 but I watched almost all the DVDs and sadly it was only the same sessions, same information that were given at WWDC 2000 (except for few exceptions).

When you have a look at the WWDC 2002 sessions, it's 80% the same topics that were discussed in the 2 previous Conferences. Yet you can still find some potentially interesting stuff (Disc Burning session for instance) but hearing for the 3rd time what are the main classes in the Foundation and AppKit is a quite boring. The Network sessions are definitely boring : you learn nothing at all, last year session on kext for instance was void.

The last year sessions I found interesting were :
- the Cocoa optimization session
- the Speech Synthesis/Recognition session (one of the best sessions)
- the QuickTime oveview session
- the Sampling and debugging tool session
- the Aqua session
- the Icon designing session was cool but did not bring any valuable information.

If you skip 90% of the Mac OS X Overview session, this one is interesting too.

So if you're going there for the first time, it's really interesting. If you're going there for the second time or more, well 80% of sessions are rediffusion and you're going to pick only few new pieces of information. But aside from the sessions, people at WDDC are great and you may get a 10.2 seed.

[Ghoser777]

All I can say: Quake 3 on a whole bunch of G4 Towers

Honestly, I ended up playing a lot of Quake 3 because either the material was a mile over my head, or a mile beneath me. Some of the sessions are kind of boring, but it depends on the speaker. But the week was definetly worth it, if only for the cool back pack. You also get to network with other developers, eat lost of food, practice implementing code and ask Apple developers for some explanation for why X Cocoa bug still persists, etc.

If I had money, I'd go again. Alas, I'm poor, so I'll just have bug my friends for all the goodies they're learning about.

F-bacher

[Chaaaosss]

The WWDC is great if you're a scholarship student because it means free food every day. Here's how it works: Everyone shows up about a half an hour before the first session begins and we grab continental breakfast, we go to two sessions, get catered lunch (which was always just okay but again, we weren't paying for it), and then go to some more sessions (during which, a thousand guys assemble these big round tables in the lobby to hold every kind of candy imaginable, as well as soda, and healthy stuff too -- free for the taking: if they run out, they replenish). And there's free Jamba Juice as well (some other vendors had space as well).

The other perks for a student developer is the Sunday before and the getaway mid-week. The Sunday before introduced us to Cocoa and WebObjects (allowing us to skip the formal introductory sessions), more free food, and a job fair (both Apple and Adobe, along with some other names, were well represented). The mid-week getaway was to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk (which they "bought" for us for about 3 or 4 hours I think). There are other perks but you need to figure them out on your own -- just be nice to the Apple reps at the job fair and you'll see them again.

[Edit:] Oh, and you get a wicked bag, pen, notebook, and guide, all with Apple badging. And another thing -- all the guys you see on those ADC sessions always stick around at the end (even after Q&A) to talk to developers or interested students. It's very, very communal. Airport's everywhere too, of course.

[ 04-19-2002: Message edited by: Chaaaosss ]

[aleph_null]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
<STRONG>All I can say: Quake 3 on a whole bunch of G4 Towers
</STRONG>

hee. yeah. that was fun. not only G4 towers, but G4 towers with cinema displays and nVidia cards running on OSX.