WWDC for First Timers

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As you may already have guessed, I've been to WWDC19. There was a ton of releases which in fact did blew minds. (🤯). For the ones who don't know, it is an Apple event which lasts 5 days. If you want to try next year, you should submit your apple ID for the lottery when available.

Registry

Ido recommend getting your badge for it on sunday as if you try to get it on monday you may lose part of the keynote. You don't need to rush for the registry line. It flows particularly well. It is also a great time to meet people, know who are you facing in the subsequent week.

Keynote

There are 3 main events in the first day. The first one is the keynote. That's where all the secrets, launches, releases, new products are announced. Information is starting to enter your brain. The second one is the state of the union. This is where all keynote information is detailed for the developers, your brain starts to make a lot of questions on the topics provided. The third one is Apple Design Awards. Developers who had built/published great apps get awarded a prize (and every one of Apple's top of the line products).

Presentations

During the week, Apple engineers do a lot of presentations, all of which described in the wwdc app. In 2019 there were some for machine learning, some for augmented reality, swiftUI. These presentations do provide a lot of details on the state of the union presented topics. There are tons of presentations and a lot of them do overlap, so choose wisely. Do you need to go watch the presentations? Exceptionally for the 3 mentioned above (in the first day) not really.

Labs

Here things start to get interesting. There are 11 labs in which Apple engineers talk to visitors. They could help you solve your bugs, answer your doubts, debug that evil crash. There are labs from watch OS to Core Data. But there's an interesting tidbit here. There are a limited amount of engineers and time, so whatever question you have:

-try to find the solution yourself. Sometimes just another look provides the solution.

-Ask other developers (there are a ton of then over, from juniors to specialists). A different point of view sometimes helps. Take notice I said developers, plural. Try to know as many people as possible. It will surely help positively our community growth.

Devices

Just don't bring your main devices to wwdc. There will be an utterly fast wired internet connection for you to download and experiment with beta software. Beta software sometimes goes unpredictable, specifically on OS level. Bring test devices so you can install the betas without any worries.

Networking

Thats the best part of WWDC. There are iOS/Mac/… developers from all over the globe. You receive some country identification pins at registry so everybody is easily identifiable. Talk to as many people as possible. Get together, lunch together, play together, follow up on social media together. The most valuable WWDC leftover.

Food

There was a wide variety of food. They serve breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. You will only need to worry with dinner. But be smart…as there are a lot of people at the event, some types of meals finish early than others. There are a lot of nightly events happening, see Parties section for details.

Concerts

It's tuesday, you're hyped. There is a small but pretty good concert at the plaza. It helps you chill out for the busy week to come. You do need to get a special wristband (showing your ID) so that you are allowed to drink beer at the event. It's thursday, you 've had a busy week. At the end of the day they present the bash, located nearby mcenery convention center. Every year apple chooses a famous band to play a pocket show. They serve food, drinks, and there are a lot of games such as billiards, ping pong, foosball. It's the best time to have fun with other developers, engineers, designers…

Music

There is always some music playing throughout WWDC…. a set of repeating songs. They make it easy to remember the event, being remarkable songs. Apple creates an Apple Music playlist with some (but not all) musics from wwdc, though developers do their own version keeping reference to all. Talk to people, get together.

External events

San Jose hosts Alt Conf at the same time as WWDC. It took place at the closest hotel from Mc enery Convention Center. In fact, you could see some of WWDC at the Alt Conf'’s "window".There are some company stands, such as Amazon, bitrise,…). Personally I do believe Alt Conf joiners feel envy of WWDC attendees. I've been told they do have some sessions, but on old content, not as fresh as WWDC.

Parties

Ifyou ever thought of going to WWDC, you need to download "Parties at WWDC" app. You'll see a lot of related night events happening at the city. There are famous podcasts recordings, and even meetings/happy hours where great iOS developers get together to meet. You definitely should consider some extra cash to join these events.