I was one of the earliest successful indie iOS developers. I've had my apps featured on Apple TV ads and billboards, and they've had tens of millions of downloads. The days of being able to do that are long gone. You'll have a few breakout hits every once in a while like HQ and Houseparty, but the amount of marketing needed to get there often outweighs development costs. There's a few big players and there's not much benefit to the long tail anymore unless you have an expensive niche app. I've recently switched to being a blockchain / Ethereum developer and there's a ton of conferences and 2-3 events a week in New York. Marco should title this "The end of indie iOS conferences".

Swift has kind of taken a life of its own outside of just iOS. There's a few big Swift conferences each year, even ones specific to functional programming. I'm also excited for its prospects on the server.