Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is back in its all-online format

I’m lucky to have bought an AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule just before they were discontinued. I have no idea who I’d turn to now for plug and play home networking. I hope they come out with some updates, because I don’t feel like doing research into that space again.

While certainly some people have been hired from Mozilla, I don't think it's particularly significant.

The areas which have seen increased activity are mostly down to earlier architectural work being completed, both speeding up new feature development and accounting for lack of new features previously.

This is basically the "flipped classroom model", which I like a lot.

I think a dedicated in-person conference where it was assumed you had already watched pre-prepared videos and then presenters did either "office hours" for semi-formal group Q&A or "labs" for hands-on working through examples together would be pretty awesome.

Online events give me loads of fatigue. In-person events energize me. The backroom conversations are why they’re great.

At the beginning I was always into the speakers. Later I realized they were really a gimmick to bring us together.

Clubhouse captures some of this in person magic. There was also a book club that was pretty good. Slate I think it’s called.

Let’s hope Apple can capture this. :)

However I see the benefit for having a local audience for those who can make it there but we are still a year off before travel resumes to normal levels if not 2023. However being such world wide company perhaps they will in the future have similar events or simultaneous events across the world.

As an participant for me the "hallway track" often is the most interesting, where I get into random discussions and run into people In otherwise rarely meet.

Just a few recent off the top of my head:

- Paddleboard breakouts at East Meets West

- Asking Vinod a question about next-gen registers at Program Synthesis Conference

- Animated discussion about cpu design over beers post conference in SF

- Talking to a startup about IOT management on the roof of an Accel event

And some ones from 10+ years ago:

- When I was a college student sitting on a folding chair and chatting with a nice woman about the startups pitching at TechCrunch40 (turned out to be M Mayer)

- Drew pitching me on Dropbox before launch in Cambridge (boring, I thought)

- Nate pitching me AirBedAndBreakfast in Mountain View (loved the idea from the get go)

The only things that have come close to being memorable online were some recent Teamflow ice breaker type events we did at Our World in Data around the virtual campfire.

Personally, as someone who now happily works remote 100% of the time, I would be more inclined to attend a local in-person conference than ever before.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUnTthHVMCI

One of my favourite live SJ scenes, at the QA of a new-hire meeting:

Person thinking they're clever: What would you do differently if you had unlimited resources?

SJ, after short pause: I do.

I have worked on design and events for user conferences for several medium-size-ish software firms. Last year, our long-standing annual conference went online-only. And I tell ya: night and day differences in terms of stress levels.

There is still that crunch to get things to MVP state to show off, and people still need to record talks and hold Zoom meetings, but something about not having to deal with physically preparing a space just made it all so much easier. (And our event space was literally across the street.) No machine/projector drama, no conference wifi falling apart, nobody with late flights…

When I go to the in person conferences, it is easy to say I'm out of the office those days, and focus on the conference.

With the online ones, I always end up getting pulled into stuff, but it's ok because I can just listen in the background.

Cost isn't much of an issue. iOS developers tend to be paid well and even then it's often a reimbursed expense. I'm obviously not speaking for everyone here.

Most notably it's a means to network with other developers. One can recruit, find out more about other companies, meet the people working on their favorite open-source project, etc. Hands on technical support is significantly easier than doing it remotely, especially when external devices are involved.

Lastly, for many it's a chance to unwind and take a pseudo-vacation. The San Jose area has lots to do, there's plenty of evening events, and there's plenty of people who you'd have something in common with to socialize with.

Conferences in general? I hope not. Remote conferences just defeat the point. There's no food. No hotels. Nobody to chat with. Defeats the entire purpose if you ask me.

I'm curious because so far I haven't attended any online conference: What has been done /experiment with during the last year especially to foster interaction between the people attending instead of just having someone talking into a camera?

But I do find it fascinating how much of an example of pandemic-conscious they had been trying to be.

"ah, nothing can go wrong because it is pre-recorded" part of the thrill of performance theatre is the suspense of perfection and error.

But how much of that directly impacts the local economy vs going into corporate coffers which are not necessarily anywhere near the convention site?

Giving $100 to each of ten employees at a chain restaurant would probably have a bigger impact on the local economy (or at least the micro-economy of the employees) than spending $5,000 on food at the same restaurant.