Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

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The building is packed all week. I don't think that keynote-only attendees are a significant factor here. If the two were separated, then maybe it would have sold out in 80 seconds this year instead of 70 seconds. Big deal.

The imbalance between the number of people willing to pay $1600 for the conference and the number of tickets available is so enormous by this point that there's simply no way to make it fair. It doesn't matter if it's first-come-first-served, or a lottery, or if you give preference to people who went before, or people who haven't gone before, or anything. No matter what you do, you're going to leave out a ton of people who deserve to go.

The event needs a bigger venue or some other radical change if it's to avoid leaving a lot of people out in the cold. Maybe Apple doesn't care, and nothing says they have to make any changes at all. But if they do care, then something really has to give. They need a vastly bigger space, or multiple conferences throughout the year, or a higher price, or something to manage the insane demand, if they actually want to improve this stuff.

Who really cares about the content? A ton of people. Buying a ticket only for the keynote is simply not a problem, and it's obvious just from being at the conference and talking to people who go or who want to go but can't because they couldn't buy a ticket.

So one interesting thing is that the "two disparate events, one conference" problem goes a little deeper. There seem to be four "things" you get out of WWDC:

1. Meeting with people (can be achieved without a ticket and just going to SF that week)

2. The sessions (many of which are recorded and thus largely don't require a ticket, but some are not I think?)

3. The keynote (not actually important for developers)

4. 1-on-1 with engineers. As far as I can tell the only truly unique and universally considered valuable aspect of the conference that absolutely requires a ticket.

So it seems that (4) is the real value here, probably more to do with the fact that its so hard to get developer help from Apple any other time of the year. Since you mention radical changes, I wonder if it would be worth it for Apple to just prerecord ALL sessions, make them all available after a Keynote that has nothing to do with the conference, and then offer a WWDC week that just focused on direct contact with engineers. This would actually be better for the sessions too: many times I've had a question about a session, and either there wasn't time to answer it then, or I didn't think of it until much later. By having a conference full of people that had plenty of time to review content beforehand, you'd probably get more questions answered.

I think that #1 is still enormously enhanced by the conference itself. You don't get the same experience if you just hang out in the area that week. (Or I assume you don't, I've not tried it.) The serendipitous socialization aspects are a big deal, even only looking at doing it with people who don't work at Apple.

I agree that #2 isn't all that important (although there are probably some people who learn better in that sort of environment) and #3 is basically just a free show that you get with your ticket and could easily be made completely separate.

I like the idea of a week that's just focused on direct contact with engineers, but I fear that it would end up in very inefficient uses of their time due to being flooded with people asking basics because they couldn't be bothered to watch the intro sessions. In general, I fear what would happen without enough structure. But perhaps it could be made to work, and it certainly seems worth considering.

The obvious first step seems like a bigger venue, though. Apple keeps saying they can't... but other companies pull it off, so I have to wonder why Apple can't.

> They need a vastly bigger space, or multiple conferences throughout the year, or a higher price, or something to manage the insane demand, if they actually want to improve this stuff.

Regarding multiple conferences, Apple decided not to do the Tech Talks for 2012. I hope they'll reconsider for 2013. That really was a great resource to have, and the 1:1 with the evangelists and DTS was excellent.

For higher prices, I keep on hearing this rumor and it never happens. There was a bump in the prices around 2010, and it never went further up from there. Maybe they're afraid of pricing out the indie developers? I have no idea.

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