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WWDC from a first timers perspective

Tom and I went to WWDC to meet our 360|iDev speakers again, make new contacts, pimp the upcoming show in Denver and make some noise about InsideMobile. On those two fronts I think WWDC was a big success for us. The USB  Drive Scavenger hunt was really popular and each drive was found really fast.

From a conference attendee perspective, it’s too big, and seems to be all about Apple making us feel like we don’t matter. I’ll break my thoughts down below.

Keynote line: Tom and I got up early and waited in it. We’d never done it before so wanted to see what it was all about. We didn’t get up crazy early, but still waited outside for I think 2 hours, we were numbers 404 and 405 or something. About an hour before the keynote the line moves inside, where they’ve put out coffee and donuts and stuff. Then the line essentially breaks down into mayhem to get up the 4 escalators then mad rush into the keynote room. Why we waited in line to be ran past I don’t know. Why we waited in line when Apple could have let us get in and get seated earlier, I don’t know. Other than it’s a nice way for Apple to show everyone who’s in control.

Sessions: with 5200 people in attendance and only like 12 or so sessions at a time, do the math, each session was a mini keynote. Complete with having to wait in line to get into the room. Why wait in line? No discernible reason, other than (to me) to further make sure everyone knew it was Apple’s show we waited in line at their leisure.

Each session had at least 400-500 people, some filled to capacity, around 1500. How do you present a topic to 1500 people? just like a keynote, you talk at the crowd. Each session ended with “go see these sessions to get more info” pitches then a little Q&A where you have to go stand at a mic, ask your question, take the answer and sit down.

Content: I’ll admit, a great deal of the content was over my head. I’m still very much a novice iPhone app dev. Be that as it may, it was still very dry and very not deep. A lot of the time, sessions were slides of code, with explanations (i can read the docs myself). Every once in a while a session would get into some live coding,but that wasn’t the norm.

Oh and since each session was a mini keynote, they dimmed the lights, and kept it warm, it was WAY too easy to fall asleep, especially in the more “sales pitch” type sessions.

After Hours: WWDC is like… well I don’t know, I’ve never partied like that before that I recall. THough I barelly recall the partying I did at WWDC, so…

There’s at least 6 or more parties every night. Most are “invite only” or “RSVP and hope you get a ticket” deals, which sucks, and further promotes the crazy superstar nonsense that exists. Sadly most party venues are dive bars around downtown SF, so they’re crowded, noisy, did I mention crowded and noisy? The House of Sheilds is a popular place to end up. Bring a catheter and strap a bag to your calf. The bathroom (used as loosely as possible) is like stepping into the 9th level of hell, which if you’re curious is the sewer for the other 8 levels.

WWDC’s official party is a concert in the Yerba Buena park. We got there just as Cake started their encore (The Distance, w00t!) and as soon as the band finished, the tables were cleared off, the booze stations closed up, and the stage crew went to work. This was all before the folks up front had stopped jumping up and down. Very weird.

As much as I liked the parties, they were completely useless for meeting people. You ended up in a group that migrated place to place and sometimes members would come and go, but meeting new people was tough. If you were in one of the parties the music and voices were so loud, you couldn’t hardly talk.

I much prefer the 1 party to rule them all approach that Tom and I do. Sure the people who need their own party to feel special, are denied that, but hey, they can still throw a party elsewhere. Cynergy did it in Seattle. But at least you can meet people, talk, and not be running from place to place trying to catch up to the “in crowd”

Overall: WWDC is just like MAX. It’s the place to go to be seen, it’s the place where you’re assured to be in the presence of people like Wil Shipley and Brent Simmons (though, Brent will be at 360|iDev) and the rest of the luminary Mac/iPhone guys. Oh and of course Gruber, who probly will never be at one of our events.

It’s not the place to get a ton of new knowledge. It’s not the place to try and meet new people, forge new relationships, etc.

It is the place to get new NDA goodies you can’t talk to anyone about, and of course be in the room, when a new laptop is announced.

It’s definitely the place for Apple to assert their dominance over us all, and make sure we know our place in the order of things,which is pretty low.

Tags: WWDC

Florida is nice when it’s not humid

February is a busy month, this one more so than most others.

My mom’s birthday is the 9th, mine the 13th, of course valentines day, and Tom and I have 360|iDev coming up in March.

We went to Florida to celebrate mom’s birthday at Walt Disney World, which was a ton of fun! I’ve never been before, so it was cool, we hit The Magic Kingdom, Animal Safari, and Hollywood studios. My favorite ride was the new toy story Midway, that was hella fun!

This was a good time to be at Disney World, it wasn’t too crowded, which is a good thing, since I hate crowds. The longest wait I think we had for the jungle cruise of all things! Having now experienced the Magic Kingdonm, I’ll take DisneyLand. Space mtn is way better in CA!!

It’s always amazing to me, how big resorts see “guests” verses smaller chains. You can find wifi in more low price hotels and motels these days, and ethernet is many others.  Disney apparently wants you in your room (understandable) as little as possible, charging 10 bucks a day for ethernet. No wifi. I can’t say I was shocked, but I mean come on Disney, Wifi by the pool maybe? Or the lobby, or heck go all out, rooms too! A Disney resort isn’t someplace peeps come to work, but it’s nice to check your email once in a while, or upload your photos to the cloud.

Thankfully I travel with my Sprint card, but man it’s weak to just not have wifi.

My birthday was not as exciting, I caught a cold our last day in Florida and brought it home with with. Boo!

I’m at least glad, that I’m getting a cold out of the way before 360|iDev, I can’t wait to meet so many new friends! I can’t wait to learn more about iPhone app development!

Tags: Vacation

It happens to the best of us from time to time

First: I suck at time zones. Plain out suck at them.

Second: I sometimes have trouble with plane flights, mostly keeping track of when they leave, if I’m in a different time zone (see above).

So,Tom and I were at Macworld last week. We were pounding the pavement talking to iPhone developers and development companies, about 360|iDev.

I landed at 11:10 on Wednesday night, we had a late meal, and planned for our day.

We spent the day hoofin’ it around, then I had to head back to SFO to fly home. My flight was at 9:15pm (Denver time)

Unfortunately, since I didn’t update the calendar on my macbook, since I wasn’t in town long enough, when I checked my calendar, it was still 9:15pm.

So with plenty of time to spare, Tom and I hit up Round Table Pizza in Millbrae, talking about the day, celebrating a job well done and day well spent.

Tom drops me off at SFO, i got to the Frontier counter, and no one is there, weird. Swipe my credit card, “can’t check you in, you’re flight as boarded”, lady comes out. The message on the screen doesn’t really register. She tries to check me in, can’t. Calls the gate on speaker and they open the list for me, and tell her to tell security to rush me through.

By this point I’m beginning to realize something’s amiss. I ask her when my flight is, “8:15″ she replies.

“uh oh, I musta messed up my calendar. I’m sorry”

“you’re lucky, the flight was delayed, otherwise it’d be gone. But they made up some time so they’re about to be boarding.”

She get’s me in a seat and walks me to the security checkpoint.

Here’s where Kharma comes in to the picture. Late and slightly frazzled at the realization of my dumbness, I’m still a pretty goo flier, by the time she was sliding me into the next spot in line before the xray. I was shoes off, laptop out, coat off, ziplock bag out.

Old guy behind me, “so what’s the reason for cutting in line?”

Nice Frontier lady, “Sir, this gentlemen is running late, his flight is boarding, I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t miss his flight.”

“And who’s fault is that?”

Me, “Mine, I’m very sorry, I messed up my iternary and fell terrible. I’m very sorry, thank you though.”

I collect my things on the otherside of the x-Ray machine, easy peasy, having caused almost zero disruption in the line, which by the way was only like 4 people long, I probly coulda made it.

An incredibly nice TSA agent leans over, “Don’t worry about mr. Bad attitude. I hate that!”

I look back at Mr. Cranky, as the TSA agent says, “Bag check”

I almost told him not to do anything to Mr. Cranky, but was in such a hurry to get to my boarding flight, that I didn’t. Plus while I know I’d be silently cursing the person that had to cut my line, I also know “siht happens”, and there’s no point in punishing someone for it. I can only hope that when he’s in a similar position some one is kinder to him than he was to me.

I made my flight. I got to the gate (the first one out of security) with 5 minutes to spare before boarding began.

Tags: kharma, macworld

The Cloud isn’t all that

Something struck me as interesting this morning. I’ve written two articles for the new Flex Authority Quarterly Update, and we used Buzzword to hand the articles. The Author writes, shares with editor, who shares with tech and copy editors. Then we do the dance of copy/technical editing and review.

The other day, Editor in Cheif Jeff posed a question. “Move to word, from Buzzword?” There were a few reasons, easier approval/dismissal of tracked changes and comments, etc.

as of this morning there are 13 messages in that thread, all saying “Yeah, Word is fine.”

Many of the authors cited being able to work offline as a major plus for Word.

I gotta say I agree. I love Google Docs,  I use buzzword for 360|Flex and The Flex Show, but there’s something to be said for being able to work when there’s no WiFi. Like aboard planes, trains and automobiles, in the backwoods, at the ski resort, etc. There’s still a lot of the country, let alone world that are offline, so sometimes it’s nice to not have all your tools rely on the cloud. I use MobileMe to keep my macs in sync, I also make use of my iDisk a lot! I sync the entire thing locally, because I’ve wanted to work and guess what, not online, no iDisk. Thankfully iDisk syncing doesn’t completely suck, so it’s a pretty good experience.

As an example, when I was in Japan earlier this year, WiFi was non existant. I never saw an access point once. The hotel didn’t offer it, they had a ethernet cord in the wall for $15 a day. The Starbucks (yes, really) had none, the local coffee shops, had none. I suspect because everyone’s phone had internet, and they text and IM through that. While being offline isn’t the worst thing in the world, especially on vacation, it’s nice to have the option. I didn’t.

I think we’re in an interesting time; on the one side we have Adobe, Microsoft, Google, et al. pushing for Photoshop online, Buzzword, Office online, google docs, google reader, etc. They’re pushing really hard to make us want to be online all the time. To only edit docs in the cloud, to store our docs, our emails, our RSS feeds, etc all in the cloud. However on the other side of that “go online” agenda is the reality that wifi isn’t everywhere. Laptops don’t ship with built in cellular modems (OK some small few do), and tethering plans range from free to really expensive, if you have a phone that can even do it. The truth is, we’re offline a lot. More than I think Adobe, Google and Microsoft would like to think.

In my opinion we’re still quite a ways from a place were “being online” is a ubiquitous condition. I think the real technology winners will be the companies that can make their offerings work in both worlds. Buzzword as an AIR app. Google docs syncing locally through Google Gears. I actually saw a gDocs offline gears app, but haven’t seen it in a while, and the 1 time I tried to use it, it wasn’t remotely in sync, not sure if I needed to open it once in a while to sync or what. I assumed since it was gears it’d be in sync from the last time I was online? Guess not.

What do you think? Are you using only cloud based tools? Still using Word or Pages, etc to keep things locally where you always have access?

Tags: Cloud Computing, RIA

Thanksgiving in the mountains

Nicole and aren’t really Thanksgivng people. In CA we’d go for all you can eay Sushi (usually the only white folks in the place), but in CO that’s a bit tougher. We still try to get sushi, even if it’s not all you can eat.

This year we headed up into the mountains, for a little time away from the city. That sounds overly romantic, like we headed off to some small log cabin with no utilities. Actuall we went to Breckenridge to a condo at the base of Peak 9, with Wifi (it sucked, thank god for EVDO), and a kitchenette.

We didn’t get Sushi, since Mountain Flying Fish wasn’t opened, but we did enjoy an incredibly tasty meal at Blue River Bistro. Get the Creme Brulee!

Who woulda guessed that there’d be so little snow? Last year the resorts were screaming bloody murder about the lack of snow, so we all knew what was up. I guess this year they decided to keep their traps closed. There was 1 run open at Peak 9, a few on peak 8. The entire town of Breck was snow free on Wednesday and Thursday.

Finally Friday saw some awesome snow. We woke to it coming down, and it continued to fall all day, making the runs AWESOME, blessing and curse, that.

We got some good runs in, but man, PEOPLE SUCK. I know I’m not the only person on the mountain, but really folks, you aren’t either.

We did pick up some cool gifts for folks for Christmas, so that was cool and did enjoy yummy food. All in all the bar for Thanksgiving has been raised for us now!

That said, we’re not hitting the slopes in November anymore. Not worth it.

Tags: skiing, Thanksgiving

MAX ‘08 Day 1 Recap

Looooooooong day.

I’m about to pass out, but wanted to get my thoughts on MAX ‘08 day one down on paper.

For Tom and I, MAX San Francisco, started on Sunday. We ran some errands, put stickers on our fliers for 360|Flex Indy, and then headed over to Moscone for some socializing. We hit up the community leader mixer thing, which was awesome. Congrats to the team that organized it.

Monday morning we hit up MAX bright and early, setting up our 360|MAX Unconference area, which is a cool area.

Enter the Keynote. So, oddly enough the keynote didn’t start until 9:30 am, yet the doors opened at 7am. I found it a bit weird since breakfast was just sandwiches.

The keynote was good, I gotta admit, The pre show dude was AWESOME! (video above). Shantanu and Kevin are both great presenters I have to say. Kevin more so, he’s very casual, and seems to be pretty unflappable, even when things don’t go the right way.

The information in general was pretty much what you’d expect, “State of Flash” type stuff, blah blah. One cool thing was some future tech they demo’ed as strictly early labs internal, but really sweet! Screens that know what’s going on around them, even where they’re pointed. I’d post a video, but then it occured to me, it might not be fully “open to the public” I can’t imagine why, but ya never know. It was cool though!

OK, the rest of the day.

Tom and I were pretty much tethered to our unconference area, which went really well. Slow start, but I think we’ll start seeing more people as the word gets out more.

Our sessions were all kick ass, especially Mate and Degrafa, which really pulled folks in. Tuesday has a bunch more killer sessions!

The bummer is not being able to wander around as much as I’d like. MAX for me is walking around the halls, finding people to chat with. This time around, I gotta chat with those who come to us.

The general session for TUesday is supposed to be Gumbo, Thermo, and future goodness. We’ll see. I’ve got my Thermo and gumbo installed to play with.

360|Flex Indianapolis MAX discount!

Also for MAX attendees, make sure to swing by and see Tom or I. We’ve got 100 tickets to 360|Flex Indy, for only $100 each. That’s $150 or so off our lowest possible price. Available only during MAX, so there’s only two days left to get this price!

Tags: Adobe Flex, Adobe MAX, Conferences

360Flex Camp New Jersey wrap up

Meant to write this up sooner, but been a busy week at work.

New Jersey was our, first Flex Camp, so it had a few lessons learned to go with it.

1. Don’t red eye it the morning of the event. Tom’s flight was an hour late, then we had to get from JFK to Montclair State, in Jersey!

Driving in New York is definitely an experience, :)

Also, don’t plan FlexCamps around major financial meltdowns, that’s bad for attendance.

We had a great turn out, not huge, but given the price and the financial meltdown, I think the turn out was awesome. It was a great group; speakers and attendees.

The topics were all stellar!

The after camp party, well beers and appetizers, was great. It’s always nice to hang with the folks who give up their time to hang with us. Love it.

If you’re interested in hosting a Flex Camp, but don’t want or don’t know how to do some of the legwork let us know.

Tags: 360|Flex Camp

360Flex Camp New Jersey Arrived at JFK, sitting

The joys of having a business partner in another state/time zone; we don’t fly together, and rarely do we ever land at the same time when we fly places.

Case in point, today. We both red-eyed it to New York (JFK) for day two of 360|Flex Camp NJ. I arrived at 5am. Tom doesn’t arrive until almost 8. Nothing sucks more than killing time at an airport. Especially, i’ve found, doing it at JFK. I left the secure zone (first mistake) since I wasn’t sure which gate or terminal he’d be arriving at. Outside the secure zone, unlike DIA, SFO, or ATL. There’s not much going on, at least not at the terminal I’m at.

Power outlets seem to be as rare as unicorns, so by the time we arrive at 360|Flex Camp, I’ll be juiceless, LOL.

Ah well, two Dunkin Donuts dounts and a coffee, and I’m slightly coherent and mostly conscious.

w00t! By the way it’s not too late to register for 360|Flex Camp New Jersey! Register now or at the door (Cash or credit card only)

Tags: 360|Flex Camp

360|Flex Camp New Jersey THIS WEEK

w00t!

Tom and I will be in Jersey this weekend for 360|Flex Camp New Jersey. Jason from NJFlex, is working with us (or us with him) to put together what should be a really kick ass 2 day Flex Camp. Friday is a full day of training, by Flex Super stars, Farata Systems! Day two (Saturday) is a full kick ass day of Flex content, ranging from customer components, to Drupal integration, to Flex builder performance! It’s gonna rock!

It wouldn’t be a Flex Camp without SWAG, so we should have some pretty cool stuff for everyone, plus a fun after event get together for everyone to hang out and relax and chat!

Make sure you register! Space is limited and it’s gonna be a great event!

See you in Jersey!

Tags: 360|Flex Camp

Miss 360|Flex San Jose? Don’t miss 360|Flex Camp New Jersey

Tom and I are working with the NJFlex crew to bring 360|Flex to the east coast in a 2 day Flex Camp.

If you missed San Jose, or have never been to a 360|Flex event, this is the perfect chance to get a taste of what everyone is talking about.

Day 1, Flex training from Farata Systems

Day 2, Flex Camp action with sessions, food, sponsors, community! You name it!

Register now! Space is limited! 360|Flex San Jose sold out, no reason New Jersey won’t!

Tags: 360|Flex Camp