Next week, San Francisco will become the extremely concentrated stomping ground of Mac developers from around the world. I’m attending this year and am very excited (if a bit overwhelmed!) by the amount of activities that I’m scheduled to participate in both within the official confines of the conference, and outside those walls in various lunch meetings and evening meet-ups.

This is the first WWDC I’ve ever paid for. Ouch! That part stings – but I think it will be worth it. The last WWDC I attended was in San Jose, while I was still working at Apple. I had been several years running, although to be honest I didn’t spend all that much time in the sessions or parties. As a member of the Core Services team I had little time or inclination to be too curious about the various technologies that comprised “complete developer landscape.” Usually I learned about technologies as they related to the Core Services functionality that my team was providing.

This year is going to be different. As an independent software developer, I’m interested in — no, fascinated by — almost every facet of the system. The reason of course is that almost every facility Apple provides has the potential to be useful to me in providing new features to my users.

The other huge difference between now and then is the number of people I have become acquainted with outside of Apple. I have to confess that as an inside developer I didn’t go out of my way to make friends with 3rd party developers. I did meet a few at various developer kitchens and through email correspondence, but mostly I just stuck with my Apple friends. This WWDC will be exciting because I’ll get to see so many of my old Apple friends again, and also see so many of the 3rd party developers I’ve come to know through the web.

Meet Me In San Francisco

If you’re going to WWDC, be sure to wear a flower in your hair. Whoops, phrase-o. If you’re going to WWDC, and you have an interest in meeting me, I’ll be showing up in some predictable places throughout the week. These events all promise to be jam-packed with interesting folks. They’re not the only places you’ll find me, but they’re probably the most reliable (i.e. I’ll be there for a while):

I would be honored to meet any readers of this blog who happen to stumble upon me. Don’t worry, it will be easy to spot me in the crowd. I’ll be the nerdy programmer!

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