I would go to WWDC if I knew there would be info about an iPhone OS device in a new screen size/form factor. Nothing else is that urgent.That would be very important news for iPhone developers. But I’d still have a hard time justifying the trip.
I’m curious to hear from other developers on this who have attended WWDC. For me to go, it would cost:
- $1600 for a WWDC ticket.
- 4-5 nights in a hotel. No idea. Ballpark of $700?
- A plane ticket from JFK, about $450.
- Transportation and expenses out there. Ballpark of $350 if I don’t rent a car and eat reasonably frugally.
- A week off from work.
Total cost of attending: at least $3,100.
I was able to make my iPhone app reasonably without attending last year’s WWDC, even though it was an all-new platform with an all-new API in a language I didn’t know. And now I know enough that some of the WWDC sessions might be too basic to be worthwhile. I’m sure I can continue to get by without actually attending. Furthermore, if I really need some help, I can buy the set of instructional session videos a few weeks later for about $500, a fraction of the cost of actually going there.
I’m sure it’s valuable, but is it $3,100-valuable for an independent developer doing this in his free time? I highly doubt it, but I’d love to hear opinions from people like me who have attended.
There are a lot of other ways I could spend $3,100 that would directly improve my app and increase its sales.
I’ve been a handful of times to WWDC and as much as I love it, for the great many developers, it’s not worth the money. I would instead encourage them to attend something like 360iDev that is far more economical and includes some fun stuff like Jailbreaking. That being said, as long as WWDC is not the 2 weeks after my wedding at the end of June, I will be going.
I’m lucky enough that I have friends in SF I can crash with, that it’s within bearable driving distance and that the BART/MUNI can take me just about everywhere (I park in Berkeley and take the BART into SF, driving in SF gives me too much of a headache). The cost of attending is lower for me, so I don’t feel the same pain Macro or other East Coast developers feel coming all the way out to SF.
This conference is a chance a) meeting the top developers in the Mac/iPhone world, b) learning from said developers, c) learning from Apple and d) and a lot of little things that I can’t put into words. There is lot of good stuff at WWDC that doesn’t immediately translate into improving a developers bottom line but for anyone serious enough about iPhone/Mac development, there is no place better to spend a week than WWDC.
Now if Apple will just announce the date already…
