WWDC 2008

So after a long time of wondering when Apple will ever announce WWDC it has finally been announced and will be from June 9 - 13 in Moscone West in San Francisco. I will be making it out to WWDC this year and it seems everybody from the AmesMUG and Des Moines CocoaHeads will be making it out as well. Already on twitter i've seen many developers start scheduling their flights and hotels. iPhone SDK The big addition to this years conference is the addition of the iPhone track and obviously the discussion of the iPhone SDK and how to design, code, debug & deploy your iPhone applications to the world. From Apples WWDC iPhone Page:

iPhone OS is the world’s most advanced mobile operating system providing developers with an amazing platform for creating the next generation of innovative mobile applications. Choose from a wide range of sessions offered in the iPhone development track and gain the knowledge you need to develop captivating native and web-based applications for iPhone and iPod touch.

Undoubtedly the public iPhone SDK will probably be released to the world at WWDC alongside the iPhone 2.0 firmware allowing people to run these apps on their iPhones and iPod Touches. This could only be sweeter if the Pragmatic Coders: Core Animation book was released about this time as well (btw I haven't had a chance to read all of it yet, but so far what i've seen is very good. I won't say much more on it right now, because I want to read all of it before posting any reviews and I wouldn't wanna spoil the fun of getting a beta copy for you :) Students If you're a student there isn't much you can do about WWDC right now unless you wanna pay the price to go. Apple (as always) does offer student scholarships to help students get a chance to go. As far as I am aware they have not announced anything yet in the way for student scholarships. The WWDC Students page and WWDC Students Rules page all just do redirects to Apples WWDC page currently. Just keep following Apple news and this blog and when it's announced you'll know when the student scholarship is available. Is it worth it? WWDC is absolutely worth it for anybody interested in developing apps for Mac OS X or the iPhone/iPod touch or if your just working with Mac's in IT. You get to watch some great sessions and get excellent tips on development from Apple themselves. Additionally you get to meet up and network with other Mac developers including the ones who develop the very apps you use. Additionally there are parties and gatherings by various groups and developers for all sorts of purposes which are worth checking out. I will be there and probably will be posting to twitter (as best I can without breaking my NDA) where I am and where I am going. So if your there and you see me don't be afraid to say hi and talk. I wish I could do the same for other developers. I totally chickened out of talking to Wil Shipley and Aaron Hillegass partially because im just naturally shy, even though they are the reason I am able to develop apps on Mac OS X right now. If I can i'd like to try and say hi to the above mentioned Wil Shipley & Aaron HIllegass in addtion to people like Scott Stevenson, Wolf Rentzsch, Matt Gemmell, Gus Mueller and too many other developers to list off here individually. Speaking of other developers my newest hero is Daniel Jalkut who makes the excellent MarsEdit blog application, which I am using from here on out to do my blog posts when I realized how much time I saved by doing posts through MarsEdit than through the web. I promise I will really resist to do shameless plugs in the future, but I figure something that makes it easier for me to get information to you is worth mentioning just once. Conclusion If you have the resources and a free week available then I would strongly encourage you to go and enjoy a week in San Francisco with all the other Mac developers out there. You'll have a good time, do some networking and learn a lot of development tips in the process. I'll see you there.