My Trip to WWDC 2011

As most of you probably know, last week I was in San Francisco during WWDC. I didn’t actually attend the conference; I was simply in town to meet with all the other nerds who were there.

It took some guts to get on a plane and fly to the city for the week while having no agenda and no reason to go other than to meet people. It was a very fun and very exhausting trip.

Fun because I got to meet all sorts of great people — many of whom I’d only ever known on Twitter or email, and many of whom I previously had not known at all. It was exhausting because I was out there on my own and was constantly having “new” conversations with people I didn’t really know that well.

I was not the only person in town without a conference badge, and not one person I met thought I was odd for flying out simply to meet and hang out with folks. In fact, there were several people I spoke with who said they were considering not purchasing a badge for next year. Though, on the other hand, pretty much every developer I spoke to said a badge to WWDC was the best $1,600 they could spend on their career.

Here is an unordered list of tidbits regarding my trip to San Francisco:

  • AT&T service was just fine. I’ve only ever heard horror stories and wise cracks about what poor reception AT&T gets in San Francisco, but I had several bars everywhere I went. In fact, service was so good for me that I used my iPhone to tether my laptop when working from my hotel room because the 3G was faster than hotel wi-fi.

  • The best place for coffee in downtown San Francisco was Blue Bottle Coffee. I say this not because I tried all the other coffee shops, but because I didn’t try a single other coffee shop. Every visit to Blue Bottle, no matter the time, was greeted with a line out the door.

They brew every cup of coffee as you order it — there is no drip coffee “on tap” because they even brew that individually by the cup. And everything they brew is brewed their way in one size. I tried to order an Americano with steamed half-and-half but they don’t steam creamer. Also, they only brew Americanos in one size. All these peculiarities add up to a great cup of coffee. I had many great drinks and many great conversations at Blue Bottle.

  • Since I wasn’t actually attending the conference, I had no daily schedule. My routine each day consisted of using Twitter and email to have spur-of-the-moment meet ups. But that was the norm for just about everyone. It was a mix of people reaching out to me on Twitter or email wanting to meet up, and me reaching out to others to meet up.

And I met a lot of people. Which was the entire point of my trip. I wanted to shake hands and talk face to face with those whom I work with, write about, and connect with online so regularly.

  • Not every meet-up was planned. It was very common to bump into someone whom I knew or recognized. And I would always introduce myself and say hello whenever I could. Sometimes I would meet someone and we’d be able to hang out. Other times I’d meet them we would chat for a few minutes and then both go on with our day.

  • There was the third group of people that I met: the friends of friends. Many times I would be having coffee with someone, when a person that they knew would walk up to say hi. I would introduce myself, or get introduced, and thus meet someone new. This is often when business cards got exchanged. Nearly everyone at WWDC had a business cards, and, no offense to those there, my cards were by far and away the best cards there.

I recently had Evan Calkins make some letterpressed calling cards with nothing but my email on them. While it’s true that there are times when you need more info on your card than that, my email address ([email protected]) gives all the information that most people needed to know: my name, my website, and how to contact me.

  • Most meet-ups were usually followed up with a tweet about how nice it was to meet that person. I also kept a log in my Field Notes notebook about who I met, where we met, and what they did.

  • I cannot stress enough how fantastic it was to meet with so many developers, designers, and other writers. It was great to make a real life, personal connection with all these people whom I work alongside and write about each day. I know that the conversations and meet ups which took place during WWDC will make me a better writer for this site.

So, in short, if your career is at all tied to the Mac community (as a writer, designer, developer, consultant, etc.) then you should be in San Francisco during WWDC. And if you make software for Apple’s platforms at any level higher than the slightest of hobbies then you probably want a ticket to the conference. See you next year.

My Trip to WWDC 2011

There are two things which irk me about the iPhone’s native Voice Memos app: (1) If you record a memo that is too long, the only way to get that memo onto your computer is to sync; and (2) the only other way to get the memo onto your computer is to email it to yourself.

I often record voice memos to myself regarding articles I’m working on or other ideas. This is especially when I’m in the car because things have a tendency to pop into my mind when I’m driving around running errands, and the only way to capture that is to record a voice memo.

Also, there are times (such as while I was in San Francisco last week) that I record Shawn Today using my iPhone.

Last week I began using DropVox instead of the native Voice Memos app. Basically this app creates a folder in your Dropbox account, and then when you launch the app you have one option: record. You record your voice memo and the app uploads it to your Dropbox account in the previously created DropVox folder. And it uploads it fast, too.

The audio quality is not quite as good as what you’ll get with the native Voice Memos app, but the utility of DropVox is superb. If you’re regularly recording voice memos that you don’t want confined to your iPhone, this one-dollar app is a great choice.

DropVox

Many thanks to Typekit for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. As a matter of fact I decided to sign up for a Typekit account about two weeks ago. (They didn’t give me any sort of deal — I paid for it myself with my own money.)

Before I signed up for Typekit I had a few preconceived notions about it. That: (a) installing Typekit would be difficult; (b) using Typekit would slow my site down; and (c) I had no need for custom typefaces for the sake of branding my site.

However, since Typekit offers a free 30-day trial I decided to give it a shot. It was one of those evenings where you feel like hacking away on some code, and I figured it’d be a chance to have fun and educate myself on precisely how Typekit actually works. Well, I learned that all three of my assumptions about Typekit were wrong.

For one, Typekit was incredibly easy to set up. I simply picked out the header and body fonts I wanted to use, added them to my “kit”, put some javascript code into my site’s header and then changed what typefaces are first in my CSS file’s font stack.

Secondly, my “kit” only weighs in at 196K, or about the size of a few screenshots. I’ve noticed no lag or issues with the loading of the site.

And Thirdly, the branding issue: Yes the typefaces I’m using are unique, but more importantly is that I find the site more readable than it was before. I used to use Lucida Grande as my body font. It was too small at 12px and at 13px it starts looking ugly. Now I use Gesta which is very open and has a generous x-height. It looks great on the screen and I think make the site very readable.

Typekit

Creatiplicity is a brand new podcast featuring yours truly and Chris Bowler. It’s the official Fusion Network podcast, and we will be interviewing the fabulously wonderful people within the Fusion network. And I love the name. Chris came up with it by combining creativity and simplicity. That is the heart of what we’ll be talking about on the show.

You can subscribe in iTunes. And while you’re there please be sure to give the show some ratings and reviews to help get it off the ground.

Introducing Creatiplicity

I think Federico’s article is not as wild of an opinion piece as it sounds. All this week at WWDC the idea that “iCloud is the operating system” was a common conversation I had with people. For one, on those big banners in the Moscone lobby — where it said “Lion + iOS 5 + iCloud = WWDC” — Apple placed iCloud on the same level as its two operating systems. And secondly, think about this:

  • Lion will be distributed via the Mac App Store — just like a Mac app.
  • iOS 5 will be updated and maintained over the air — just like an iOS app.

And so, if iCloud is the operating system then it’s almost as if Lion and iOS 5 have become a type of app. It’s an interesting and exciting time to be a nerd.

iCloud Is The Operating System

I’ve had several conversations with people wondering about how iCloud and iOS 5 will work for those of us with multiple family members each with their own iDevice (or two, or three). Specifically: if each person has their own Apple ID for their personal calendars and mail and contacts, how then do you share purchased music and apps? Brian Stucki’s figured out that it will be possible, though (currently) it’s a bit of a hack.

How iCloud Works With a Shared Apple ID