It’s sad to see Wolf close up C4. Sad to see Apple basically snub it’s nose at the mac desktop crowd.

Makes me wonder if (I’ve entertained this thought a few times) there should be a 360|Mac? Aimed specifically at the desktop app builders, bringing the same great content (Maybe more/better parties) the iPhone community has come to expect.

Nothing is firm, this is more just my thinking out loud post. I do love Mac desktop apps, I do think it’s a bummer that Apple is focusing all of WWDC on the iPhone.

What do you think? Point your mac dev friends to this post. if there’s interest, let’s do it.

Remember, this fall. 360|iDev Austin.

• Leave with new friends. Friends you’ll stay in touch with online in between conferences, and reconnect with at the next 360|iDev
• Leave with new projects. You met a great developer that you want to collaborate with, and a new game is born! (Just ask Keith and Natalia about teaming up with David Whatley on geoSpark)
• Leave with new employees/employers. You’re hiring, or looking for work. Odds are good you’ll leave with resumes, or actual new hires/new employers.
• Leave inspired. You’ll get home, jazzed about new techniques you learned, new concepts you picked up. New ideas you talked about over beers. With a keynote by David Whatley, a Wednesday General Session by Mike Lee, it’ll be heard to walk out uninspired!
• Leave 6 months ahead of the curve. You’ll get home and start working on things that others won’t be thinking about for months. New libraries that haven’t hit the mainstream yet, new ways of writing code, new frameworks, etc. You’ll be ahead of the pack when they finally catch on to what’s going on.
• Leave with new apps that just need to be cleaned up and submitted. The Game Jam (Sponsored by Touch Arcade!) is the birthplace of games like Hippo High Dive, Gravity Sling and more. Whether you’re a game developer already or not, attend the game jam. It’s Tuesday night thru Wednesday morning, and you won’t regret it. You’ll leave with more than you came in with Tuesday night, we promise.

As an iDeveloper (You know what I mean.) you have a lot of choices; iPadDevCamp the weekend after, Voices that matter in Seattle, etc. All things being equal, compare what you get from each and see what makes sense for you to attend. If you don’t agree it’s 360|iDev… Let us know. You won’t get as much technical content, community, and fun from any other event, really.

CHeck out the schedule, description of sessions, and of course, the awesome speakers list!

Register now!

But when the sessions are over, the parties begin.

The evening receptions give everyone a chance to decompress after having 8 hours of insanely awesome technical information jammed into their skulls. Grab a beer, some food, maybe a root beer float (That’s right!) and just hang out. Watch Joe rock out on Rock Band, chat with Mike Lee over beers, talk icon design with Dave, whatever.  The evenings of 360|iDev are a great time to meet new folks, enjoy the great community that is the iPhone dev community.

And that’s not all that’s going on during the receptions :)

We’ve introduced the idea of BOF (Birds of a feather) sessions, which are more free form, discussion type sessions, that take place during the receptions. Something you want to talk about? Post it to the BOF site. Maybe there’s a topic not covered at 360|iDev, throw out a BOF idea. The BOFs are open to any attendee, there’s no requirements, no guidelines. Want to talk about something, put it up on the list.

The BOFs are community organized. Heck, maybe a Sci Fi chat over beers BOF, skies the limit.

Our evening receptions are sponsored, so make sure you show some love to the party sponsors!

Sunday’s welcome reception is sponsored by: Double Encore

Monday night’s party is sponsored by: Ansca Mobile

Tuesday night’s party, the last official party of 360|iDev, is sponsored by: appFigures. The Tuesday night party also kicks off the Touch Arcade Game Jam!

Register now for 360|iDev San jose. Get more out of 4 days than you’ll even imagine possible!

The first conference in 2009, had several sessions, including a sunday Hands-On about Jailbreaking, and what you can do in the jailbroken environment. We also had tons of people who had just put 1 or 2 apps in the store, we had a few folks who had already gone full time, whether as indie developers for hire, or running their own agency, building iPhone apps for companies big and small. We had authors and more in attendance. Mike Lee talked about the Apple community, and why it’s so awesome. We had sessions on how to market your app, what you need to watch out for legally and more.

Then in Denver, we noticed a shift, seeing more indie game developers in attendance. Keith and Natalia keynoted, David Whatley, an awesome late addition talked about being successful in the iPhone game space. Matt Drance formerly of Apple kicked off the conference, with an incredible keynote. We had developers talking about game design and development, being successful in the app store, making a living. We had developers talking about integrating push, getting crazy with OpenGL ES,  Core Data, Core Animation, and more. We also saw the first Game Jam take place, developers spent the night churning out games. Presenting them on Wednesday. Several are in the app store now.

Were seeing the same thing as we plan for San Jose 2010 (You should register). We’re seeing tons more successful developers talking about how to succeed, how to rock the app store, even how to rock the app store with out being a “Smash hit”. We’ve got sessions that are sure to blow your mind, and be worth more than the price of admission, just for those 80 minutes. The Game Jam is back, sponsored by Touch Arcade, Aurora Feint is holding a Game Bar, to highlight games using Open Feint and talk about the added coolness of using OF in your games. We’ve got sessions, on marketing, running your business, advertising, and more.

360|iDev has proven to be an incredible mix of technical sessions, unlike any you’ll see at other events, and business and design sessions that will inform and inspire.

So to answer the question, who attends 360|iDev? Everyone.

• Developers who want to be a success in the App Store.
• Developers who want to hear about what the rest of the world will be talking about in 6 months
• Developers who want to level up their skillset
• Developers who want to meet other developers, and share experiences, and a beer.
• People looking for work (3 people who’ve spoken at 360|iDev, have been hired by Apple, coincidence? Probably, but who knows), indies looking for projects, people looking to hire developers, etc.
• People who are already a success, making their living from apps in the App Store
• Authors of THE books you’re reading to learn iPhone Development
  • From Manning, O’Reilly, and Apress
• People with new projects and products to announce!
  • Where better to announce iPhone specific things than to a very targeted group of people.
• People who want to connect with the iPhone developer community. Not the hobbyist community, not the authors for x publisher community, THE iphone developer community. The people doing it daily, making and selling apps. The people who eat, sleep and breath iPhone development.

The short answer is, the people who attend 360|iDev…

Want to make a nice living in the App Store. (Originally it was “Want to get rich on the App Store”, but I toned it down)

Want to get hired by Apple.

:)

Do yourself and your career a favor, be in San Jose April 11-14th for 360|iDev! Register now!

We updated the wiki for one more bit of ad hoc. Activities.

If you’re planning a trip to the mothership or hitting a specific bar one night, or a movie on Wednesday or lunch on Saturday  before the conference, whatever. Post it on the activities page of the wiki.

This way folks looking for the fun, can find it easily ;) It truly does suck to have to hunt for fun :)

On the main page of the wiki is also a few links for hotel searches in the area. If you missed the room block, shame on you, but we don’t want ya sleepin’ on the street, so check those links for other options.

Maybe it’s a Sci fi meetup or how to best create app icons, or a round table chat about the benefits of core data… whatever you want, literally. We’ve got a wiki set up with a BOFs page.

Simply go edit the page with your topic and your name. Then promote it of course. Once the listing is populated we’ll make noise too.

BOFs will take place from about 6:30 – 7:30. There’s time to enjoy the appetizers and beer and Rockband, then hop into a BOF, before heading to points unknown for the rest of the evening :)

It’s not too late to register, 360|iDev is coming up fast, don’t miss the most awesome collection of community awesomeness in one place, register now!

Why an official hotel that’s not connected to the conference center? For one, the conference center is on eBay’s HQ. They are trying to run a business, not make your beds or pick up your mess. Aside from that obvious reason, we want to keep having fun after we leave eBay. We’re still gonna party at Ebay after the last sessions; However, instead of taking the post functs to someone’s room, we want to take the party to downtown San Jose!

One thing that’s always nice at a conference is bumping into the “superstars”. While it happens a lot at the conference, it’s tough to pull someone aside to buy ‘em a drink to say thanks for contributing to the community. While we (the organizers) may not be the superstars you’re looking for, we will be at the hotel with all the speakers (who are the superstars). If you’re flying all the way to the show to meet and learn from these people, why would you bother staying anywhere else? Yes, it would be silly, especially after you read up on the deal we have for you!

We have a room block of Sunday night thru Tuesday night. We lined up an amazing rate of $99, for you all because we love you so. :) You don’t think we love you? How about this? In addition to the low rate of $99 for a Mariott (read: Not Sleazy 8 or Motel 6), we’ve also negotiated free wi-fi access for everyone’s guest rooms. That alone will save you some additional coin.

Assuming you’re arriving Saturday to take advantage of our awesome Sunday Hands-On training, and staying until Wednesday to make sure you don’t miss the final panel, that’s likely to be “tablet related” you’re still only paying about $125 a night when you average the prices. Compared to other hotels in the area, that’s a damn good deal. Saturday night and Wednesday night are a bit beefier on the price because the majority of people just stay Sunday to Wednesday, so that’s what our block is for.

I’m sure you have all been to conferences where there’s the, “Which hotel are you at dialogue?” Then there’s time and effort spent on who will go where and when to meetup, etc. Make it easier on yourselves and sure to be newfound friends. Just stay at the Mariott so you’re all in the same place and will be easy to find each other. We’ll be there, the speakers will be there, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t be.

You can book online, easy peasy :) Just click here.

While you’re booking your room, you have registered for the conference right? We have so much awesome lined up it’s hard to contain ourselves when talking about it :) Register now!

Robert was already inside when I got there, but there was a seat next to him. I grabbed my number, which I’m pretty sure is the same number Beetlejuice had at the end of the movie.

I sit down between Robert, and … well I think he’s human, but could easily pass for either vegetable or mineral.

Me: Hey Robert how are ya?

Robert: Great John, you? Stuck renewing your license too I see.

(I nod)

Me: Yeah. Hope you’re excited about 360|iDev, I  know I am, I can’t wait for April.

(They call number 365, a large black woman gets up. I’m not entirely sure, but I think they might be covertly filming a “Martin Lawrence dressed like a black woman” movie at this DMV. I keep an on eye on “her”)

Robert: Yeah I can’t wait. this is my first 360|iDev. I spent the early part of my career working as a hardware engineer so I’m really looking forward to Michael Gile’s session about the External Accessory Framework and finding out more about how to get the iPhone to communicate with custom hardware via the 30 pin connector.

Don’t think there won’t be talk of iTablets at 360|iDev. Maybe not San Jose, but the late summer show for sure. It’s gonna be awesome. ;-)

Sure it’s anecdotal, but if attendance from the first to second 360|iDev is any indication, the iPhone developer community is growing like crazy.

The next 360|iDev is coming up fast, and we hope to see all our friends in San Jose, and hope to make  a ton more!

Let’s rock 2010 harder than we rocked 2009!.

If you haven’t checked the schedule, you should. Also make sure to check the speakers page. That’s some serious star power! We’re gonna have a Game Jam like we did in Denver, we’ve got sponsors lining up parties, it’s gonna be good stuff.

See you all in 2010!!

We’ve raved on this blog about the speakers already, so I’ll wrap that up with, EVERY SINGLE ONE WAS AWESOME! That’s really all there is to say. Special thanks to David Whatley, not only did he agree to speak at the last minute, but also stepped up to moderate a frakkin’ awesome lunch time panel on “The App Store” that inspired us to make sure panels are a bigger priority in future schedules.

We had a really great time, Tom and I both agree, the 4 days of actual conference make up for the 5 months of looking for sponsors, selling tickets, dealing with hotels, etc. It’s so amazing to be with such an incredible brain trust, exchanging ideas, talking opening about troubles and successes in iPhone development.

So much cool stuff happened too, that the mind wobbles, whether it’s every attendee getting a Mobile Sketchbook, courtesy of Apress and Dean Kaplan, or Aurora Feint Releasing Open Feint 2.1.

Our official sponsor, Apress provided 30 some odd books for our raffle, and Ebags (Local Denver Company!) provided 5 backpacks as well. The raffle is our way of encouraging attendees to participate in session surveys, and it works. We had a ton of submissions and since each submission is an entry in the raffle, those who submitted for each session they attended had awesome odds, and it showed.

We also got to experience what will now be a full fledged feature of the conference. The Game Jam. Mad props to Noel for throwing it together. I admit I was little unsure whether 1 night was enough to roll out a game, even a rough one. Turns out it’s enough time to turn out several.