Networking

360idev – it’s a wrap

October 5, 2009 By John Leave a Comment

I don’t even know where to begin, trying to wrap up the conference. David does a really great job of capturing why we do what we do, read it. It’s worth the read, but here’s a few of the many gems of why I love doing what I do.

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.

Filed Under: Community, Content, Denver, Drinks, Gaming, Geeking Out, Hands-On, Keynote, Networking, Parties, speakers, Sponsors Tagged With: awesome, Denver, Hands-On training, Keynote, speakers, Sponsors

360iDev – DUB group for connecting onsite

September 22, 2009 By John Leave a Comment

dub_tagline_sm We had a great conversation with Chris from DUB the other day (I’ve been on the iPhone beta for a few days, and using the app for a couple of weeks)

The idea isn’t super new, it’s a business card, sans business card. What’s novel (at least to me) is that you can create groups (perfect for events) and everyone who registers for that event could (in the future) automatically get a DUB ID. Then at the event you just look at the group and see who’s there and if you want, you add them and send them your contact info. There’s

iPhone 2.5

no spamminess to it, you have to approve all inbound requests, and such, but it’s a cool way to connect with people at an event and share contact info with.

What I like is that it’s not a new contact app. It pipes all contacts (and updates) to your contacts app. Which is nice cuz I keep my contacts app and Google in sync, so a new app, would be the suck. Anytime someone I know updates their info, my address is book is up to date. Think of it as Plaxo, +mobile -what we don’t like about Plaxo.

So take a look, get the iPhone app (iTunes link) it’s free. Join the ’360idevdenver’ group, and share your contact info, leave your business cards at home!

Join the group, register for 360|iDev, before it’s too late, which it almost is! It’s gonna be a great time! Don’t miss out! Register Now!

Filed Under: Announcements, Community, Content, Denver, Geeking Out, Networking Tagged With: awesome, Buy Now, Denver, Game Development, Hurry Up, Party, Schedule

360iDev – got Plans wednesday night? (30th)

September 11, 2009 By John Leave a Comment

Interesting story, and why we love doing what we do.

We got an email from Ali a while back, she’s out of work, looking to volunteer for the show, because she couldn’t afford the reg price. We noodled on the idea for a while, and while we typically don’t need a lot of man power (That’s part of why it doesn’t cost much to attend) we wanted to help out.

We wrote her back and agreed to let her volunteer around the conference. Before you open up a new email, we’ve accepted 2 people to help out, which is 2 more than we usually accept, and we’re not accepting more, we would if we could, but we just can’t, our margins aren’t high enough on each ticket to give away 20 or so to those who can’t afford it.

Back to the story, the only night Ali isn’t free is Wednesday night (which is ok, we normally have no official activities on Wed. night) because her band is playing at a local venue in Denver, just north of the conference.

So as of now, we have an official/unofficial outing for Wednesday night. We’re going to trek (It’s walkable, but not short) to Larimer Lounge to see Choke the Word perform!

Ali sent us a few MP3′s so ya’ll can see what they sound like. If you dig it, print out this sheet of tickets. They get points for every ticket that comes in and if they get 50 they get more bookings, so help ‘em out. It’ll be fun!

Songs:

Horseman

In June

Secretion

It’s stuff like this that makes this job awesome! Not only do we get to help people when we can, but we can be a part of things external to iPhone development sometimes and just enjoy music. Did we mention the band that’s playing Tuesday AT the conference? More on that next post.

Filed Under: Community, Denver, Geeking Out, Networking, Parties Tagged With: Denver, location, music

360iDev Registration – $499, Time with Mike Lee and Matt Drance – Priceless

August 25, 2009 By Tom 1 Comment

Many people dream of visiting the mothership, Apple HQ in Cupertino. A relative few make it into the sacred walls to actually find work there. To work at Apple, you have to be good great at what you do. All the products we know and love are a testament to that fact.

If you’re in the iPhone development scene, access to those that have or are inside the sacred walls is truly priceless. It’s the reason that WWDC sold out. Now, we’re not claiming that chatting with these two fellas at 360|iDev beats chatting with entire teams at WWDC. It’s close though! LOL

Now, don’t get us wrong. We’re making a pretty big deal about these guys, but they’re not all the show has to offer. We have 40+ sessions led by the best of the best in indie developers, biz dev folks, etc. They are definitely the substance of the show. @drance and @bmf are just the lipstick and the eyeshadow (we’ll let them fight over which is wihich!)

However, even the speakers themselves realize how special it is to hang with these two. Aside from their knowledge of iPhone dev, mac dev, objective-c, startups, etc., these two are just nice guys that you’d want to hang with and share some good times with.

We just announced yesterday that prices will steadily be going up after 8/31. So hurry up and buy your tickets now while it’s still just $499.

Filed Under: Announcements, Community, Content, Geeking Out, Keynote, Networking, Reasons to Come, speakers Tagged With: @drance, BMF, Matt Drance, Mike Lee

360iDev – iPhone Dev Conferences Compared

July 31, 2009 By John Leave a Comment

With a few alternatives to 360|iDev coming up, we thought it might make sense to talk about the options available to the community. This way those, who haven’t decided, can make the most informed decision.

You basically have 3 choices: iPhoneDevCamp, 360|iDev, and Voices That Matter. (in Chrono order)

Name	iPhoneDevCamp	360\|iDev	VTM: iPhone Conf.
Dates	8/1 – 8/2 Party (7/31)	9/27 – 9/30 (Parties 3 nights)	10/17 – 10/18 (No party listed)
size (capacity)	500	400	unknown
speakers	33ish	40+	14
Price	$50	$499 (First 100 were $360)	$699 (Early bird $495 thru 9/13)
Audience	Hobbyist/Developer	Developer/Business	Developer
Location	Silicon Valley, CA plus satellite locations	Denver, CO	Boston, MA

So what makes sense for you? Well, let’s go through some of the driving reasons for attending a show and find the one that best fits you.

Travel: If travel is not an option, then go to the one that’s close enough to walk or drive to. If travel is an option, then flying to iPhoneDevCamp or 360|iDev are the best options since you get more bang for you buck.

Attitude: By this we mean, the attitude of your fellow attendees towards the iPhone platform. If you’re a hobbyist that just wants to see what the hype is about, then go to iPhoneDevCamp. At $50, you’re gonna find yourself surrounded by a bunch of hobbyists. If you serious about making a living on the iPhone Platform, then 360|iDev is the best as we talk about the business side as well as the development stuff, have hands-on sessions (for free) and almost twice as many dev sessions as VTM.

<armsInAir>Supah-Stars!</armsInAir>: If seeing some big names from the Mac and iPhone world is your goal (and really, for some it is), any of the 3 will give your opportunities to “see” some superstars. We’ve never been to the other two, so we can’t speak for them. However, at 360|iDev, the superstars also party with you on 3 nights so you can meet them, chat with them and (if you really want to) get their autograph! If you do get autographs, give a token bone to the organizers and ask for theirs. We want to feel special too. LOL

Timeliness: If you can’t wait, get your butt over to Yahoo HQ (or one of the satellite locations) for iPhoneDevCamp since it starts tonight (well a party does, the real meat is Saturday). Next up would be 360|iDev at the end of September and then VTM in mid-October. Ask your boss when would be the best time to go and run with that one.

Community Vibe/Action: Again, we’ve never been to iPhoneDevCamp and the VTM show has yet to go down. We were told though by those did attend IDC and 360|iDev last time that our show had a stronger community vibe. People wanted to interact and get to know each other. The interaction was so good that the idea for App Treasures was born at our conference. You gotta admit, that’s pretty cool. New ventures formed from the connections made at 360|iDev

History: By this we mean show history. iPhoneDevCamp is on rev 3 and it shows. The camp has changed quite a bit from what it was the first time. 360|iDev is on rev 2. It was built on a tested formula and it showed. Attendees loved the show as you can read here. VTM is on rev 1, so will be a new experience for all involved. If a track record is important, then definitely weigh your options carefully.

The purpose of this post isn’t why you should be at 360|iDev. We do want you there, but having you know your options is more important to us. We want everyone to attend the event that makes the most sense to them. Hopefully, the competition feels the same, but again, we can’t speak for them.

That being said, if you read the chart and made us your choice, click here and reg now! We’ve sold out the first 100 cheaper tickets and sales hasn’t really slowed down since. Get in before it’s too late!

Filed Under: Announcements, Community, Content, Denver, Geeking Out, Networking, Parties, Reasons to Come Tagged With: Community, Denver, Schedule, speakers

360iDev – Post WWDC Recovery

June 18, 2009 By John Leave a Comment

We’re home now, recovering from our first WWDC. What a crazy week! It was our first WWDC, so we went in with no prior experience and lots of expectations.

We started the week off right, we met up with Rana from Medialets for drinks and a little work talk about InsideMobile and 360|iDev. Rana rocks, there’s little else to be said on the topic, she’s awesome, knows her stuff, and knows everyone. We’re very excited to be working with Medialets again.

After that it was keynote line ride time. We got up early (not crazy early, since when we went back to our hotel at around 10pm I think, there was already 1 guy in line) Our place in line . We were around 407 in line, we got there about 7am IIRC. Yeah it’s crazy.

Having now ridden the WWDC line ride, I think I’m good. It’s not something I need to do again.

The line didn’t move at all until about 7:30 or so. Then we slowly filed into the Moscone center. Where there were donuts and bagels and coffee waiting for us. Then we waited some more, but at least it was warm and we could sit down.

We met the guys behind dogood (iTunes link), which is an awesome ‘pay it forward’ application. Check it out, and who doesn’t need help with Karma points!?

The keynote was cool, neat stuff announced hardware wise, nothing too “OH MY GOD”

Tom and I left the keynote just before the iPhone 3G S was revealed to take in the Symbian Hackathon. Symbian is really working to get more developers exposed to the platform which is great. Giving away free 5800′s is a huge move in the right direction. Developers aren’t likely to strike out into a new platform, for no reason, with no way to actually play with their code. Having a free phone to test with, reduces many barriers to adoption. It’s definitely gutsy to throw an event in enemy territory, but Symbian pulled it off. The hackathon had a good turnout, and a few folks even wrote some code onsite and played with it, experiencing the deployment to a Symbian device, they did a good job.

Palm on the other hand :( I’ll admit our expectations were set by Symbian, but Palm broke a major rule. How do you have a Palm Pre developer get together with no Palm Pres in sight? Nothing about MojoSDK either. Just drinks and some food. Granted, giving a Pre woulda been costly, but you’re trying to steal developers away from another camp. Drastic times call for drastic measures. At the very least, have some Pres lying around to play with. We got more face time with a Pre during Rana’s drink hour (see above), then we did at the Palm Pre party. Not a good way to attract developers.

WWDC as a whole is a neat event, but too long, and too ‘line ride-ish. Every session starts with a line. Since there’s very few sessions in general , each one was several hundred people in size, sometimes over 1000. That’s just too big. There’s very little if any developer community involvement, sessions are given by Apple engineers, and range between reiterating what’s in the docs to fairly code intensive deep dive stuff.

The nightlife of WWDC is insane. There seemed to be, on any given night, 5 or more competing/overlapping parties. Between parties to launch companies or apps, to just plain “Come hang out on my dime” parties, it was intense. Syncing up with friends was an effort, with “we’re at X” only to arrive and see a tweet “We moved to Y”

I’m all for parties and keeping everyone entertained, but I didn’t attend a single party that was good for anything but drinking and losing your voice to have a conversation. You couldn’t mingle because it was too crowded, conversations were tough, because of the volume of the other 100-200 people jammed into the same small place, and if music was playing, well just shut up and drink.

The Best part?

Meeting new people in the hallways, and syncing up with our speakers from 360|iDev San Jose. The USB drive hunt was also a ton of fun, and seemed to be very well received. We had 7 USB drives packed with discounts on products, promo codes for games, and sneak peaks at new services, and each drive (except one that we think is in a Hobo’s pocket) was claimed fairly quickly after being dropped off. The buzz around the hunt was incredible. Next year it’ll be even better with more goodies on the drives! We’ll be picking one of our USB Hunters to receive an iPod Touch, sometime this week.

Haven’t registered for 360|iDev? Want 40+ sessions over 4 days of iPhone content from the leaders in the industry? Register now! If you thought the iPhone content at WWDC was good, just wait!

Filed Under: Announcements, Denver, Drinks, Networking Tagged With: Denver, InsideMobile, USB Dead Drop, USBHunt, WWDC

360iDev USB drive hunt! Win an iPod Touch!

June 5, 2009 By John Leave a Comment

We’re trying something new (to us) and I think kinda cool!

We’ve got 7 2gb USB drives left over from 360|iDev San Jose. They’re packed with all the presentations and such from that show (so you can see what you missed ;D ) but we’re also adding something even more awesome. Discounts and promo codes.

Each drive will have a unique, single use discount code for 50% 1 registration to 360|iDev in September.

We’ve also gotten some promo codes from the crew at App Treasures! And will be collecting a few more promo codes. We’ll announce here and via twitter.

The point is we’ll hide the drives around San Francisco, near Moscone. We’ll drop clues and WWDC attendees (or SF natives) can go find the drives. After all 7 are found, one lucky hunter will win an iPod Touch. It’s an 8 GB model, but hey, it’ll make a great test machine!

Again stay tuned here and twitter to find out clues! Let the hunting begin. (Well, not yet actually, since none are hidden yet, but if you wanna warm up. Feel free! LOL)

Filed Under: Announcements, Community, Geeking Out, Networking Tagged With: USB Dead Drop

360iDev at WWDC

June 2, 2009 By John Leave a Comment

Tom and I will be heading to San Francisco this weekend for WWDC. We can’t wait, it’s our first WWDC!

We’re actually planning to attend some sessions, which will be nice! I know my own learning Obj-C efforts stalled out a bit, so getting some good session time in will rock. The downside of 360|iDev, we can’t attend it :)

We’ll also be trying to meet as many folks as we can to talk about 360|iDev, make sure the iPhone community knows about the conference, and for those interested in getting in early before the cheap tickets sell out, we’ve got an awesome “I found Tom and John” discount price of $200 for all 4 days of the conference.

We’ve got moo cards to hand out to people we meet, I really dig ‘em

We’ve already got some awesome speakers lined up, but there’s plenty of room for more! Once WWDC closes, and we know exactly what can be talked about in [redacted] and what doesn’t make it and is still NDA, etc, we’ll be adding speakers like crazy since they submitted [redacted] topics.

Filed Under: Denver, Geeking Out, Networking Tagged With: Denver, WWDC

360|iDev Evening Festivities – Sunday, Monday, Tues

February 20, 2009 By Tom 1 Comment

Lots of people have been asking: Should I stay near the conference center? What they’re really asking is: Are we gonna party? The answer is: Oh yeah, you betcha. The best thing is spouses/significant others/partners are invited to join you: FREE. Just let us know they’re coming so we can make sure to have enough stuff.

We have 3 nights of great networking opportunities for you. The nice thing is that you won’t have to go very far to party. Each night’s revelry will be at the conference center, right outside the meeting rooms.

What can you expect? We’ll have some appetizers to fill your belly along with some beverages to wash it all down. You can share a beer with a speaker or chat over a root beer float with a fellow attendee. If you’re on twitter and made a drink suggestion, we passed that along to our caterer. If there’s some particular appetizers you like, drop a comment and let us know. No guarantees, but we’ll at least ask if we can get them.

In addition to drinks and munchies, we’ll also have some Guitar Hero III and Rock Band action going on. You’d better practice before you arrive, because the competition tends to be fierce.

These are the sponsors that you can thank for each night’s party, in addition to the time slots for each day.

Sunday – 6:30p to 8:30p – Nitobi and 360Conferences

Monday – 5:20p to 8:30p – O’Reilly

Tuesday – 5:20p to 8:30p – Medialets and 360Conferences

If you haven’t registered yet, you should do so now. Prices went up to $350, but that price alone is worth the 3 nights of networking. Not to mention that you get 4 days of awesome sessions and training thrown in at no extra charge. ;)

Filed Under: Drinks, Networking, Parties