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360iDev 2012 – Schedule V1

May 21, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It was a busy weekend for us, but after sending out 124 emails to everyone who submitted we wanted to get the schedule out to everyone as fast as possible. We know some folks were waiting to see what the line up was before buying tickets. So without further yacking from us, head over to the schedule page and check it out.

One word of warning, there’s likely to be some tweaks to the schedule in the coming weeks. So while the names aren’t likely to change, the days and times they’re speaking could. When we make changes we’ll make sure to blog or tweet about the changes as well as update the PDF, etc.

 

We’re also working on the session details doc which will have full descriptions for each session. expect a link to that sometime later this week.

 

See you all in September!

Filed Under: Announcements, Community, Content, Denver, Geeking Out, Hands-On, Reasons to Come, The Speakers Tagged With: , , , , ,
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A True iOS Developer Story

May 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Thought this was pretty cool, if a smidge old. Did you hear the one about the Massachusetts State Trooper who became an iOS Developer?

Derek Langton, who had been serving as a state trooper for eighteen years, put in some mean hours to pick up and get adept at iOS application coding over the last year and a half, delving into and learning Cocoa and Objective C, all to be able to build the iOS version of Smoopa, a price check app which rewards you when you use it to comparison shop and share prices from the real, brick-and-mortar stores you patronize anyway.

How did he do it? According to the TechCrunch article, he began simply by auditing the freely available online computer science courses offered by MIT and Stanford, then continuing on with equally freely available YouTube instructional videos, such as this one which explains how to leverage the camera integration on an iPhone into apps.

Was it hard? According to Derek, the answer is, as you’d imagine, an unvarnished “yes.”. However, he also points out that though he certainly worked to get to the point where he could code with sufficient proficiency to create an iOS app, it was very attainable.

“I eat, drink and sleep iOS development. This is the kind of thing where either go or you don’t. You don’t go halfway.”

And of course, even beyond the MIT and Stanford courseware, there are other resources like 360|iDev :) and even other conferences, that not only help developers raise their game but almost more importantly establish social connections and support systems among other developers. The iOS community has really shined IMO with welcoming new people to the fold and making sure they can succeed.

Something to consider:

  • The current national unemployment rate is 8.1% according to the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics – nearly doublenthe 4-5% unemployment rate the nation experienced before the 2008 economic crisis.
  • One of the sole market sectors which is not experiencing this same dearth of good jobs is Silicon Valley – there is currently what TechCrunch calls a “Hiring-pocalypse,” where coding houses simply cannot find enough skilled workers.

Given this, it seems that there has never been a better time to pick up coding skills.

Being an iOS developer has been described as a “lottery;” but it’s a lottery you can cheat at by being better than many others playing the same game.

 

See you in September!

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360iDev 2012 – Now with Dates!

April 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Yup, it’s taken a while, but we finally locked down some dates and a hotel.

Actually the dates were less up in the air, we’ve been aiming for the week of the 9th since we started planning 360|iDev 2012, but finding a hotel we could work with, well that was a bit harder than it’s ever been before.

However we’re really happy with the hotel we’re working with. We use them for other events and everyone loves them. One of the best hotels we’ve ever dealt with.

So yeah…

September 9-12, 2012 come learn from the best of the best in the indie coder world. It’s gonna be epic.

 

Remember we sold out last year, and we’re already 1/3 sold out for this year… I wouldn’t dilly dally. Register now.

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360iDev 2012 – Call For Papers is Open

March 6, 2012 By Leave a Comment

OK it’s official. The Call For Papers is open. Now before you freak out and start asking “when does the call close, I’ve got an idea but it’s not done yet, etc, etc” you’ve got time.  We should be locking down the exact dates and such this week, but likely you’ve got 7 months until 360|iDev 2012, so the call for papers isn’t likely to close until mid to late April.

 

Of course as with all things iOS, NDAs and announcements play a big roll, so we’ll be playing that stuff by ear, and hoping that when 360|iDev 2012 rolls around we’re not under NDA. That means feel free to submit NDA topics, and we’ll see what happens.

 

You can submit as many topic ideas as you like of course.

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360iDev 2012 – Signs and Portents

March 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

So last friday we opened up ticket sales. As we always do before we have the full event locked in we put our “Faithful” ticket on sale. For those that might be new to the conference the faithful ficket is basically  an inexpensive ticket that you buy before we announce the exact dates or hotel. Usually it’s on sale for a week or two and limited to a small number of tickets.

Well we’re about a week from locking the in the hotel and the dates, and so we turned on the ticket sales page, and sold out of faithful tickets in 6 hours. Now while I’d love for this to be a WWDC-esque story of 5,000 tickets moving in the blink of an eye, it’s actually less than 100. So just under 1/3 of our total capacity. But still, that’s never happened before. Normally the faithful tickets are turned off with a few left.

We sold out last year, I’m pretty sure we’re well on our way to selling out this year, and we’re still at least 7 months from the conference. I’m really excited by everyone’s excitement around 360|iDev 2012.

Register now while there’s still some early bird tickets left. They went on sale after the Faithful ticket sold out and are moving fast.

Oh by the way, the Call For Papers is open too :)

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360iDev – You do Mac apps?

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Have you ported your app/game to the Mac Appstore? Thought about it?

The current video on the 360|MacDev home page is Dave Wiskus and Kyle Richter talking about building an iOS app that lead to building a Mac App.

360|MacDev 2010 was pre Mac Appstore and the dialogue was great. Tons of talk about what the future would look like post App store.

Guess what, it’s the future!!! Come talk to Mac app successes, and learn from the best and brightest! Check out the rock star line up and schedule.

Don’t miss out! Register now!

Filed Under: Announcements, Community, Denver, Geeking Out, Networking, Reasons to Come, speakers Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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360idev – 42 session recordings for 2011

December 2, 2011 By 2 Comments

Not bad.

The 360|iDev 2011 session recordings bundle has 42 70 minute sessions in it. I think that’s the most sessions we’ve captured and been able to produce to date.

Next year the plan is to try something different as Flip cams just aren’t designed for capturing conference sessions, and really with the exception of Mike, seeing the presenter isn’t that important to the presentation. :)

 

We’re going to focus on getting better at capturing the screen only. Our speakers show a lot of code, and that’s the important part. We want you to be able to watch the video and clearly see the code. Where ever possible we did that this year if a screen recording existed, but many didn’t. We’re also working out the best rendering methods (video production isn’t something we’re trained in, LOL) to make sure the videos aren’t crazy huge, but are still viewable.

If you haven’t already taken a peak at the videos go check ‘em out. They’re pretty damn cheap and even the bundle isn’t a bank breaker.

If you attended 360|iDev 2011 you received an email with a code in it. that code is good for the bundle, use it as you need to get the videos.

 

Of course the videos are all DRM free mp4 files. Watch ‘em on as many devices as you want. Show your coworkers or business partners.

 

See you in 2012!

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360iDev 2011 – Survey results

November 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

For those who attending 360|iDev 2011, thank you for doing the post conference survey. It’s now closed, so if you didn’t, shame on you! That survey is really important to us in planning the event, and getting sponsorship!

Before announcing the winners and their prize i wanted to post some details of the survey. First, we had 355 tickets sell for 360|iDev 2011. We planned on having 300, but let in an additional 55 people. On the other hand the post conference survey only had 113 responses. About 1/3 of our attendees answered the survey. Hopefully that ratio gets better next year. This survey helps us when sponsors ask how many people are X skill set. How many are designers vs. developers (5% are designers of those who responded). If you attended but didn’t do the survey, well you missed out on helping us, but more importantly, missed out on a chance to win a $500 prize.

Years of Experience with iOS

 

I mentioned this in the keynote too but it’s clear that 360|iDev is NOT a hobbyist conference. In Fact it’s clear that the best and brightest who’ve been around the block since there was a block are attending 360|iDev.

I think a chart like this is really healthy for an event. If it was too heavy on the less than a year of experience side, there’d be too little hands-on knowledge to share.
If there was too much “I’ve been doing this forever”, there wouldn’t be enough people to learn. Part of what makes the iOS community so awesome and healthy is the sharing of knowledge and welcoming of new blood.

This type of distribution to me is healthy and what we aim for with 360|Events. It’s a community, not an exclusive club where only the anointed can hang out, and it’s not a intro to community class where no one knows what they’re doing.

 

 

I love that the iOS community comes from so many places. Many think it’s people who were doing Mac Desktop stuff, etc. but in fact as you can see, it’s people who were doing Flash stuff, other mobile technologies, even Java… :)

Background

 

It’s great to see that there’s no real well spring of iOS developers. Anyone can do it. Anyone can be successful.

 

How many 360|iDev events have you attended

There’s a ton of data in the survey, but I think I’ll end with a really promising bit of information. As you can see, we had a ton of new people show up to 360|iDev 2011. Not only was it the first 360|iDev to sell out, but it had a huge turn out in new blood for the community. Maybe they just haven’t been doing the conference thing, or as we saw above are new to the platform. In either cas that’s awesome. Very very awesome!! We’re very happy to have so many people finding 360|iDev and enjoying it.

 

It’s good to know what we do is being enjoyed by so many! It helps re-enforce why we do it :)

 

Oh yeah and the winners. Did you know when we do these post conference surveys we give away two $500 prizes.

 

Chris Patterson & Nick Bhardwaj are the lucky winners. They’ve got an email waiting for each of them with their prize options.

 

Thank you again to everyone who took the survey, and to those who came to 360|iDev 2011. You’re a part of something awesome, and we’re truly honored to be a part of it, and look forward to even bigger and better things in 2012!!

 

John

Filed Under: Announcements, Community, Content, Denver, Geeking Out, Networking, Reasons to Come Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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360iDev 2011 – Crowne Plaza…. FULL

August 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

So…

you dilly dallied about booking your hotel for 360|iDev. Maybe you’re still dilly dallying about registering… Well Like we warned everyone months ago would happen, the Crowne Plaza has filled up our block. That means there’s no room at the Inn.

 

You’re not without options of course. Below are the three nearest hotels to the Crowne. All are within walking distance. We can’t promise a rate as good as we got for the room block, but you never know, maybe you’ll luck out.

 

Hilton Garden Inn
1400 Welton Street
Denver, CO 80202
(303) 603-8000
Hyatt Regency
650 15th Street
Denver, CO 80202
(303) 436-1234
Embassy Suites
1420 Stout Street
Denver, CO 80202
(303) 592-1000
Denver Marriott City Center
1701 California Street
Denver, CO 80202
(303) 297-1300

 

 

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360iDev 2011 – 31 days to go!

August 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

You know how many tickets are left? Less than 40.

Yes less than 40 tickets left for 360|iDev 2011. That means we’re closer to selling out than we’ve ever been. EVAR!

 

What’s that mean? Well if you haven’t bought a ticket, better get on it. Not only are tickets running low, so are hotel rooms. We’re gonna own the Crowne Plaza.

If you have bought your ticket, well you’re gonna be in some truly awesome company.

 

Sure there’s lots of other iOS conferences, but none are focused on the community like we are. Don’t miss out!

Register now!

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