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360iDev – From Game Jam to Appstore

August 31, 2010 By 1 Comment

The Game Jam, is a great time. It’s also an awesome place to create a game that will someday be up on the appstore. Case in point Star Fighter X2 By our pal Dan at Manic Gaming. This game started out life in the Game Jam, as a prototype. Now it’s in the app store!

The Game Jam started in Denver 2009, and we’ve continued it ever since. In San Jose 2010 The Touch Arcade Game Jam saw a ton of awesome games being worked on, developers collaborating, sharing their knowledge and skills, to help each other out.

The Game Jam brings together developers of all skill levels, to collaborate and build games or learn game theory. Many developers with little experience in game development use the Game Jam as a launch pad to quickly ramp up and leave the next morning with a firm understanding of Game Dev. Touch Arcade, our awesome sponsor in San Jose did several posts about the experience.

To take part in the Game Jam you have to be an attendee, register now!

Filed Under: Announcements, Community, Denver, Gaming, Geeking Out, Reasons to Come Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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360iDev – Everyone gets a sketchbook!

August 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

We’re happy to let everyone know that as a special bonus Apress has agreed to give EVERY attendee of 360|iDev one of Dean’s iPad Sketchbooks

These books are great! If you’re thinking up app ideas, designs etc, these books (There’s an iPhone one too!!) are the thing to use. They’re incredible resources!

Whether you’re a developer or designer, these books are invaluable assets in your day to day work!

We’re really glad that Apress is such an awesome supporter of 360|iDev, and that we’ll be giving one of these to EVERY attendee of 360|iDev Austin.

Don’t miss out. There’s only a few early bird tickets left!! Remember there’s only 100 and they’re moving fast! Register now!

Filed Under: Announcements, Austin, Community, Geeking Out, Reasons to Come Tagged With: , , , ,
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360iDev – Volunteers Needed

August 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

For those that were at 360|iDev San Jose this past year you’ll know we had volunteers to help out. The volunteers were a HUGE help, and a large part of why the conference was probably the smoothest we’ve ever done.

It’s that time again for our call for volunteers!
Why do we want volunteers?

  • Obviously having free workers is a bonus, but one of our main reasons for having volunteers is to provide a way for those that absolutely cannot afford the conference to be able to have a way to join us!
  • Give us your new graduates, those that were laid off, and those without 2 nickels to rub together!
  • The point behind 360 conferences is to have an affordable event that the majority of people can come to! Being unemployed doesn’t need to be the barrier.

Please note, that if you just want to save a few bucks you don’t necessarily fit the bill. Think of those less fortunate than you! We’re always throwing out discount codes, visit your local user group, they’ll have one, etc. The volunteer program is really for those that won’t otherwise be able to make the conference.

What do I need to do if I’m a volunteer?

  • We need you to be available Saturday thru Wednesday.  (Saturday can be waived, but the more hands the faster the work is completed)
  • We need people the Saturday prior to the conference for lanyard/badge assembly, and swag bag assembly, and to get familiar with the location.
  • We need people Sunday to run the Registration desk. This is your training for monday when the masses invade! There are 3 shifts, 7am-noon, noon-5, and 5-8.
  • Monday thru Wednesday we need people to run the Registration desk as well as the cameras in each session. You will be assigned to either the desk or recording sessions.
  • If you are assigned to record a session you need to remain in that session for the duration. You will need to confirm the camera continues to function and get the slides from the speaker at the end (via flash drive)
  • Sunday and Monday you will need to arrive between 7 and 7:30.
  • Tuesday and Wednesday you will need to arrive between 8 and 8:30.

What’s in it for you?

  • When you are not assigned to a session or the reg desk – you are free to see the sessions.
  • You get to enjoy lunch.
  • You get to mingle at all the parties (unless you are working the desk on sunday)
  • You get to meet a ton of people during registration!
  • You get a cool badge that says “Volunteer” :)
  • You get to say you know the folks that run 360|Conferences.

We really want you to get something out of the conference! We want you to have fun and learn a ton! You’re there to help us, but also get as much as you can out of sessions.

If you think you can hack it – apply!

  • Name:
  • Email:
  • Local:  Y/N
  • Phone Number:
  • Current application of technology:
  • Reason for wanting to be a volunteer:
  • Availability Sat?
  • Availability Sun?

Just email us at INFO at 360idev DOT com with the above details. We’ll let those selected know ASAP.

Filed Under: Announcements, Austin, Community, Geeking Out, Reasons to Come Tagged With: , , ,
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360iDev – Austin schedule is live!

August 3, 2010 By 2 Comments

I know the wait has been unbearable… at least for me, but here you go. Go download the PDF of the 360|iDev Austin schedule and have a look see.

There’s some empty spaces, and I can’t promise we won’t shuffle a few things around in the next week or two, but in general terms, this is it. This is what’s in store for everyone in Austin!

To quote one of our schedule reviewers “I think this is a strong schedule, John- possibly the best I’ve seen yet.”

There’s plenty more to announce, we should have a party or two to announce by next week and much more. For now, start planning your week in Austin :)

I’ll be updating the speakers page later today

Filed Under: Announcements, Austin, Community, Content, Reasons to Come, speakers Tagged With: , , , , ,
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360iDev – The Community is strong!

July 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I’m biased, obviously. I like competition, but hate johnny come lately type stuff that dilutes the market without providing benefit to the community/customer.

I hate seeing an event fail, I hate seeing a business fail, it sucks, 360|Conferences is slowly climbing out of bootstrap and into slight profitability, I know the pain of having no money, as do many if not most app devs at one point or another.

As such, seeing Appcon, fail before it even started, doesn’t bother me. I hope they refunded everyone’s money.

What does bother me, is saying that the community isn’t ready for their “groundbreaking event”.

Groundbreaking? Let’s be honest.

Birds of a feather? Been there, done that.

Fast pitch? not interested, but have done ignite style fast pitch things. It works at Ignite events, not conferences IMO.

Expo? Do it each time.

40 sessions by experts? Yeah we know all about having that many awesome community experts in one place, we do it 2x a year!

The App Developer community, primarily the iOS community is crazy strong, and growing daily!! To say the community is the reason an event fails is disingenuous at best. When Tom and I started 360|iDev, we barely knew the community, we opened our doors, approached those who we either knew, knew about, or found, and from there have continued to build something that we’re proud of, and hopefully the iOS developer community is proud of.

Look at the image below, I’m thinking there’s another reason appcon failed, and it has nothing to do with size or strength of the mobile developer community. Heck the modern, (again IMO) technologies that matter… are thriving and growing.

So I personally and on behalf of 360|iDev, call BS on appcon. Let’s show the organizers, just how ready the community is!! See you in Austin!!

Filed Under: Announcements, Austin, Community, Content, Pricing, Reasons to Come Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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360idev – Make some noise, make some money!

June 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment

So I’ve made some site badges, grab ‘em and put up on your site. Blog, twitter homepage, whatever.

You can get the 200pix and the 250pix size.

But wait, what about the money?

Yeah so we’re trying something new. When you add the badge to your site, you can use an eventbrite affiliate link, to earn $25 every time someone uses your site and registers for 360|iDev.

Of course you don’t have to sign up as an affiliate, that’s entirely up to you, but if nothing else, show the love for 360|iDev and put the badge on your site and link here to the main site.

It’s easy. Just:

  1. Go hear, and sign up as an affiliate. Yeah, you gotta create an eventbrite account, but hey how else they gonna pay you!
  2. Add the badge and the URL to your site.
  3. make noise, get folks to click the badge and register
  4. make money. Every person that registers from your site is worth $25.

See you in Austin!!

Filed Under: Announcements, Austin, Community, Pricing, Reasons to Come Tagged With: , , ,
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360iDev – WWDC super discounts, USB Drives, and more

June 18, 2010 By Leave a Comment

This year I didn’t attend WWDC. I was in San Francisco, but not attending. That was both a blessing and a curse.

My main goal in attending WWDC each year is to hang out with the awesome developers who are there, saying ‘hi’ and making sure they know about 360|iDev. By not actually attending the conference my only options for meeting the community are the parties, and my office away from home, Starbucks. That worked to a degree. Several people were able to find me and purchase tickets, even a few potential sponsors. But I think it’s easier when I’m hanging out inside the conference. The time between sessions, etc, made it hard for some to get out, get to Starbucks, and back in to the next session.

My other goal in being around WWDC is to offer our special WWDC pricing. We figure you’ve paid $1600 to attend WWDC, why not cut you a break. A break in the form of $200 off the ‘first 100′ price of 360|iDev. I mean really, who can pass up $299 for a 4 day event with the best and brightest of the iPhone community? This was the second year we sold super discounted tickets to WWDC attendees, and we sold 2x as many. That’s a plus on a lot of levels!

The parties at WWDC are always a blast, and I met a ton of awesome peeps! Finally got to meet @grouchoduke! which was nice! They give me a chance to hang out, meet folks, give out cards… you see the moo cards around? Those had 15% off discount codes on them, hope you picked one up! It was a testament to the iPhone developer community that WWDC Sold out in 8 days, and was entirely iPhone focused. It’s great to see the community so huge, and getting so much love!

The upside of not being an attendee of WWDC, sleeping in :) Sorry guys, but after closing bars, it’s nice to not be up by 8-9am :)

The other thing we do at WWDC is the scavenger hunt. This was the second year we’ve done it, and judging by the interest, a HUGE success. Last year the drives sat in their hiding places for a good while, while this year, they were all gone within 30 minutes of being hidden. Congrats to those 5 folks! They all got a free pass to 360|iDev, and a bunch of awesome promo codes from some incredible developers!

Next year I’ll have more drives, and more promo codes! I really enjoy the hunt, and it’s a ton of fun for everyone!

So, see you next year at WWDC, but in the meantime, you should seriously be registering for 360|iDev Austin. November 7-10. I mean WWDC is great, and the best/only place to see what’s new and hot, and coming soon, but 360|iDev is the place to learn things that will not only energize you for months afterward, but will have you doing things the rest of the community isn’t even thinking about! Go get your ‘first 100′ ticket now! before they’re gone!

Filed Under: Announcements, Austin, Community, Geeking Out, Reasons to Come Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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360iDev – Worth every penny and more

June 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Conference pricing is funny.

You see events that cost over $1000, and think (at least I do) “what will I be getting out of this conference? Will it be worth $1000? Will I be wasting my money?” I especially have those thoughts as someone who doesn’t have a company expense account to draw upon. But even in my days as a cube monkey I felt weird when I’d return from a conference and 1. have to make up what I learned to report back to my boss, and 2. submit expense reports, etc for thousands of dollars of company money.

What about when a conference has an early bird price that takes $550 off the price? I mean the savings in the early bird price is more than the actual cost to attend 360|iDev. I wonder if they think they provide over $1000 in knowledge and networking?

Why do events, with similar formats as 360|iDev cost so much more? They’re “enterprise” I guess is the only explanation. Meaning nothing but they want to milk attendees (who are typically on the company’s dime) for as much as possible. I certainly hope “enterprise” attendees don’t get suckered into this thinking, but looking at conference history, those events with “enterprise” anywhere in their name or description, tack on at least an extra $500 just because.

These events are obviously not aimed at indie developers. Ever wonder if you get 2-3x the value? They’re not 2-3 times the length, or the number of sessions, or anything else that would be a good metric, so what’s the difference?

I know that every attendee or potential attendee has a choice in the events they attend, and I show my gratitude in organizing an awesome event that blows their minds. At least a few times every event, someone walks up to me (I’m the guy at the reg desk, or walking around saying hi) and tells me that they’ve already gotten their money’s worth.. ‘Already’, and it’s usually lunch time on day one!

360|iDev Austin is still a ways away, but why wait? Waiting will cost you $100 if nothing else, and it’s not like you’re not gonna have a good time, and get more information from 3 days than you’ll get anywhere else. Go register, worse case you can get a refund if you can’t make it (Make sure it’s before the cut off though!)

Filed Under: Austin, Community, Content, Geeking Out, Networking, Reasons to Come Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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360iDev – Call For Papers Open

June 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

November is a long way away. I know that.

BUT once accepted, speakers can tweak their topic to their heart’s content, so long as it’s not a complete “Oh well it was this, and now it’s this completely different thing”, so submitting now, or waiting a while, no matter. What matters is not forgetting to submit, or missing the deadline. You can always update your submission as we go before the call for papers close.

I figure the call for speakers will close around July-August sometime.

The way it works (for those of you that haven’t spoken before) is this. You email us with your idea, answering all the items outlined below. That’s it :)

After we close the call for papers, we’ll make selections.

Haven’t spoken at 360|iDev before? it’s easy. We’re probably the most low pressure event around, and we love having new people from the community present. Many of our highest rated presenters, started out as attendees, then decided to share what they knew with the community.

What we’ll need in your session submission:

  • Your name
  • Your Email
  • Your twitter ID or blog address (Whatever you want your name to link to on the speakers page)
  • Session Name
  • Session description
  • Session level (100 – 300+) The more advanced the better, just saying.
  • Session Track (tracks are: Business,  Sights, Sounds, and Interactions, Development Tips and Tricks)
  • Is this session strictly iPhone or iPad? Let us know so we can start marking any such sessions
  • Lastly, have you presented this topic anywhere else. No offense to other events, but we hate stuff that’s made the circuit. It’s cool to show it at a cocoa heads, or NScodernight, but we hate sloppy seconds. The fresher the content the better.

Have a few ideas, submit them all! Sometimes we ask speakers to do more than one session if they pitch more than one awesome idea.

What’s in it for you as a speaker? Well we of course don’t make you pay to attend, but we also cover your hotel stay for 3 nights.

Less quantifiable benefits of speaking at 360|iDev?

  • Book deals
  • New Job or new consulting work
  • who knows, Apple might hire you… just saying, we’ve seen a fair number of people who come to iDev, get snatched up by the mothership…
  • Everlasting fame and (kharmic) fortune

So send in your topic ideas, remember, I’m under NDA too, so if you have an idea that’s not released yet, feel free, and we’ll keep it hush hush until it is announced. No NDA breaking here :)

See you in Austin!

Filed Under: Announcements, Austin, Community, Content, Geeking Out, Reasons to Come, speakers Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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360idev – USB Hunt at WWDC is a go!

June 8, 2010 By 1 Comment

At the time of this writing Drive 3 is out and about. More will be following today and tomorrow.

They’ll be placed all around (maybe inside?) Moscone. I’ll tweet clues and pictures of their locations.

Special Thanks to Owen Goss, Nathan Eror, Shane Crawford, Chris Adamson, Yadong Liu, Cory Smith, and Saul Mora for the promo codes to some of their awesome apps, and games.

Each drive has a unique code for a free pass to 360|iDev Austin, this November, in addition to 8 promo codes from the awesome developers I mentioned!

This is a great chance for you to get some great apps, and a free pass to the best iPhone Developer conference around.

Can’t find the drives? Not at WWDC? Register now, before the early 100 tickets sell out. They’re already selling fast!

Filed Under: Announcements, Austin, Community, Reasons to Come Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,