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360idev – 42 session recordings for 2011

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 – The Community is strong!

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!!

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360iDev – Worth every penny and more

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!)

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360iDev come for the sessions stay for the parties

360|iDev is more than just sessions. I mean, the sessions are awesome, 40+ from some of the best and brightest in the iPhone dev community. And don’t get me started on the panels…. (seperate blog post)

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!

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360iDev – Who attends 360idev?

360|iDev, since it’s beginning has attracted an awesome mix of people.

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!

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360iDev – Be a Star, Show some love, Win prizes!

We’ve done this before, and we’re currently doing it for 360|Flex as well. Now it’s time to see how creative and funny the iPhone community is!

Take a look at that post. The gist is that we asked people to make short videos about what they thought of 360|Flex, and Flex in general.

So here’s your chance to be a star :)

The rules are simple.

  1. Keep it short. We’ll be showing these before the keynotes, no small movies!
  2. Explain why you think 360|iDev is the best iPhone conference out there, what makes you attend, what makes the iPhone the best platform? etc.
  3. post it to youtube with “360idevSJ2010″ in the title (we want to make sure it doesn’t get cluttered after all)

That’s it.

The prize?

Free pass to 360|iDev San Jose? Already registered? Good for you! You rock! We’ll give you a full refund.

We’re gonna work on some other prices too, to sweeten the pot! Maybe a few of our awesome sponsors will chip in!

Deadline?

The deadline for video submissions is gonna be the End of the year. You’ve got 2 months to get going. That’s plenty of time to record something awesome!

Once you’ve uploaded, send us the link. During the keynote we’ll be playing all the submissions!

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PayPal X Innovate 2009 is next week!

Sadly Tom and I won’t be at Innovate 2009. Not for lack of interest either. With Tom consulting now, and me being swamped with Conference work, well, our travel budget has temporarily shrunk. Why should you go? PayPal is opening up its platform to developers. For any developer who has needed a flexible, global payments solution, this is a very big deal. It will simply life for many developers who have struggled with integrating payments. As well, it opens up the doors for finally making money from doing what you are passionate about, something we both encourage.

I can’t even tell you how many times as a developer, AND a consumer I’ve wished for better integration with payment solutions. Not to mention, now that micro-payments are becoming the norm, it just makes sense to make collecting money easier for everyone involved.

Check out the event details, They’ve sold out, but if you’re local, they’ve got limited onsite registration space, don’t miss out!

The PayPal team has a great speaker lineup, including Tim O’Reilly as one of the keynotes. Attending will be some of the most innovative developers in the world of mobile, consumer electronics and financial services. Early adopters will demonstrate how they’re already building businesses on the PayPal platform.

All conference attendees will receive exclusive access to not-yet-released PayPal APIs. You’ll also get the chance to work directly with PayPal engineers and other developers during hands-on labs and code-and-build sessions and interact with PayPal’s leadership team.

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360idev – it’s a wrap

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.

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360iDev – There’s a calendar for that

We’re hoping the App ChaiOne wrote will get approved, Speaker Howard Fore is also working on a kick ass webapp, BUT baring both of those…

Subscribe to this gCal, to have the latest info on speaker/session time slots, etc.

It’s not too late to register, but it’s almost too late to not hate yourself for missing out on the best iPhone developer conference of the year :) Just sayin’

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360iDev – Sunday Hands-on Training, Your Options

In case you missed it, or we hadn’t added them when you registered, we wanted to make sure you were well aware of your training options for our Pre-Conference training Hands-on.

We’ve got 4 great classes lined up up, they’re all included in the registration price, and they’re all awesome!

Our Hands-on courses range from iPhone development 101, to an all day workshop with Saurik, the man behind the Cydia Store and celebrity in the Jailbreaking world, and everything in between.

Kendall, will be leading a half day session 8:30-12:30 on Debugging your apps, titled “Advanced debugging, peering into the great unknown” If you’re new to debugging or want to see what you don’t know, this session will rock you socks!

In the same room, after lunch we’re going to have a half day hand-on session with Appcelerator’s platform for building mobile applications, there’s options, and Appcelerator is a really cool one! They’ve got some great stuff to share, if you’re interesting in seeing what your iPhone app dev options are, check this session out!

Jay (Saurik) Freeman will be doing an all day workshop titled, “Extending Existing Applications (Techniques in Code Injection)” And don’t worry, this doesn’t require jailbreaking, most of the session is stuff you can do on a jailed device. Saurik is an iPhone mad scientist of the highest order! The Cydia store is to jailbreakers what the app store is the rest of us, it’s a wealth of incredibly cool, vetted, and often signed applications that simply make the iPhone experience that much better.

Jonathan Lehr of About Objects will be in the last Sunday session room doing a full day, iPhone Development 101. Whether you’re completely new to iPhone development or already know a thing or two, this class will fully prepare you for the next three days of 360|iDev. The outline for the class is here, take a look. It’s going to be an intense day, but a must for anyone that wants to ensure they’re ready for Monday thru Wednesday.

If when you registered the last four questions on the registration form, weren’t about training, just email us and we can update the record. You’re not locked into the class you express interest in, we just like to know how many people to plan for. So if you didn’t express an interest, but do want to join us on Sunday, let us know.

Time’s running out, missing 360|iDev could be the thing you regret most about 2009 :) hundred of iPhone developers, 40+ speakers/sessions, free hands-on training. iphone development celebrities, the works, we’ve got it, don’t miss it! Register now!