WWDC2020 was the first WWDC I’ve been to in, what, five years? Whenever I last went, it was in San Francisco. There’s no way I could’ve got my employer to expense it this year had I needed to go to San Jose, nor would I have personally been able to cover the costs of physically going. So I wouldn’t even have entered the ticket lottery.
Lots of people are saying that it’s “not the same” as physically being there, and that’s true. It’s much more accessible than physically being there.
For the last couple at least, Apple have done a great job of putting the presentations on the developer site with very short lag. But remotely attending has still felt like being the remote worker on an office-based team: you know you’re missing most of the conversations and decisions.
This time, everything is remote-first: conversations happen on social media, or in the watch party sites, or wherever your community is. The bundling of sessions released once per day means there’s less of a time zone penalty to being in the UK, NZ, or India than in California or Washington state. Any of us who participated are as much of a WWDC attendee as those within a few blocks of the McEnery or Moscone convention centres.
What is Chipzilla?
Chipzilla is Intel.