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WWDC 2015 Lottery Ends, Winners Begin Receiving Confirmation Emails

Compile 'em all said:
The reason to go to WWDC for people who attended before is close to zero now that they stream live sessions and put them online very quickly. Not worth the 1600 + hotel + flights.
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I agree - there is no reason to go now unless, say, you have a small company and want to network, or need person-to-person time with Apple engineers on code issues. Or your company is paying and you want a vacation - San Francisco is a great place to travel to.

Yes, the food is maybe worth $10 a day (croissants, donuts, boxed lunches), the party may be worth $75, the merchandise maybe $75. Still it's about $1400 more for the rest of the conference. Plus Flights ($800), Hotel ($1500) - a lot of money.

I can now pay $0, take the week off at home, watch the videos online, and my company will have no problem with this expense.

Oh, if you REALLY want to see Tim Cook or Jonny Ives, or anyone else in person (at the keynote if nothing else), then it is worth it to go one time. I really wish I saw Steve Jobs. When I went in 2009, Steve could not attend because he was sick - he did attend in 2008 and 2010, which I did not go to. But I saw Woz and other Apple top dogs. That was cool.
 
puckhead193 said:
damn $1600 :eek:

Does that even guarantee a seat for Cook's keynote?
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Basically yes unless your the last to show up, but there is standing room in the back if all seats are full. Moscone Center is huge. The price is basically no different than any other technology conference. I go to VMWorld each year and its held there most of the time and those main conference halls hold a crap load of people. VMWorld, EMC World, HIMSS all range in the 1,500 range for the week long event. At VMWorld for the price of the ticket it gets you lunch each day a Hall Crawl at the solutions exchange with free alcoholic beverages and snacks, snacks drinks throughout each day. A huge party on Wednesday night with live bands and events. 2 years ago they rented out AT&T Park had a ton of games and things to do and had Train and Imagine Dragons performing. So for the money you get a lot plus all of the sessions and labs and networking. They are not places for just fans and enthusiasts, its for technology professionals to learn and have a little fun while doing it.
 
bbeagle said:
I agree - there is no reason to go now unless, say, you have a small company and want to network, or need person-to-person time with Apple engineers on code issues. Or your company is paying and you want a vacation - San Francisco is a great place to travel to.
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I'll add to that and say that even big companies benefit from networking. Maybe especially big companies. I work for a large company, but we only have a small number of iOS developers and are trying to both find more people and improve the depth of our skills. Until recently, our mobile presence was a lower priority and now we're really trying to step it up.
 
bbeagle said:
WWDC is a 5 day event

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...And a free party on Thursday night with a big name band, free drinks and food. Plus free lunches and food throughout, free apple merchandise, and one on one with apple engineers to help developers code their apps. The money is well worth it.
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That sure is a lot of 'free' stuff for your $1600 ! How does Apple do it...
 
ReValveiT said:
That sure is a lot of 'free' stuff for your $1600 ! How does Apple do it...
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$1600 for four days of sessions and labs WITH access to Apple engineers is a bargain. I don't see what the big deal is. My 7 days of hotel stay in SF is going to be much more than that and my airfare is going to be a forth of the ticket cost.
 
puckhead193 said:
damn $1600 :eek:

Does that even guarantee a seat for Cook's keynote?
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If you're going to WWDC you want a seat at the State of the Union Keynote + the other keynotes you're interested in. The first one with Cook and co is basically for us non programmers who want to know what's happening at WWDC.
 
mmendoza27 said:
I mainly go to WWDC for networking and personal reasons, not so much for work.
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That's one ticket that someone who really needed to go for work reasons misses out on because of your personal reasons. Shame on you.

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Also for those who can't go, most of the keynotes are eventually online. It's a long list of them each year Apple put up on their site to watch. So really all you miss out on is the one to one help with your code from Apple and asking Apple questions about the keynotes. But that help is worth the $1600. If you're in a business that writes swift code you'd want to be in the lottery every year.
 
the8thark said:
That's one ticket that someone who really needed to go for work reasons misses out on because of your personal reasons. Shame on you.
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Well... Maybe if Apple held and or sponsored another non-dev conference/expo they could eliminate(or reduce) the problem with non-devs wanting to go to WWDC. Even most of their product announcements are press only. Due to the limited number of engineers WWDC can not grow any larger from a developer standpoint but that wouldn't stop Apple from renting out Moscone North or South at the same time and starting a expo type event for non-dev and charging $500 or $1000 per person.

Apple basically killed Macworld Expo when they pulled out. Also the internet might have hurt expos but in my opinion there is still a draw to them as long as the right companies/people put them on.
 
Like the team that writes the Microsoft, eBay or Facebook apps for iOS need to get into a lottery for WWDC. I'd love to see the master attendee list for this event. I'm sure it works this way.

Apple employees
Apple VIPs (celebs, award winners, etc.)
Journalists
High profile regularly ranked app developers that does not need to go to the lottery
The masses who won the lottery

Would not be surprised of only half who attend WWDC are in this lottery with the rest on the guest list. Does anyone know the entry amount vs available slots to know what the odds are? Is the lottery an even probability or weighted with ones app store history, attendance history and types of membership count?

Has there ever been a third party audit of this lottery?

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the8thark said:
If you're in a business that writes swift code you'd want to be in the lottery every year.
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One of the big pieces of dirty laundry this year at WWDC is the mulling over how poorly the Swift programming language has been accepted by the third party developer community. Even the on-line Apple documentation is not getting updated to Swift. Many are comparing it to C# over at Microsoft.
 
CFreymarc said:
Like the team that writes the Microsoft, eBay or Facebook apps for iOS need to get into a lottery for WWDC. I'd love to see the master attendee list for this event. I'm sure it works this way.

Apple employees
Apple VIPs (celebs, award winners, etc.)
Journalists
High profile regularly ranked app developers that does not need to go to the lottery
The masses who won the lottery

Would not be surprised of only half who attend WWDC are in this lottery with the rest on the guest list. Does anyone know the entry amount vs available slots to know what the odds are? Is the lottery an even probability or weighted with ones app store history, attendance history and types of membership count?

Has there ever been a third party audit of this lottery?
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Your name, company name and badge type(VIP, Press, Apple Employee, etc) are printed on the badge.
There are Apple VIPs they don't hide those because it is printed right on their badges. The Press is there at the Keynote(I believe Press badges are only good for the keynote) but it is made clear that you are under NDA so I doubt Apple would be handing out large amounts of non-press tickets/badges to the Press because they couldn't legally/publicly report any information anyways.
I am sure there is a list people that are just invited/given tickets(that do not have VIP badges) but I seriously doubt that accounts to half of the people in attendance.
 
puckhead193 said:
damn $1600 :eek:

Does that even guarantee a seat for Cook's keynote?
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There is only assigned seating in the VIP front section. The rest of the cattle have to wait in line. Last year, there were people waiting in line overnight. SF cops were cool about it and didn't bust anyone for loitering. If anything, the cops were there to keep the inevitable sidewalk derelicts that litter San Francisco away from the WWDC attendees.

If you can afford $1600 + travel + housing to attend, odds are you are a professional developer where you get that money back in less than a week. The contacts you make at WWDC be it Apple employees or fellow attendees far outweigh the cost of attending. Also good parties.
 
lostngone said:
3am doesn't cut it anymore. I have been to every WWDC for the last 9 years except 2014 and you have to get there ALOT earlier than that to get that close to the front. You have idiots with tents now to deal with.
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Tents.

I hate tents.
 
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