A random day in 2015, watching WWDC 15

Me: Well, who knows, maybe one day we’ll go and be there watching Craig Federighi presenting the future of iOS. Luis: Hahaha well yes, who knows.

April 18, 2016

Luis: Erik, I just sent my info to enter the WWDC lottery, don’t forget to send yours! Me: 😱, alright, I’ll do it in a bit. Why would I do it though? 🤔.

April 22, 2016, morning

Me: Well, today is the last day of registration, honestly I have nothing to lose. We are thousands and thousands of programmers in the world who will send our application and we would be very lucky if both of us win, but:

• What if only Luis wins? Honestly, I would be really happy for him, he will bring us many photos and memories.
• And what if only I win? Honestly, I would be scared to death. I’ve never been to the United States, let alone have a VISA. But Luis doesn’t have a VISA either, and well, we haven’t even calculated the expenses that all this implies. But if he had the courage to click, there must be a reason, right? Plus, my luck is going from bad to worse, so why not? (That was the most YOLO “why not” of my life, because to complete the registration you had to put a credit card and in case you “were lucky,” they would debit you the modest sum of $1599. Seriously Apple, that dollar missing to complete $1600 is stored in my wallet). Well, whatever, why am I thinking so much about it? Going to a WWDC and visiting San Francisco is on my bucket list of things to do before I die, so I’d kill two birds with one stone. At that moment, I made the most important click of my 2016.

April 22, 2016, night

— Erik, can you check your card balance? — Luis writes to me on iMessage. — Okay — I replied via Apple Watch. — They just debited me $1599, I think I won, I already have my ticket for the event — Luis writes back. At that moment, I saw that my account was also missing $1599. — Luis, I’m also missing $1599, “chocatela”? ✋🏼 — I wrote to him trembling (for those who don’t know what “chocatela” is, it’s like a “High Five”). — Werik, we’re going to San Francisco! — Luis replied (Werik is what my friends call me, and sometimes even people I don’t know). And at that moment, the email that reconfirmed it arrived.

April 25, 2016, at work

Well, we had already processed the idea that we had our tickets purchased, that we had to build a budget for the trip, and that we did not have a VISA to travel to the United States (that was the best part). Me: Well Luis, I’m putting together my VISA application. Luis: True, I’ll do it in a bit too. Me: If they deny our VISA, well, it was nice to go to WWDC in spirit at least. But we just won the privilege of buying a $1599 ticket, so we are lucky 😀.

Getting the VISA

I sent my VISA application first and they scheduled my appointment in 10 days. When Luis applied, there were no interviews for another 30 days (remember, we didn’t have much time, the event was in June, we needed to buy flights and rent a place to stay, and how do you do all that if you don’t know if you’ll be able to travel due to a missing VISA). The good thing is that Luis checked the appointment calendar again and managed to book an appointment in two days. I told you we were lucky or blessed by Steve Jobs, one of the two, or both. Luis went to his interview, they asked him a few questions, and they gave him the VISA 🎉. My case was completely the opposite, but I had already prepared myself for the good and the bad.

Very serious embassy officer: Why are you going to the United States? Me very serious: For a Technology conference. Embassy officer: Okay, your visa has been approved. Me very puzzled: What? Where are all those tough questions all my friends told me about? Am I so boring that the embassy officer doesn’t want to know about my life? Whatever, we’re going to San Francisco! 🎉

Planning the trip

We bought the flights on Expedia (Expedia, if you’re reading this, you can sponsor me if you want) and it was a very good experience. We got the accommodation via Airbnb (same goes for you, Airbnb, you can give me credits if you want) and we were very lucky to get a good place.

Waiting for the Keynote

We were notified that we should go a day earlier to the Bill Graham Auditorium (which is where the Keynote would take place, by the way) to do the mandatory Check-in. That day, they gave us an event jacket and the event badge with our name, and in case you used a company account, it had the company name, which was my case.

That day, we asked a very kind lady about how the queues worked to get into the keynote.

Apple Lady: Oh well, from past events I can tell you that people queue up very early. Us: How early? Apple Lady: Since dawn. Us: 6am? Apple Lady: Way before that. Us: 😱 (just like Home Alone). Since uncertainty got the best of us, we decided to go at 4am :)

It was very, very cold, and breakfast time was approaching. I saw that many people were coming with Starbucks cups, and it was the first time I saw a Starbucks open since 5am, or even earlier I think. The point of this is that many companies (not Apple) did not waste the opportunity to offer coffee with advertisements about meetups they were hosting. I thought that was simply brilliant!

In the end, Apple provided breakfast for everyone 🎉

Hours went by and I started to see people arriving, and that’s when I remembered that this is an official Apple event and that it is full of thousands of iOS developers from all over the world. That’s how I met Ricardo, who was the one who taught me my iOS course in Lima.

Hours were passing and we were ready!

For me, it was all new—seeing all that organization, seeing so many people passionate about the same technology as you. What more could I ask for? (Maybe more coffee, hey, I had been there since 4am).

The Keynote was a great experience, because it’s one thing to watch it at home and another to see how the developers around you discuss and even get excited about new features of the operating system.

Attending the workshops

The keynote had been great, I still hadn’t fully processed it. We hadn’t found accommodation in San Francisco, so we had to look for accommodation a bit far from San Francisco. That forced us to learn how to use the BART and the Muni.

When I turned the street and saw the Moscone Center with all the WWDC decoration, my skin got goosebumps (my fanboy was activating).

We entered the Moscone Center and I couldn’t believe it.

We arrived early and took advantage of the breakfast offered by Apple.

You saw that in the previous photo, there is an ethernet cable, right? Well, besides having breakfast, it was a “download zone” to get the beta versions of what had been announced yesterday in the keynote (iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, Xcode, among others). The thing is that these softwares are not megabytes—they are gigabytes! That’s when I remembered when I was at home and how it took me hours and hours to download the betas. But hahaha, I forgot I was at a WWDC. The first thing I downloaded was Xcode, which weighs between 3GB or 4GB, and it downloaded in 3 minutes! First I thought it had downloaded wrong, but when I saw that the 3-point-something GB was on my machine, I wondered, what is the download speed?

Well, once you have all the betas it’s time to go to the talks and learn about the future of iOS, but before everything I saw this panel which I found very funny and is indeed a good summary of WWDC.

The good thing about going accompanied is that you can split the attendance to the talks. In case you don’t make it to one, you will find it later on the web.

Apple Design Awards

The Apple Design Awards are like the Oscars of the Apple world and it is one of the parts I like most about WWDC, because here they show the best of the best in development using Apple technology. The feeling you finish with after seeing all these awards is that you set your own limits.

Meeting People

Being at these events, meeting people is inevitable. That’s how we met Raúl, an Apple employee, who was in charge of looking at applications made in Latin America, promoting them and taking them to another level. He invited us to a meeting where we would meet all the developers by region (Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, and so on). Each region had a representative, Raúl was the representative of my region, and that’s how I met people from Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, and even from Peru! Hahaha yes, from my own country (greetings Laura!), it was simply great.

In that interim of talking, we saw a gentleman pass by with a shirt with a logo that, for those of us who consume games on iOS, is synonymous with genius. It was Bagrat Dabaghyan, a member of the Shadowmatic team (technical leader and winner of an Apple Design Award to be exact. And if you don’t know what Shadowmatic is, you should go look it received in the App Store right now, then you can finish reading my story, you won’t regret it). Luis and I were amazed by his story of how he developed the game. It was the best of the day, I’m not lying to you.

What happens at WWDC stays at WWDC

That was what the wristband said to enter the party offered by Apple for WWDC attendees, so for that reason, I won’t tell more in this part. Maybe they brought Good Charlotte, but I won’t say more 🙈.

Geek Tourism

When we put together our plan for the trip, we had defined that we were going to do the geek tour no matter what it cost us. That was why we rented a car and toured all of Silicon Valley and other beautiful things that San Francisco offers.

Summary

If I hadn’t made that click to send my application to get a ticket to WWDC, none of what I showed you earlier would have happened. Sometimes we believe there are things we have to do in the very distant future because we simply are not ready, but in the end, you know what? I think we are always ready to do it all.

@erikfloreq