See you in June

For the last two years, James Duncan Davidson and I have spent mid-January talking to marquee Mac developers at the Mac World Expo. We cover a wide variety of topics and this year one of them was why they go to Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference.

Of course the sessions are important. You can take a look at the three basic tracks and their announced sessions and find plenty to keep you busy the second week of June. It could just be me, but the sessions feel less "engineery" and more "markety" than they did when the conference was held down in San Jose. The sessions still are filled with great information and delivered with a polish and an awareness of the audience that you don't find at other developer conferences.

As good as the sessions are, the developers we talked to identified three other reasons you should go to WWDC.

First, you have unbelievable access to Apple engineers. Some of the developers reported keeping a notepad next to their desks during the year and jotting down questions to ask in person at WWDC. The mailing lists are great but there's nothing like catching the engineer responsible for maintaining a framework and asking a directed question.

Second, many of the developers said that they watch the sessions and labs, the Steve Jobs keynote, the signage, and the messages that are delivered between the cracks to get an idea of where Apple is headed. Sometimes the direction is subtle and sometimes the direction is obvious, but the developers thought they were well-served by understanding the technologies that Apple was embracing and the technologies that aren't being resourced. This led them to include plug-ins for QuickLook and Spotlight and to embrace Core Animation.

There are times that the message is confusing or changes. John Gruber has a nice post about the Carbon 64 bit issue and how there probably wasn't malice on either Apple or Adobe's side. Carbon and Cocoa has been difficult for developers to understand at WWDC -- but that's another post for another day.

Third, there was consistent advice that one reason you should go to WWDC to talk to other third party developers. You should show them what you're doing and look at what they're doing. There are rock stars and there are solid developers at small shops who are doing great work in areas that you should check out. Look outside of your specific area. Folks presenting Science posters may be using technologies that you can take advantage of. Apple Design Award winners are doing something that has interested Apple engineers - you should take a look and see what you can learn from them. But most of all, during those long breaks between sessions, get to know your fellow developers.

I know this year will be different. With more Macs being sold and the iPhone SDK there are so many new developers coming to the platform - but I'm really looking forward to this year's conference.