4 ms·

Interesting comparison. I wonder how many people attended each of the respective events? Could the lines, price, "you're lucky to be here", etc. be based on sup

by rtrunck 16y ago

Interesting comparison. I wonder how many people attended each of the respective events? Could the lines, price, "you're lucky to be here", etc. be based on supply and demand? I mean if WWDC sold out in 8 days AND they charged almost 4 times more, there has to be some issue with supply and demand.

rbanffy 16y ago
Everybody knew Apple would announce a new iPhone at WWDC, maybe more stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if a very significant part of the attendance were there not for the technical sessions, but to cover product launches.
- wmf 16y ago
  If that's really the case, they should start selling tickets for the keynote separately from WWDC itself.
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    Keynote attendance already went into overflow.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    This would not benefit Apple. The ones who went there for the keynote (and, perhaps, one specific talk) will pay the same and use less infrastructure.
    - wmf 16y ago
      That's true if you see WWDC as a profit center. As a developer outreach tool, turning away N developers (due to selling out quickly) so that one developer can go to one session sounds pretty suboptimal.
- astrange 16y ago
  The press were invited to the keynote; they didn't take up any of the conference slots. I doubt that many people come just to be there, though I did see Gruber around last year and not this year.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Sorry. There is press and there is press. I was counting the zillion part-time bloggers who paid for the tickets and went to the conference as a bonus. Even when I get invited as press (I used to contribute to magazines more or less regularly) I am never stopped from watching the talks. The worst that happens is that the organization doesn't give me the same bag they give everyone else. But I had lunch with James Gosling once.
ergo98 16y ago
These events have been overrun by non-developers, so it really doesn't say anything about developers: WWDC is a million crappy tech bloggers live blogging about the latest unveiling. Android simply doesn't have that. The devices are released frequently and uneventfully. Though note that Google I/O sold out very early (well in the early bird period). And here's the best part: No one who signed up knew they were getting ANY free phone, much less two. So when someone says "See they had to bribe you to be here", it doesn't really wash given that the bribe wasn't known until you were already there. Google wants developers developing and testing on the top devices, so they give them out.
- ben1040 16y ago
  There was at least a little precedent in that Google gave phones to I/O attendees last year and established that it was not out of the realm of possibilities they might do it again. That said I did not buy my ticket to I/O this year under the assumption that I would get a phone, and I intend to go next year -- the value I got from the talks is still more than the price of admission and I couldn't care less if I got a phone out of it.
- wmf 16y ago
  No one who signed up knew they were getting ANY free phone, much less two. Google gave away phones at I/O last year as well as several other Android developer events, so it's not hard to predict that they'll keep doing it until they are satisfied with Android developer mindshare.
  - ergo98 16y ago
    >Google gave away phones at I/O last year Knowing and hoping are different things. This year I/O sold out very quickly. I got around to signing up, during the early bird period, and my dreams and hopes were dashed by a registration full notice.
- stevejohnson 16y ago
  Clearly, your only experience with WWDC was the keynote. If you had bothered to look into anything else about the conference, you would know that the entire rest of the week is filled with tech talks about relevant technologies (both newly announced and pre-existing) and labs staffed by every breed of Apple engineer. What I'm trying to say is that WWDC has not been overrun by "non-developers." The keynote is the only part of the event open to the press, and they exploit it as much as they can, but the rest of the conference really is devoted to working with useful, relevant technology. This is not to say that WWDC is better or worse than I/O, just that bloggers have not hijacked the event from real developers.
silencio 16y ago
Meh, I had some more thoughts, mostly along the non-technical line... - Google I/O is only two days long while WWDC is five days long, which makes the price a bit more comparable. - Apple worked with Duarte and got all their speakers to rehearse in excess to get the presentations polished as much as possible before the event - what you saw on the public keynote with Zynga's CEO babbling about Farmville was amateur hour. All the speakers may have been nervous at some point or another about speaking to so many people, but they knew their stuff and pulled it off. While a lot of conferences do similar things, occasionally when it's a more laid-back or shorter event, they skimp so much here that it hurts. Nothing spoils a presentation more than an unprepared speaker with crazy slides to me. For one extreme example (to me), I went to an Amazon event local to me after WWDC last year, and saw this atrocious presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/aws-startup-event-la-2009-last-legion-games http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/aws-startup-even... (slide #4 is particularly bad). I'm sure it was pretty easy to guess how far my jaw fell going from a week long professional polished-to-an-extreme event where every single presentation used the same syntax highlighting, to that, where the person couldn't even get the bullet points to match in size or shape on a single slide. - Partnerships? To do what? Any partner that would have participated in something like that at WWDC should it exist had employees there to go to the conference that could promote their products or whatever with people they meet over the course of a week. - While WWDC this year had a noticeable lack of Mac-specific sessions, they had plenty foundational sessions for all platforms, and a LOT of talk about Safari and then the developer tools, which are clearly not only for iOS development, so there's no excuse for combining Xcode and iOS 4 together. Not to mention that 10.7 is probably not ready to even be previewed, so what else would Apple have presented there? - The OP totally just doesn't even mention anything about the existence of Office Hours and Labs at I/O and WWDC respectively, which to many were the most valuable part of the conferences...I know people who didn't even bother to go to more than a couple sessions throughout the entire week at WWDC, they just permanently parked themselves in the labs on the first floor. (The labs/office hours being the places/times you could go and chat one-on-one with the people behind whatever you wanted help with or just wanted to talk about.)
mcantelon 16y ago
I think both events were ~5000 attendees (likely Moscone's capacity has something to do with this). WWDC has been going on for 15 years, whereas this Google IO was the third. Having been going on for 15 years, there may be more depth of community and, subsequently, more networking value.
- silencio 16y ago
  I wish this were true. While the networking value of WWDC can't be ignored, I heard something like 60%+ of WWDC attendees this year were first timers, probably because the balance between iPhone and Mac in previous years shifted drastically over to iOS this year, and it's a hot and newer platform than Mac OS X is. Or, how a lot of these new developers were coming over from other platforms, and the value of networking with them is not as high as networking with veterans, many that didn't bother to show up this year because it was so iOS heavy. Assuming, of course, that a large part of "value" is the person's depth of knowledge, interests, and involvement in the community.

by rtrunck 16y ago

rbanffy 16y ago

Everybody knew Apple would announce a new iPhone at WWDC, maybe more stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if a very significant part of the attendance were there not for the technical sessions, but to cover product launches.

wmf 16y ago
If that's really the case, they should start selling tickets for the keynote separately from WWDC itself.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  Keynote attendance already went into overflow.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  This would not benefit Apple. The ones who went there for the keynote (and, perhaps, one specific talk) will pay the same and use less infrastructure.
  - wmf 16y ago
    That's true if you see WWDC as a profit center. As a developer outreach tool, turning away N developers (due to selling out quickly) so that one developer can go to one session sounds pretty suboptimal.
astrange 16y ago
The press were invited to the keynote; they didn't take up any of the conference slots. I doubt that many people come just to be there, though I did see Gruber around last year and not this year.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Sorry. There is press and there is press. I was counting the zillion part-time bloggers who paid for the tickets and went to the conference as a bonus. Even when I get invited as press (I used to contribute to magazines more or less regularly) I am never stopped from watching the talks. The worst that happens is that the organization doesn't give me the same bag they give everyone else. But I had lunch with James Gosling once.

ergo98 16y ago

These events have been overrun by non-developers, so it really doesn't say anything about developers: WWDC is a million crappy tech bloggers live blogging about the latest unveiling. Android simply doesn't have that. The devices are released frequently and uneventfully. Though note that Google I/O sold out very early (well in the early bird period). And here's the best part: No one who signed up knew they were getting ANY free phone, much less two. So when someone says "See they had to bribe you to be here", it doesn't really wash given that the bribe wasn't known until you were already there. Google wants developers developing and testing on the top devices, so they give them out.

ben1040 16y ago
There was at least a little precedent in that Google gave phones to I/O attendees last year and established that it was not out of the realm of possibilities they might do it again. That said I did not buy my ticket to I/O this year under the assumption that I would get a phone, and I intend to go next year -- the value I got from the talks is still more than the price of admission and I couldn't care less if I got a phone out of it.
wmf 16y ago
No one who signed up knew they were getting ANY free phone, much less two. Google gave away phones at I/O last year as well as several other Android developer events, so it's not hard to predict that they'll keep doing it until they are satisfied with Android developer mindshare.
- ergo98 16y ago
  >Google gave away phones at I/O last year Knowing and hoping are different things. This year I/O sold out very quickly. I got around to signing up, during the early bird period, and my dreams and hopes were dashed by a registration full notice.
stevejohnson 16y ago
Clearly, your only experience with WWDC was the keynote. If you had bothered to look into anything else about the conference, you would know that the entire rest of the week is filled with tech talks about relevant technologies (both newly announced and pre-existing) and labs staffed by every breed of Apple engineer. What I'm trying to say is that WWDC has not been overrun by "non-developers." The keynote is the only part of the event open to the press, and they exploit it as much as they can, but the rest of the conference really is devoted to working with useful, relevant technology. This is not to say that WWDC is better or worse than I/O, just that bloggers have not hijacked the event from real developers.

silencio 16y ago

Meh, I had some more thoughts, mostly along the non-technical line... - Google I/O is only two days long while WWDC is five days long, which makes the price a bit more comparable. - Apple worked with Duarte and got all their speakers to rehearse in excess to get the presentations polished as much as possible before the event - what you saw on the public keynote with Zynga's CEO babbling about Farmville was amateur hour. All the speakers may have been nervous at some point or another about speaking to so many people, but they knew their stuff and pulled it off. While a lot of conferences do similar things, occasionally when it's a more laid-back or shorter event, they skimp so much here that it hurts. Nothing spoils a presentation more than an unprepared speaker with crazy slides to me. For one extreme example (to me), I went to an Amazon event local to me after WWDC last year, and saw this atrocious presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/aws-startup-event-la-2009-last-legion-games http://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/aws-startup-even... (slide #4 is particularly bad). I'm sure it was pretty easy to guess how far my jaw fell going from a week long professional polished-to-an-extreme event where every single presentation used the same syntax highlighting, to that, where the person couldn't even get the bullet points to match in size or shape on a single slide. - Partnerships? To do what? Any partner that would have participated in something like that at WWDC should it exist had employees there to go to the conference that could promote their products or whatever with people they meet over the course of a week. - While WWDC this year had a noticeable lack of Mac-specific sessions, they had plenty foundational sessions for all platforms, and a LOT of talk about Safari and then the developer tools, which are clearly not only for iOS development, so there's no excuse for combining Xcode and iOS 4 together. Not to mention that 10.7 is probably not ready to even be previewed, so what else would Apple have presented there? - The OP totally just doesn't even mention anything about the existence of Office Hours and Labs at I/O and WWDC respectively, which to many were the most valuable part of the conferences...I know people who didn't even bother to go to more than a couple sessions throughout the entire week at WWDC, they just permanently parked themselves in the labs on the first floor. (The labs/office hours being the places/times you could go and chat one-on-one with the people behind whatever you wanted help with or just wanted to talk about.)

mcantelon 16y ago

I think both events were ~5000 attendees (likely Moscone's capacity has something to do with this). WWDC has been going on for 15 years, whereas this Google IO was the third. Having been going on for 15 years, there may be more depth of community and, subsequently, more networking value.

silencio 16y ago
I wish this were true. While the networking value of WWDC can't be ignored, I heard something like 60%+ of WWDC attendees this year were first timers, probably because the balance between iPhone and Mac in previous years shifted drastically over to iOS this year, and it's a hot and newer platform than Mac OS X is. Or, how a lot of these new developers were coming over from other platforms, and the value of networking with them is not as high as networking with veterans, many that didn't bother to show up this year because it was so iOS heavy. Assuming, of course, that a large part of "value" is the person's depth of knowledge, interests, and involvement in the community.