Last week, myself, Hasani Hunter and over 300 other iPhone developers came to Denver to learn from each other. It was on the third floor of a cool hotel called The Curtis. The conference was packed with three days of sessions and at times there were as many as four sessions going on at once.
There were all sorts of great sessions and even great keynotes. Usually keynotes can go a bunch of different ways; unrelated, boring, unmotivating, etc. But I have to tell you the three I heard were great. Matt Drance gave the opening keynote and did the hardest thing, being the first speaker and getting people motivated. The final keynotes by Rana Sobhany gave me some important things to think about regarding the app store and the apps that I make. She is VP for an analytics company that has been analyzing the App Store from day one. She talked about the different versions of the App Store. The Imangi Studios folks also talked during the final keynote. To me they were great because they are a indie company doing very well for themselves; and built everything from scratch.
I went to this conference expecting to spend my time in the technical talks; learning more about Core Animation, MapKit, etc. However, I ended up sticking around and learning the most out of the business, marketing and design sessions. In fact that consumed all the session time I had for all three days. All except the amazing XCode session done by Kendal Helmstetter Gelner; it made me say this on twitter – it was awesome!
As the title reads (I learned a ton at 360idev)… I truly did. For one thing I learned value of Evernote, as everyone was using it. During each session, I had recorded pages of notes… all in Evernote! One thing that stood out to me was to stop getting stuck in the internet noise of the App Store. There are tons of people, businesses, indie companies doing very well in the iPhone world. From building games, to contracting to killer apps… not everyone is being rejected and failing. In fact, most people are doing very well. Lots of the successful ones were there to share their formula for success.
Regarding the conference itself, I’d suggest just a few things. Much more reliable wifi. I know it was the hotels wifi, but packing a bunch of rooms with demanding Mac people wifi should have been better. Also it seemed a bit unorganized compared to other events i have been to. Hasani had to post on twitter to find out what the access code was for the hotel. We had no idea there were planned parties or that much was going on Sunday night. Just things for the 360 conference people to do better next time.
All this being said, I won’t miss the next one! Thanks guys for a great conference. Just like everyone said, the iPhone market is so new so it changes rapidly. Having a conference like this once a year is not enough. Hope to see you early next year!
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Glad you enjoyed!
Evernote is a great tool for note taking, love it! The CEO gave a great preso as well, that’s always awesome!
RE: Wifi, yeah we’re really sorry. The Hotel assured us going in that it’d be able to handle us, and well, that was a huge FAIL. Our apologies.
Weird that you experienced disorganization. The Codes were on the reg table with us, the entire time. We’ll try to be better at getting the important information out, it’s a struggle for sure, but we want to make sure everyone enjoys their time and it’s as un-difficult as possible.
Thanks again for attending, We’ll make it up to you in San Jose
RE: The access codes, I thought I was the only one. When I sat down for the keynote I asked around to other tables and they didn’t know either. I think since most folks weren’t checking in before the keynote, we didn’t the key. With that and the not knowing about the Sunday stuff and parties at night, I felt scrambled. In the grand scheme of things, those weren’t big deals. Instead of small pieces of paper with the access code, how about posting signs around area with the code.
I have to tell you, I went to the conference last week because it was in Denver; I could keep the costs down. It was worth every penny and I fully intend on going to where ever the next event is. San Jose – perfect!
You guys did a pulled together a great set of speakers. The next one will be even better and I won’t miss that.
See you in San Jose!