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WWDC 2012 – The Golden Tickets |

WWDC 2012 – The Golden Tickets

Whew boy! What a week! I totally meant to write this before I went, but time as always, was a fleeting illusion. XD

Since it’s too much to cover in one post (And I’m writing this before work), I’m going to cover my trip to this year’s WWDC, including how I got in, the whole keynote experience, and then reflections of the conference itself. 🙂

Right after my trip to GDC, I received word that the AUC was opening up scholarship applications for staff and students of Australian universities to attend Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Aside from the pool of competitive scholarships, as luck would have it, this year my university had been allocated a scholarship for them to select one staff member for the trip. ^_^

Not wasting anytime, I sent off two applications; one for the competitive scholarships and one for my university’s allocated one. I was initially disheartened when I received word that I hadn’t made the cut for any of the competitive scholarships, but then I was thrilled to receive a phone call from my university’s AUC coordinator saying that I’d been selected for the allocated staff scholarship! ^_^

Now, given the way that Apple decided to roll with the selling of the WWDC tickets this year, simply getting a scholarship did not guarantee we’d all get to go. In the past, Apple simply allocated the tickets to AUC which were then forwarded onto the scholarship winners, but since this year, tickets were digitally tied to the Apple ID they were purchased with, that meant we’d have to see about securing our own tickets when they opened. And given last year the tickets sold out in less than 12 hours, it’s fair to say none of us knew what was coming. XD

When the ticket sales opened, I had JUST sat down in a cinema to watch The Avengers. Thankfully, one of my co-workers had noticed the sales had opened and sent me an SMS to tell me. Not wasting a second, I bought my ticket on my iPhone, in the middle of the cinema, right in the middle of the movie. By the time the movie ended, the WWDC tickets were sold out. So in hindsight, I’m VERY glad I didn’t wait until after the movie to sign up, and I’m pretty sure I owe that ticket to my co-worker.

But… sadly, as a result of that extremely small window, a LOT of the scholarship winners ended up missing out. And in addition to that, one new condition of buying a ticket that wasn’t really made clear before ticket sales opened up was that not only did you need a valid Apple ID, but it had to be an active developer account (eg, currently on the $99 subscription), which tripped up even a few more applicants.

So while I was extremely happy to have managed to secure a ticket to WWDC, it felt rather bittersweet seeing a lot of my buddies miss out at the same time. It was absolutely crazy how fast the tickets sold out this time around and I’m extremely scared to think about what it will be like next year.

Either way, right there I knew WWDC was going to be way more hardcore than GDC. Even getting your foot in the door requires you to be quick, and on the ball. XD

  • Published June 21, 2012
  • Categories Tech