Last Night I went to a few WWDC after parties. This being my first year in the SF bay area, I wanted to make an effort to meet more Apple people, and while I couldn’t quite afford attending WWDC, I wanted to make it down there to meet some of the people.
Mike was planning on attending the Webkit Party yesterday, but as the day wore on, he was less and less definite about his attendance, as he was already tired from a wild Monday night. So that left me with no one to go with. Now, I’m not overly shy, but I always like having a starting point in a crowd. Without Mike, I felt it would have been difficult to find that point (He works for Apple and therefore knows a bunch of people at webkit).
With Mike heading back, I saw yet another WWDC slipping away from me. I remember when I was really young and my grandfather took me to a MacWorld in Boston. That was the last Apple event I had attended, and I remember thinking how wonderful it was, but wanting to find more developers. WWDC was my next mission. I was about to miss the whole boat once again.
I had given up all hope, and committed to myself that I would try harder next year, when Kyle arrived. Kyle is a relocated employee at my company, who had just finished the drive across country. While my trip took about 7 days, his had taken only 4. He decided to make it into work early (why?). Well, turns out he is a Mac User, and with a little prodding was easily convinced to come attend the aforementioned Webkit party.
So we went, and it was amazing. I ran into a bunch of web guys who worked for the NY Times. They were really cool, and one of them even went to college with a high school buddy of mine, re-affirming my belief that we really do live in a very small world.
I also got to run into some cool Apple people, including Mike Matas. All in all, it was a rather fantastic experience.
One last important note, while getting Subway on the way home we ran into this other gentleman, wearing what had to be the best shirt I saw there, “WYSIWTF” with an Internet Explorer logo. I have never seen a more true shirt :-D.
Hopefully next year I will be able to attend WWDC, not just an after party.