Author: David

WWDC week recap: Micro.blog, The Talk Show

Continuing my week-delayed recap of my WWDC week: on Tuesday I attended a meetup of the Micro.blog community from about noon (I was early):

Here’s a group photo (not taken by me):

Micro.blog meetup

The Micro.blog service is like a social layer on personal blogs, encouraging the idea of owning your own content, instead of donating it to social silos. As you may know, I host my Dejal, Dejus, and Yellow Cottage Homestead blogs on my own server, and cross-post them to Micro.blog, Twitter, Mastodon, and Facebook. Micro.blog is my preferred social network; the people there are generally more friendly than on Twitter, in large part to the way the service is designed, without casual likes, so people often reply with a more meaningful comment if they enjoy a post.

It was great to chat with lots of people there; some I’d met in person before, some only online, some new.

I was planning to attend the Automators meetup after the Micro.blog one, but by the time I left there, I didn’t have time, since I was going to meet with a client. Maybe next year!

That evening, I headed to the California Theatre for another podcast recording show, The Talk Show Live:

California Theatre

The foyer of the theater is rather fancy… and was very crowded:

California Theatre foyer

California Theatre foyer

I sat in the balcony, as I often do, though a bit further back than last year:

California Theatre balcony

Here’s our host, John Gruber of Daring Fireball, pulling a Playdate out of his pocket:

John Gruber

John was joined on stage by Apple execs Greg Joswiak and Craig Federighi for a fascinating discussion (video and audio versions are available if you missed it):

Greg Joswiak, Craig Federighi, John Gruber

Afterwards, I scooted back to my hotel room for the night:

Scooter

Tomorrow, Wednesday’s highlights.

WWDC week recap: sjMacIndie, AltConf, ATP Live, Loop Bash

During WWDC week I’m too busy attending events and such to do blog posts. So I thought I’d do a week-delayed recap of some highlights of my time in San Jose.

I arrived in town on Sunday afternoon, and headed to the sjMacIndie party that evening, where I caught up with other developers I’ve met before, chatted with people I’ve only known online, and met new people. I wore a Dejal shirt, which made it easier for people to recognize me. It’s always nice to have someone come up to me and say how much they like one of my apps:

sjMacIndie

sjMacIndie

On Monday morning, I headed to the convention center to watch the WWDC keynote.  Since I wasn’t attending WWDC itself, I went past the very long line of WWDC attendees waiting to get in:

WWDC keynote line

Instead, I headed to AltConf, held at the next-door hotel:

AltConf

I watched the keynote live-streamed, along with about 900 other developers:

Keynote

That afternoon, I also watched the State of the Union livestream there; the keynote focusing more on the developer news.

A blue margarita at the AltConf happy hour:

Blue margarita

That evening, I attended a live recording of the Accidental Tech Podcast, which began with Alex Cox from Cards Against Humanity bringing John Siracusa a toaster to review; a hilarious callback to a long-running sponsorship spot when they’d do that instead of an ad read:

Marco, Casey, John, Alex

John taking a photo (during an ad read, if I recall correctly):

John takes a photo

Marco gave Stephen Hackett a trashcan Mac Pro for his collection:

Stephen gets a trashcan

Hugs:

Hugs

Hugs

After that show, I headed to the Loop Bash at the Ritz nightclub:

The Loop Bash

They had an open bar:

Bar

The nightclub was rather crowded:

Nightclub

The Houserockers performed:

The Houserockers

I didn’t last very long there, since it was too loud and crowded for my comfort. But I’m glad I went.

Tomorrow, Tuesday’s activities.

Planes fly directly over downtown San Jose when coming in for a landing. I’ll be getting on one in a few hours. Goodbye WWDC! It was great to chat with lots of other developers, and see fun evening shows. #dejus365