Getting the most out of WWDC

The four of us here at TinyPlanet Software will be traveling to Apple's annual Worldwide Developers' Conference (WWDC) in just two short weeks. This is the first year that the show has ever sold out, so there will be a lot of new faces milling about Moscone West in San Francisco. After a recent Cocoaheads meeting, we received questions from other developers asking how they can best prepare for the conference and what to expect. Now, we're not experts - WWDC07 was our first year - but we know some experts and had them review our advice (thanks, Scott and Roelof)!



WWDC07 was pivotal for TinyPlanet Software and our flagship product, Knapsack. We came back from San Francisco with a redesigned and largely re-implemented application. We were on a Cocoa-high for weeks afterwards. We hope this advice helps others get the same benefit out of Apple's annual developer-fest.

Here's our advice for making the most out of WWDC:

1) Set your planned schedule:
First and foremost, you really need to work out your schedule ahead of time. Spend some quality time with Apple's Schedule. Pick out the most interesting sessions you see, and pick backups in case you want to duck out of a session if it's not going where you thought it would. Read about the sessions and the APIs which will be covered. Make a special note of the TBD sessions, as they often cover material revealed during the Keynote. Also, be sure to watch for schedule changes when you get there and update accordingly.

2) Set your planned after-hours schedule:
There are lots of events that happen after-hours, both Apple and non-Apple sponsored. So far, we know of the following. There will probably be others. For example, last year there was a great Cocoaheads meeting at the Apple Store just down the street from Moscone with Brent Simmons, Daniel Jalkut, Gus Mueller, and Wil Shipley talking about "Going Indie".

• Sunday: MacCommunities Pre-WWDC Social Gathering


• Sunday: The sfIndieMac Soiree


• Monday: Apple's WWDC Welcome Reception


• Monday: Buzz Anderson's 5th Annual WWDC Party


• Tuesday: VMWare Fusion User Meetup WWDC Edition


• Tuesday: Ars Technica and Gizmodo WWDC Party


• Wednesday: Apple Design Awards and Stump the Experts in Moscone


• Thursday: Apple's WWDC Bash

3) Prepare questions:
If you're working on an app or a specific problem, compile a list of 10-20 very specific questions to have handy. Take advantage of the lab sessions, Q&As, and chance meetings to ask these questions; you can often talk to the very people who wrote the framework you're trying to use.

4) Sign up for a UI consultation:
If you would like your UI reviewed by an Apple human interface expert (and who wouldn't?), sign up for a 30-minute one-on-one UI consultation. Sign-ups usually begin on Tuesday morning on a first-come, first-served basis and are only available one day at a time. We radically redesigned Knapsack after going through two UI sessions last year.

5) Take notes:
Bring a spiral notebook to take notes during the sessions. Write down the names of the presenters, demonstrators, lab helpers, UI consultants, and anybody who you might want to talk to - or refer to - later.

6) Meet people:
Hand out your business card, shake peoples' hands, get other peoples' cards. We're all engineers, so we tend to be introverted and taking that first step can be hard. Be an extrovert for the week. Write down context information on the backs of others' cards so you remember the person and can stay in touch after WWDC is over. Stay in touch after WWDC is over.

7) Show up early:
If you have a chance, pick up your badge before Monday morning to avoid the crowds. Similarly, admission to WWDC does not guarantee admission to the Keynote with Steve Jobs; you may end up in an overflow room. If you want to be in the actual room, plan to get up bright and early on Monday morning.

8) Bring gear:
This may go without saying, but bring your laptop, iPhone, and whatever else you need to be a productive developer. Bring a small external hard drive or a hard drive partition to install any beta software on.

Anything else? What do other folks think? Anybody else want to throw their own tips in for the good of the community? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and seeing you developer-types in Moscone!

Knapsack is "Hot Stuff" in Macworld June 2008 edition

Chris, Merrilee, and I were out on an 8-mile run with our marathon training group this past Saturday when one of our fellow coaches, Richard, casually mentioned, "Hey, my wife saw your write-up in Macworld this week. Pretty cool." Thinking he was referring to the blurb we received on macworld.com back in March, we said, "Yeah, that's been up for a couple months now". He said, "No, Macworld. The magazine. The printed version." We were excited, surprised, and anxious to see it for ourselves so on the way home we stopped by the local bookstore and, sure enough, right there in the Hot Stuff section on page 32 is a screenshot and little blurb about Knapsack.



We were so excited that we bought five copies to share with family! When we came back and showed Ruby, she was, in her words, "jumping up and down like a bunny on speed."

For me, the printed Macworld magazine has been part of my Mac-user experience since my first Mac LC back in the early 90's. I had a subscription for many years and always enjoyed the articles, news, reviews, and commentary. Seeing my own product printed in its pages brings a great sense of pride and nostalgia. We'll be holding onto this month's edition in the TinyPlanet Software offices for awhile to come.

Knapsack 1.1 is here!

The four of us here at TinyPlanet Software are excited to announce that Knapsack 1.1 is now available as a free upgrade for existing customers. Version 1.1 features two-way trip synchronization with iCal among a host of minor improvements and bug fixes (view the complete release notes on our website). We believe integration with iCal is something that improves all aspects of Knapsack's mission to help you plan, organize, and relive your travel adventures and we've made the integration as seamless as possible. There's a screenshot below.



Read on to hear how we chose to focus on iCal integration for our first update.

It's been less than two months since we first released version 1.0, and as Merrilee mentioned in her earlier post, the response has been amazing. We loved finding and reading the apple.com feature, the website interviews, the reviews, the blog entries, the tweets on twitter, the forum comments, and all the rest. But one thing that we really love is direct user feedback. We're continually amazed by the high quality of our users' ideas. Knapsack really resonates with people and many take the time to let us know. Here are just a few examples:

"I'm extremely excited by your software.  Not only can I keep track of everything in one place, but it will be there for future reference."

"I'm a frequent traveler, so an app like Knapsack has a lot of appeal for me."

"I am considering purchasing Leopard just so I can use Knapsack."

Now, not everybody is completely satisfied, as you might expect for a 1.0 product (or any product for that matter). We've had many, many feature requests since we went live and a few keep on bubbling to the top. Our top-three requests continue to be (in no particular order):
* iCal integration
* an improved world map
* iPhoto integration

Our plan is to tackle these features in minor releases (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc) which will be free upgrades for existing customers. Here are a couple of the comments that lead us to iCal first (I love the second one. So ... pithy!):

"The things obviously missing are iCal and Todo integration. I'm pretty much bound to want to put trip details into my calendar. So I hope this is on the roadmap."

"It doesn't integrate with iCal?  Are you kidding?  IT'S A TRAVEL PLANNER!!!"

We took these to heart and got cracking on the design and implementation. We're quite happy with how it turned out and as always, would love to hear your thoughts. Leave your comments on this blog or feel free to send us an email to our support address listed on our help page.

Where in the world is Knapsack?

We've been thrilled with the positive response that we've received so far for our initial release of Knapsack. You may be wondering, "Where is Knapsack now?" After reviewing all of the incredibly thoughtful and insightful feedback, we immediately began work on version 1.1. We are so close to releasing! One of the most popular requests from users was integration with iCal, and so that is what we did. This means that it will be easy to get your itinerary events and checklists onto your iPhone which we think many users will be excited about. We're anxiously awaiting feedback from our beta testers and we'll keep you posted on an official release.

In the mean time, we decided to take a look at our customer base and see where our users call home. We wanted to know where in the world Knapsack was hanging out and it turns out...all over the place. It was pretty stunning to see the distribution. We've got users from Australia to Munich to Singapore and many places in between. This got us thinking about all of the amazing trips that are being planned in Knapsack. We'd love to hear about your adventures. Leave us a comment on the blog and let us know what you're up to.