If You Plan It, They Will Come
I have to admit, I was always a little nervous about how the WWDC Weblogger Dinner would come together (never having planned such an “event” before), but I’m proud to report that not only did last night’s festivities go off without a hitch, they were actually successful beyond my expectations. I’m not exactly sure how many people ended up attending, but it was certainly over 30, and I think we had a great mix of truly interesting people (both Apple and indie developers) having conversations that ranged from Safari’s RSS integration to medieval Welsh!
For me, the most interesting thing about the dinner was actually meeting so many people I’d previously known only through web pages. It was as if my NetNewsWire subscription list had suddenly sprung to life, and it was fascinating to see how peoples’ actual appearances and personalities differed from my impressions. Michael McCracken, for example, was a lot younger than I expected, while Wolf Rentzsch was more friendly and outgoing.
My only real regret is that our space didn’t accomodate mingling very well. I tried my best to make it to every table and have a meaningful conversation with everyone, but I still ended up feeling that I hadn’t really talked to people as much as I would have liked. I think this is one respect in which the Thirsty Bear would have been a far better venue (the other respect would definitely have been food). Now that I’m a little more experienced, I will plan ahead for next year’s dinner and beat O’Reilly and the rest of the WWDC party scene to the punch on reservations.
I want to sincerely thank everyone who attended. I think it’s a testament to the awesome social networking power of weblogs that someone like me can have so many interesting acquaintances, and I appreciate you letting me hang out with you. All of this, of course, makes me sad that I can’t attend ADHOC, but, hey, there’s always next year…
In the meantime, here are a few photos documenting the occasion (apologies if I missed you—I rejected a lot of my shots as unflattering due to eating or what have you).
(Update: It has come to my attention that some people felt excluded. My apologies, although I’m not sure what I should have done to promote the dinner more effectively—demand that more widely read webloggers mention it? I guess I assumed that Brent’s post on the subject would have been seen by most of the Mac developer/weblogger community.)