Sci-Fi Hi-Fi

Last week, with WWDC rapidly approaching and the Thirsty Bear asking for a final guest count, I decided to shut down registration for the WWDC dinner. However, I’ve still been getting a lot of last minute emails from people who want to come, and I’ve started to get indications that some people are just planning to crash the party.

This is tough for me, because the last thing I want to do is be exclusive, but at the same time I need to give the venue a definite guest list for menu purposes. Also, the head count has more than doubled since I instituted the original (and now completed) DropCash campaign, and with it the cost of the food.

To compound my party planning anxieties, I’ve also discovered that the original per-person amount I quoted really only really covered appetizers, not a proper dinner, and that the actual cost will be more like $25/person. This, combined with the number of people who have yet to pay (I estimate only about a third of the people who expressed interest have actually contributed), leaves me worried that I’m going to end up personally footing a large part of a huge (and still growing) bill.

Since the goal on the old DropCash campaign (which was based on about half the people and a lower food cost) was met, I’ve set up another one to attempt to collect as much of the rest of the money as possible. If you are planning to attend, haven’t contributed yet, and don’t have some sort of problem with PayPal, now would be a fine time to donate. By the same token, if your name is on the list and you don’t plan to come, now would be a great time to let me know.

With all of that unpleasantness out of the way, I can say that I’m looking forward to the event immensely. I’m very proud of our interesting mix of attendees, which should include people from all over Apple, smaller “indie” Mac developers, large company Mac developers, web developers (both indie and large company), students, and all-around interesting characters (Merlin Mann alone is usually worth the price of admission). Hopefully with that many bright and interesting people in one place, we can get some fantastic conversations going!

Many thanks to everyone for their interest. I look forward to seeing you all next Monday in San Francisco!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 2nd, 2005 at 12:35 am and is filed under WWDC 2005. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.