This is a late post on 360 iDev, which was held September 11-14. Once again it was a great conference and a highlight for me this year especially as I missed out on WWDC. I have always thought that 360iDev is better value for money than WWDC. You will meet many excellent developers from around the world and as it is a smaller event you will get a chance to meet them.
The sessions were great. I started on Sunday with Photoshop for devs. This was an excellent session by Mike Berg. I find very often that I want to manipulate an image, something that seems relatively simple, but do not know how to go about it. Mike lead us through various techniques on how to create awesome graphics. (Ok awesome graphics for a developer)
While I can always learn more on the coding front I always look out for the sessions on business and UI design to round out my skills. Being an independent iOS developer I need to be able to do all aspects, soups to nuts to run my business. I went to two informative business sessions. The first one was by Kyle Richter who focused on the people side of getting clients and keeping them happy. The second session was by Andria Jensen who did an excellent job of explaining the in and outs of running a contracting business, all very useful information.
My favorite session had to be from Mike Lee who lives in Appsterdam. (Amsterdam Netherlands) Mike is a larger than life developer who came dressed as a Mariachi Cowboy, along with margaritas and a Mariachi band. Mike took us through the technology steps of man kind all the way to shipping a product. This was a laugh a minute presentation.
I still have hopes of creating a game with cocos2d so Ray and Rod’s intro to cocos2d was another motivator to get going on learning cocos2d. They made it look so easy to create a workable game.
A big part of 360iDev is meeting other developers and there was ample opportunity to do that at the parties scheduled in the evening by the sponsors. So if you have been sitting in the fence I hope I have persuaded you to attend next year.
You can find more information on the 360iDev website http://360iDev.com