Today was Student Sunday – a special day for WWDC student attendees with presentations from various people and a chance to get acclimated and socialised. It ran a bit smoother than last year, although was less hands on; last year they ran a CoreData lab (full of shiny iMacs) which Wil Shipley directed with the challenge of building an app like Delicious Library, the conceptual core of which he figured could be implemented in only two hours or so. (It couldn’t, as it turns out)
This year there was also meant to be a hands-on session, although it never really happened. I felt the presentations were quite good, although virtually everyone I’ve talked to disagreed, some quite strongly. I was pretty tired throughout the day, a little jetlagged still and also simply tired from the early start, so I didn’t do a whole lot – mainly just sat back and listened. I was entertained, though, and pretty well fed – breakfast was a little bland with cake and sugared pastries, but lunch was quite nice indeed.
We wrapped up the day with the AUC reception back at our hotel, which was good – lots of people there; not just AUC participants, but anyone from Australia or New Zealand, including Apple, Pixar & other company’s employees. I also went back to the Student Sunday career session, just to check out what was on offer and so forth. It was bigger than last year, although again I wasn’t really all that interested in anything that was there. Apple had a table, as did Google, Quark, Adobe, Lego (that tempted me almost more than anything else :D ), Kodak, and numerous others. I chatted with a few people, including Aaron Hillegass – famous MacOS X author and the drive behind the Big Nerd Ranch, whom was really quite nice.
After that, I returned to the hotel, where I’ve been sitting ever since, in my room, typing up all this and sorting through photos. And using the hotel’s free internet connection to leech numerous podcasts. :D
But I’ve had enough for today… we’ve got an 8am start (or thereabouts) so that we can line up for an hour waiting for the venerable keynote, after which there’s food to be had and various further presentations. I won’t be able to write about any of those, but we’ll see what activities spawn themselves for tomorrow night.
