If we are lucky, there will soon be a small boom (a boomlet?) in locally developed iPhone apps, thanks to Apple Asia and IE Singapore. This year, Apple Asia sent a bunch of undergraduates from NUS, NTU and SMU to San Francisco while IE-Singapore helped to send a few local iPhone developers including buUuk, Elchemi Education, Orange Gum, Personae Studio, Scoreless Music, Ufinity, Violet Enterprise Solutions and Xsago.
Apart from the chance to attend the various technical sessions with Apple engineers, the Singapore contingent also briefed Apple about developments in Singapore in the lifestyle and enterprise space.
According to the prolific but modest Muh Hon Cheng of buUuk, WWDC was very useful. "Not having a programming background, there are a lot of basics and best practices that I may not know about. Attending sessions and talking to other developers definitely helped. There were also specific topics that I had no idea where to start, and WWDC helped a bit with that."
Willson Cuaca of Xsago says that WWDC helped jumpstart some of Xsago's efforts. "WWDC helped shorten the learning curve of the new technologies. Before the end of WWDC, Xsago submitted two applications for OS 3.0."
It wasn't just the technical seminars that were useful though. Joash Chee of Scoreless Music found the networking opportunities to be helpful too. "The time spent interacting with the other companies that went together with me as the IE Singapore mission team has also brought about several interesting collaborations that I hope to cement in the following weeks," says Joash.
For Joash, the highlight of WWDC was "being in the same room as some key Apple executives, like Apple's WorldWide Developer Relations - Games Evangelist Andy Hess, and having the opportunity to talk about what I do.
"Even more spectacular was hearing from those same people how they would like to keep us on their radar and that we should definitely inform them of all our developments so that they will be able to figure out the best way to support our efforts.
"With everyone fighting for attention in the increasingly crowded iPhone / iPod Touch application space, it is a tremendous advantage to have the attention of people of influence on the 'inside'."
This was the first WWDC for Willson, Joash and Hon Cheng but all of them have plans to return. Notes Joash: "I have set several goals for myself and one of them is to have at least one product that I will submit for the Apple Design Awards for WWDC 2010."
WWDC impressions
Hon Cheng on the keynote: "Woke up quite early on the first day to queue at 5am, hoping to be among the front rows during the Keynote. Didn't feel like a long wait at all (even though the Keynote started at 10am).
Willson on his favourite sessions: "Other than all the technology sessions and crash courses, I loved two other sessions -- "A story of Smule" by Ge Wang and "Creating a company and iPhone apps" by Neil Young. Both were really inspiring and opened your eyes to see the potential of the iPhone."
Joash on meeting other developers: "In general, the people that I managed to interact with were friendly and open with their sharing. There's a very strong sense that we are all in this together and I did not feel any strains of tension found in serious competition or rivalry. During breakfast at a nearby diner, I struck up a conversation with a developer sitting at the counter next to me and she felt that people were generally nice and not 'stuck up'."
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