News: Get Ready for WWDC!

WWDC 2024 has just been announced and will kick off on Monday, 10th June. Just as the last couple of years there will be a keynote viewing party live on-site, while the rest of the conference will be online and anyone can attend from anywhere in the world.

For smaller, community based events, online conferences have been a tough call. During the pandemic they became the only way we could continue to meet as communities, but as soon as restrictions were listed the majority of such events went back to being fully in-person (although some dabbled with hybrid).

For a conference like WWDC, though, it makes perfect sense. For those lucky enough to be able to go, pre-pandemic, there was certainly a community aspect to it. But really it was - and is - primarily an educational event. The majority of the sessions are about new APIs or other new features or approaches that developers need to be aware of and learn the details of.

For the last few years it ran that way most developers were not lucky enough to go. Many couldn't afford it - the ticket price alone was expensive, but for those outside the US - or even just on the other side of it - the travel and accommodation costs could have paid for several sets of Mac Pro wheels! But even if you could afford it it had become so over-subscribed that you had to enter a lottery to even get a ticket.

So the new format, made necessary by the pandemic, seems to have settled in as the better way to serve the developer eco-system more fairly and broadly.

Of course, for the keynote viewing party there is still a lottery to get tickets.

No lottery required?

That works for WWDC, but those smaller, community-based, events have their own value.

After WWDC many developers feel the need to spend all their time learning new APIs and trying to adopt new features in their apps. But as the year draws on there is time to take a step back and re-integrate all the new knowledge with the old, making sure that we haven't lost sight of the craft of working with Swift and Apple platform APIs.

That's what Swift Craft is for. It runs just under a month before WWDC - and there is no need to enter a lottery! Tickets are on sale now and you don't even have to set your alarm to get up at some weird hour (although you can if you like). Check out our amazing schedule packed full of our community's best and brightest speakers and instructors and make this the year you put the craft before the graft.