inessential by Brent Simmons

360 iDev iPhone/iPad Conference - San Jose, April

Going to the 360 iDev iPhone conference?

I am. I’m speaking, even, on the topic of content-based apps. (On feeds, XML parsing, performance, networking, the beauty of NSOperationQueue, image caching and scaling, SQLite and Core Data, etc.)

I went last year to the San Jose conference and then to 360 iDev in Denver. Had a great time both times and totally look forward to this conference.

The iPad should actually be out by then, which is cool — I don’t know exactly what iPad content is lined up, but I have to figure lots of speakers will incorporate iPad into their presentations. And I bet lots of folks will bring iPads with them. I want to go just to see a whole bunch of people’s iPad apps and ideas.

I think it’s the first iPad conference with actual iPads. That’s kind of like Woodstock, right? I don’t want you to say you were there when you weren’t really there — you should actually be there.

Not enough? Here are some other randomly-jotted notes, then…

  • It’s near Cupertino. One night we all go over to Steve Jobs’s house for barbeque and Cuban cigars. It’s totally chill. (Wait. Okay. Maybe not. But it is near Cupertino, though.)

  • Last year I almost got in a fight at Linda’s Light Rail Lounge. Lesson learned: don’t ever joke about NASCAR with somebody who cares. He said he liked so-and-so as a great driver, I said something about Jeff Gordon (the only driver’s name I know) — and apparently the guy thought Jeff Gordon was a sissy or something. I had to talk fast. It’s possible that I bought him a drink, or maybe Joe or Dan handled it and saved me.

    What I mean is this: you and me, we should hang out.

  • My friends Brad Ellis and Dave Wiskus — great designers — are doing a co-presentation on something designer-y-ish.

    Don’t know who they are?

    Check out some apps Brad’s worked on: Apple Design Award winner Postage, Word Spin, and SnoGlobe.

    And check out apps Dave’s worked on: Coathangr and the wickedly addicting Typewar.

  • Oh, whatever, shut up, at least it’s always open.

  • Marcus Zarra will be there. And speaking. Don’t miss your chance to hear from the double-fisted wizard of Cores both Data and Animation.

  • Colin Donnell will be speaking. He has great hair and brains to match.

  • I sometimes judge a conference by who I met and keep in touch with. Last year I met Ryan Nielsen and the previously-mentioned Dan Burcaw.

  • In fact, the conference has such great mojo that last year Dave Wiskus was in town — for other reasons, only coincidentally in San Jose — but he hung out with us at night. And a year later he’s a successful indie iPhone developer and a speaker at 360 iDev. Imagine if he had actually attended the conference. He’d probably be an App Store billionaire by now. (Which is just $150 million in regular money, but still nothing to sneeze at.)

    (That App Store money thing didn’t make any sense. Sorry.)

    What I’m saying is: this conference has the power to launch entire careers!

  • Check out the entire list of speakers. Julio will be there! Joe-with-the-hat! More! It’s a great line-up.

  • TapLynx is a sponsor. That means, yes, we’re paying for some of your fun and awesome learnings. :)

  • It’ll be months before WWDC. Hard to wait, right? Especially with all this cool iPad grooviness.

Anyway… you should go to the website and check it out. Here’s the registration page.

Also, they might set up Rock Band again. You haven’t lived till you’ve seen Joe Pezzillo do No Sleep Till Brooklyn. You can hope.