Post-WWDC 2009 Early Monday Morning: Reflections About Lining Up For The Keynote

My goals at WWDC were simple — learn as much as possible, network and meet fellow developers, and to enjoy the whole WWDC experience. For some of us part of that experience is to line up early for the 10 AM keynote. Lining up at 7 for a 9 AM conference keynote I’ve done before. But lining up at 5 AM or earlier? No way — that’s only reserved for rock stars or World Series tickets or so I thought! Well, as the saying goes — in for a penny, in for a pound. So for the full WWDC experience I thought I would go for it. Lining up at midnight was too extreme for me even though I’ve read that some developers do just that. A more “reasonable” approach I thought would be to get up at 4 AM and join the line around 5 to see how many of us were nutty enough to do this. At 5 in the morning there were enough of us lined up one to two abreast to cover one side of the Moscone West building.

At about 5:30 AM there were still no Apple employees inside the hall that I could see. When an Apple employee came by later to compress the line and asked us to count off I was number 173 (or 193 I forget which).

As it got lighter around 7 I saw Jeff LaMarche stop by to say hello to Bill Dudney who was closer to the beginning of the line than I was. So I guess I wasn’t that crazy!

Around 8 AM we were admitted to Moscone West and this is the view to the beginning of the line on the second floor.

And this is the rest of the line behind me.

And finally around 9:40 we were allowed to move up to the keynote on the third floor.

Would I do it again? Yes I would! You get to meet other developers, talk to a few vendors as they ply the line, and watch the sun come up. After all it is part of the WWDC experience!