WWDC was a ton of fun. One of my coworkers equated it to drinking from a fire-hose all week, and that’s exactly what it was like - hardly any time to process any of what you’re taught all week. The sessions were really good, being surrounded by others who do what you do was inspiring, and the labs gave me access to Apple engineers to ask them whatever I wanted. I got some really good feedback on my iOS ad integration class, as well as some help integrating auto layout with some existing projects. There is a ton of material that is not mentioned in the videos (and sometimes even in the documentation) about how a class functions or was built. This is when access to the engineers that actually build the API is infinitely useful. I’ll definitely be more prepared next year.

For those wondering, the WWDC minty boost did in fact work to charge my devices (which was totally necessary every single day), but heated up the AA’s due to the current draw and re-melted the hot-glue that was protecting the PCB to the battery chassis. I only got one use out of it, but really didn’t need it any longer once you know to plug your phone in to charge at every opportunity.

It also humbles me as an engineer to be surrounded by so many people from all over the world who have gone on to do such publicly “great” things by comparison to what I feel like I’ve done. Most of the work I do can’t be shown to anyone else as my work, so I often find myself longing for a very public application or open source project to put my name on. Something I can say that I built or had a significant impact in building and it’s something that millions of others love and find useful. All good things come in time to those who work hard, so we’ll see where the next few years takes me. But for someone who really likes being openly proud of his work instead of just knowing intrinsically that I worked on something public, private white-label consulting is difficult for me - at least in that way. I’m not entirely sure how I would do in a single-project setting where the company I worked for was the product and I wasn’t able to bounce around multiple projects if I wanted to, but I’m sure I would manage just fine.