Similar to WWDC, I/O is a developers conference part education and part evangelism for developers to use their technologies. Also similiar to WWDC, I/O had a jam packed keynote (more on that later) -- This will likely be a long post as I feel the need to say a lot.
WWDC '10
First let me talk about WWDC '10. Sadly I'll not be attending WWDC this year -- I've gone for the last 3 in a row, the first year it blew my mind. Year two was satisfying but quite frankly last year was dissapointing. This is mostly because the material they covered was largely a repeat of the prior year and partly because of the iPhone focus. When I saw the agenda this year and realized it would be all iPhone and probably (most likely) a repeat of prior years I took a pass.
Google I/O
Fortunatley I had signed up for Google I/O well in advance. I use a number of Google products and have considered going for a few years. While I was dissapointed to miss WWDC I was pretty excited going into I/O.
Google I/O vs. WWDC
It was fun to compare and contrast the two conferences. Held at the same Venue (Moscone West) at almost the same time of year (only about three weeks apart) for the (more or less) same crowd was interesting. In bullet points my observation(s) were.
- I/O is much more open -- Engineers actually go 'off script' and answer questions (and sometimes even (shock) share things they shouldn't). This is both good and bad as the Polish to most I/O presentations was quite a bit less than WWDC. Some of the material was poorly done or hard to follow and some sessions made poor use of time (one guy flew through his slides in 20 minutes and then didn't know what to say for the rest of the hour!). By comparison WWDC is always well polished -- Material is timed almost perfectly and the sessions last precisely the same amount of time. Winner: I/O -- While I wish a few of them had been a bit more polished I felt like I was getting information at a more 'engineer to engineer' level with less fear of going off script.
- Focus. WWDC is about one thing (ok, two things) -- Mac and iPhone/iPad. there is (used to be) at IT track also but the majority is for developers. You can walk into almost any session and get something useful out of it. Google I/O is all over the map. It went from new storage products to chrome web browser extensions to brand new programming languages. While they had 'tracks' you could follow if you were there for 'one reason' I had a tough time because there are a number of things I wanted to do -- Partly I wanted to sharpen some skills and partly I wanted to learn. As a consequence I jumped from session track to session track probably a bit much. Winner: WWDC
- Material Share: WWDC puts videos up afterwards -- it used to take months but last year it was about 2 weeks. Google puts them on youtube (soon?) for everyone. Winner: I/O -- I was able to watch sessions from last year coming in which helped a lot. Apple has this misguided approach to keep information 'secret' somehow (crazy!)
- Food: Both had catered service for breakfast, lunch & snacks. Apple provided Odwalla drinksk while google provided more varieties of bottled water and soda. Winner: Draw
- Other: both conferences had areas for getting work done. Google went one further with foosball tables, pool tables & wii. Google also had charging stations (WWDC used to but dumped it last year) and a 'tech desk' to get emergency parts. Winner: I/O
- Non Conference. Both events have parties, I missed the I/O one so can't comment on that. At WWDC they have the sessions, stump the experts and ADA. Google had sessions and the developers sandbox where devs showed off their google solutions. Winner: I/O
- Length: WWDC is 5 days (well, 4 1/2 as the first day is mostly keynote) and that is 'about right'. I/O is 2 days (way too short). Winner: WWDC
- Freebies. WWDC gives you a t-shirt and computer bag (the last three years). Perhaps this year the'll get something more but I doubt it. I/O gave me two t-shirts, socks (Google TV Sock no less) and two phones each with a month of service (Motorola Droid and HTC Evo). Winner: I/O (not even a fair fight)
- Value: WWDC $1600 for 5 days. I/O: $400 for two days (plus lots of hardware freebies to help you develop). Winner: I/O
- Keynote: It's impossible to beat a apple keynote -- the google one was well done and by any normal standards exciting and fun (you should have heard the crowd when they gave us all HTC Evo's) but you cannot beat a Steve Jobs Keynote: Winner: WWDC
Finally on Google vs. Apple -- Google poked a lot of fun at Apple (and I'm sure we'll see it poked back in a few weeks) -- It's been surprising to me to see how many people have come out of the wood work trying to defend apple or claim Google looked defensive.
People: While they work together on many things (Almost all Google employees used Macs and Apple uses Google services for much of the iPhone) they are in many ways competitors. Of course Google will try to use it's developer conference to attack who they perceive is the biggest threat (just like Apple has against Microsoft and I'm sure will do so against Google this year) -- It's actually a compliment (imagine if Google had bashed RIM or microsoft during the keynote so heavily and ignored Apple. That, my friends, would have been a slap in the face!)
At the end of the day though what you have to do (and what I am still processing) is do I buy it? Honestly Google made a lot of very valid points. While I love my Apple products the fact is they are limited by what Apple/Jobs thinks they should do. Having played with my Android phones these last weeks I've been impressed with the kinds of integration and capabilities they have (although they are not nearly as pretty as an iPhone).
I'm not sure where my head is at the end of the day -- I decided to try to use my Android exclusively for the next week or two to see how it works for me -- I'll report back later what I find.
Enough for now, if you are still reading thanks for sticking with it. More so than most this post was something I needed to do to get my thoughts together on what I heard & saw last week at I/O. I'll be curious to see what Apple does at their Keynote (and, I'm sure, I'll be sad that I'm not at WWDC0
3 comments:
Thanks for lowdown John! Sounds like something really worth the effort.
How much was actually on the desktop OS? Do you think Google's focus has hugely gone mobile (just like Apple's appears to have)?
I think that where Google had a pop at Apple and then couldn't/didn't back it up (how about seeing a portable device run Flash for a bit and prove it didn't eat half the battery in 10 mins) is where it didn't do them any favours, and that might become more obvious to those who were there over time. Who knows!
Good read. I have a feeling there will be a lot of Mac developers in that same camp -- looking for a more open place to be, with geekier, but friendlier talks. I think Apple needs to tread a lot more lightly and will have to start considering their developer relations more strategically or suffer a brain drain. The history of Microsoft's mismanaged developer relations should weigh heavily on Apple right about now.
One thing I find interesting in your report was that you actually preferred the more open but less prepared presentations.
If a presentation is bad, unrehearsed, or poorly given, no matter how interesting the topic, I can't focus on the content. At the twitter conference I twice got up and walked away from a talk that was on a subject I was interested in because the presentation was so bad that it offended me that I was paying to see it.
I've attended a bunch of conferences in the past year and have decided to mostly stop because poorly presented seems to be the norm and I get so little from that formal -- I'd rather read a book, and they're a lot cheaper.
I do wish there was a bit more organized interactivity at WWDC. Group problem solving, group sharing of products/solutions, a hack-day type thing, whatever.
As far as networking is concerned (the social kind) WWDC is second to none. But with all the focus on iPhone this year, it could be changing. We'll see.
Isaiah
@isaiah,
I was sort of torn on the less formal but more open presentations -- There was only one presentation that I would have called 'bad' though and in balance on several others questions asked (including my questions) were answered directly and in some cases included forward looking stuff (We are thinking that is a 2.3 feature, etc.)
What ultimately won me over is that in three cases (two involving myself and one I saw for someone else) a question was asked that they didn't know the answer and the google engineers gave out their emails saying "Send me the question via email to remind me and I'll get you the answer"
Keep in mind this is the engineers, not the developer relations folks. Would that ever happen at WWDC? Not a chance.
That was ultimately what gave it the edge in my mind.
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