CocoaConf PDX 2015

I was blessed to go to Portland over the weekend for CocoaConf with my family in tow. We packed up the Hyundai Elantra and made the trek down last Thursday, completing our journey to the Embassy Suites PDX by mid-afternoon. The following 2 days were chock full of great talks, great conversation, and lots of motivation to go make great apps.

I went to great talks from Daniel Steinberg, Danny Greg, Laura Savino, and more. A few high points:

  • I had my mind expanded by Danny Greg's talk on MVVM. I want to start building my apps using this in mind in the future. I was unprepared for how awesome that architecture looks to wire things together on iOS. (This talk was actually voted the favorite of all the conference-goers)
  • I loved Daniel Steinberg’s talks. I come away from them wanting to play, learn, and teach. I can’t wait to expose my son to lots of things. Not just programming (don’t get me wrong, I will show him) but I want to also show him Christianity, math, English, science, sports. It’s going to be amazing to watch him grow and become his own person.
  • The Apple Watch talks were really good. David and Curt have spent lots and lots of time with the SDK and mockups thinking about how apps should work on that platform and they have been great to share with the broader community. I haven’t built anything for the watch but I now feel equipped to go try it out.

The conference was all-inclusive, even with the meals. Instead of going offsite to eat somewhere they provided lunch and dinner for us on Friday and lunch on Saturday. We got to sit together and mingle or work on something that has inspired us (I got started outlining my June Xcoders talk). The community amongst Cocoa developers is something that I’m truly growing to treasure more and more each day. I got to hang out with some folks that I’ve met up in Seattle but didn’t know that well, and I got to meet new people too.

I can’t say enough good things about CocoaConf. This is the second one I’ve been able to attend (after they visited Seattle last October) and both have been great experiences. The next time they’re up in the Northwest I’ll definitely be on the attendee list.