WWDC

On the strength of a student scholarship from Apple, I’ll be going to Apple’s World Wide Developer‘s conference. I can’t stay the whole time, the hotels cost too much, especially if, like me, you’re a navigationally impaired grad student and need to be fairly close to Moscone. But I will be blogging, when the NDA allows, like these bloggers Jonas Luster lists, and I’ll go to Buzz Andersen’s Weblogger Dinner. It should be a lot of fun, but I always feel like I’m being crammed with information at WWDC. Many of the presenters are extremely good teachers, which takes more than just a pretty Keynote presentation. I’m going to concentrate on the QuickTime track, and of course, interface stuff.

This is my third time to a WWDC. I think I puzzle a fair number of the developers—my resume is certainly different. And of course there aren’t that many women there, and there are even fewer female students. My chief skill, explaining technology to non-technical people, in person and in writing, and acting as a user advocate and representative, doesn’t seem to make sense to a large number of the people I meet at technical conferences. Last time, at the student reception, an HR person told me that “anyone can do technical writing” (not true!). I said “Yes, but can they do it in Old Irish?”

I don’t think he got the joke.