by Jason Snell
Benjamin Mayo on WWDC’s format
I think this is a pretty fair take from Benjamin Mayo about finding a balance between “traditional” WWDC and what we saw in June:
Doing something live, truly live, has this effervescent ambience that will never be matched by something that has been filmed ahead of time. The lingering danger of something going wrong with the demo is palpable, and that’s what makes live events great…. I want to see a show, not watch a marketing video. The risk of live is what makes it.
The technical sessions were also all pre-recorded this year … and they should keep them that way. It was brilliant. The seminar format conveyed the information with more detail and more clarity. For learning materials, that’s exactly what you want….
In the hypothetical future, WWDC would still be an in-person event with consumer Keynote and developer State of the Union presentations on the Monday. Session videos would then be released that evening, leaving the rest of the week for extended labs, mixers and hands-on workshops for the developers in attendance.
I don’t know if WWDC will ever return in its prior form, but if it does come back in some way, I agree with this view—the technical sessions being pre-recorded was a smash hit. Maybe the keynote and State of the Union events could be live in front of an audience, and there’s a question about how to fill out the rest of the week. But the bottom line is, I want WWDC to return in person and I want the technical sessions to be like WWDC 2020 forever.