I was able to get down to PayPal headquarters in San Jose for a few days to attend my first iOSdevCamp and I’m happy to say that the experience was great! Like many other experienced developers I know, I had been under the impression that most of the attendees would be fairly inexperienced, but this was not the case. I was happy to find a great blend of veterans in the group, including Jon Wight, Bill Dudney, August Joki, Ramin Firoozye, and Tim Burks.

iOSDevCamp co-founder Dom Sagolla enjoying the PayPal campus with some koi

iEurope

I’d been busy enough that I decided not to commit to any particular team, and spent most of the first morning just helping whoever I could, until I got recruited by the iEurope team. Our app used the iPad’s compass to present a 360 degree panorama depicting various locations around Europe, with positional sound used to present a location-specific voiceover with background music.

iEurope Screenshot

I contributed the OpenAL code for the project, while Scotty Allen worked on the view animations and Ivan Torres and Amy Wang laid out the application content. The project came together very quickly, and I was happy to hear that it was given the most innovative app award by the judges.

A+++, would attend again!

All in all, I can say that the experience was a complete win. Anyone thinking about going to the next iOSDevCamp should definitely do it, regardless of their experience level. It’s a great chance for inexperienced developers to get immersed in Xcode and the development community. It’s also an opportunity for veteran developers to hook up with old colleagues, make some new ones, help people out, and stretch their own skills.

Thanks to Raven Zachary, Dom, and everyone else that worked to make this weekend so great.