WWDC attendees know the labs are the best (official) part of the conference. Apple is opaque 51 weeks per year, but the lucky few who attend get tremendous access to Apple engineers in the labs for just that week. I’ve been lucky enough to attend twelve WWDC’s in person. This being 2020, these were remote labs. I was very curious how the remote lab thing would go. This is my experience.
For the remote WWDC, a developer submits a request for a lab the day prior to the lab. The request includes a few questions about the specific topic of discussion. Overnight an email is sent out with either your assigned time, or if unsuccessful, a sad email that you didn’t make the cut.
I attempted three lab appointments for Wednesday. I requested sessions for PDFKit, CoreData, and WebKit. I won the lottery for PDFKit and CoreData, but didn’t get WebKit. They had another WebKit lab today (Thursday) which I did get. All the appointments I was assigned were 25 minutes, but apparently that can vary by lab and/or specific topic.
Based on my limited experience, the remote/appointment process led to a perfect engineer being assigned in all three cases. In one it was the panacea of the engineer who wrote the thing I was using. In the other two cases I was assigned engineers who were intimately familiar with the extreme narrow focus of my questions.
As lab sessions often go, they start down one path then wind and swivel a bit, as related questions come up once the core question is answered. In person, I often bounce around engineers before the person “who knows all about that” is brought in. It seems people truly read my lab requests and assigned the perfect people from the get-go. Good stuff.
Also as lab sessions often go, you learn something doesn’t work quite right. Apple knows, but hasn’t fixed it yet. But here’s a workaround. Or, there is no workaround yet - but now that they’ve connected a bug report with a real human being there’s a good chance you’ll hear more as work progresses.
Serious kudos to the three engineers I dealt with. And three cheers to the folks that figured out how to have successful WWDC remote labs. I didn’t think it would work, but it did.
But, I still miss the real thing. Here’s why.
First, there was no face-to-face contact. Remote labs are audio-only, plus you can share your screen. I never saw the engineers’ faces, nor their screens. Two gave me their first names; one said they weren’t supposed to do even that. Not having the eye contact is a loss for me (I know some developers prefer no eye contact - I get that). There’s a chance to develop a rapport, which leads to even better things. Maybe bumping into the same engineer later that week, even socially.
Second, the appointment structure is tough. Requests for the next day needed to be in by early the prior evening. No same-day appointments, meaning no followup unless the same lab repeated. It’s Friday 9pm ET now, which means I get no opportunity for a lab Friday, even as followup should a recommended solution not work as expected. Out of luck, other than the forums. One of the engineers confided they weren’t too busy with lab questions. If true broadly, they could have opened things up for same day lab registration.
Third, there’s no opportunity for an unplanned question. During WWDC week I’ll wander to the labs when a lab topic interests me, even if I don’t have a burning question. I’ll read, absorb, talk to other developers, and often come up with a question - which I can ask right then and there.
Fourth, the limited lab sessions aren’t appropriate for suggestions or debate. I don’t want to take another developer’s 25 minutes to ask if they’ve considered some API feature, or to comment why I think some decision wasn’t right. Chances are I’d be (appropriately) denied the appointment. But I’ll do that in person, especially if the lab isn’t crowded. I’ll usually learn something in the process, and I suspect I’ve had some minor impact in changes that came later through those informal conversations.
I was able to get my top three questions answered, so I shouldn’t complain. Remote labs work far better than no labs. I didn’t need to travel or buy a ticket. Awesome. But I miss the real thing, so I for one hope next year’s WWDC is “the real thing” again.