Apple sold all of the seats to its Worldwide Developer Conference this year in a matter of only two hours, and the conference sold out before most of the west coast had even crawled out of bed. If you didn’t signup fast enough, you didn’t get a pass to the hottest developer gathering in town.
WWDC demand has spawned several alternatives, including Indie Developer Lab in San Francisco. Many developers were unable to attend WWDC due to how fast the event sold out, and Apple has killed the ability to resell tickets this year.
Mobile game maker CocoaChina has put together a site that aims to get Apple’s attention regarding the pent-up-demand for WWDC 2012.
We believe there are people who purchased WWDC tickets that do not plan to actually attend. There are various reasons for doing so and we understand but it has created three problems:
- The tickets are non-transferable and non-refundable, which has caused purchasers to experience a financial loss.
- Many developers (like us) won’t be able to attend WWDC.
- WWDC turnout may be lower than expected.
This website is meant to help track the scale of this issue and provide a potential solution to Apple dev community. If there is evidence that the problem is widespread enough we will potentially catch Apple’s attention. We hope Apple will then refund people who have entered their Apple IDs here and ultimately utilize the returned tickets to satisfy those developers genuinely interested in WWDC.
Apple let developers resell WWDC tickets last year, but things got out of hand when tickets started getting marked up for double and triple their worth. This year, Apple says “WWDC tickets (including activation codes) are non-transferable and may not be sold, resold, or auctioned in any way.” If you’re a member of a business, tickets may be transferred between employees if necessary.
Instead of offering to legally change your name, you can now put your name on the unofficial waiting list with hopes that Apple will take notice and offer refunds to devs who are unable to actually attend. This would theoretically free up space for those on the waiting list to buy tickets.
There are two options on wwdcwaitlist.org: you can enter your email addresses as a registered developer who has bought a WWDC pass and is not attending, or you can be entered to be put on the “waiting list.” The site is tallying who has entered in both forms publicly, and it promises to “not take any profit from this operation” or “use your email for any purposes other than communicating about WWDC tickets.”
To attend WWDC, Apple says you must be a “paid member of the iOS Developer Program, iOS Developer Enterprise Program, or Mac Developer Program” and 13 years of age and over. A ticket to the conference costs $1,600 and consists of more than 100 hands-on sessions led by Apple engineers over a period of 5 days. More information can be found on Apple’s FAQ page.
Via: AppAdvice
