Little more than a week away from Apple’s first all-online WWDC, the company today revealed the full details for how this new virtual conference format will work.
While the full conference will span June 22-26, the two biggest events will be held on kickoff day, as per tradition. The Special Event Keynote will stream directly from Apple Park starting at 10 a.m. PDT on Monday, while the Platforms State of the Union will follow a few hours later at 2 p.m. PDT. The former will offer a wide variety of options for viewing, including apple.com, the Apple Developer app and website, the Apple TV app, and YouTube; the latter will be limited to the Apple Developer app and website.
Apple will also offer over 100 engineering sessions throughout the week. Rather than having these sessions at different times throughout each day, as usual, Apple will instead drop a new batch of videos every day at 10 a.m. PDT, which developers can view via the Apple Developer app or website.
Perhaps the biggest question marks about the conference have been what opportunities for interaction with Apple engineers will be made available. The company is addressing this in two ways: with brand new Apple Developer Forums and by offering reservation-only 1-on-1 Developer Labs. Through forums Apple will enable over 1,000 of its engineers to interact with the developer community in a more public way, while developers can get private help from an engineer through a 1-on-1 lab. More information about how to sign up for a lab slot will be forthcoming.
While this will certainly be a WWDC unlike any before, it sounds like Apple is doing everything it can to ensure developers get as much value out of conference participation as possible. Whether you’re a developer or not, there’s surely a lot of exciting things the week will bring.