Mercari members at Worldwide Developers Conference 2019 ! #MercariDays

This was my fourth time attending a WWDC, after going in 2012, 2017 and 2018.
That being said, WWDC 2019 was by far the most exciting one I’ve ever had the chance to attend! So many new things that I had been eagerly awaiting, and even some things I didn’t know I wanted were announced.

I’m extremely happy to have both Dark Mode for iOS, and UIKit for macOS. And I was completely floored when Apple suddenly announced that Xbox One and PS4 controllers now also work on iOS and tvOS.

Finally, it’s clear from this WWDC that we are on the cusp of a whole new generation of programming technologies from Apple, with the announcement of SwiftUI: something only made possible thanks to Swift, as well as Swift Package Manager finally about to hit the big leagues.
All in all, I had a fantastic week. I’m extremely excited with everything that was announced, and I can’t wait to see what sorts of features they’ve unlocked for my side projects.

With mutual pressure from teammates, we decided to wake up early for the main keynote, so some members lined up starting from 3am. On the bright side, I got the chance to briefly talk and take photos with some Apple executives: Craig Federighi, Eddy Cue and Philip W. Schiller.
One of my favorite aspects of the conference is the opportunity to speak 1on1 with Apple engineers and get consultation and an inside look of what is happening under the hood at Apple.
In addition, the most touching moment for me was when an Apple Creative Pro approached me, while I was having my lunch, and said “I’m sorry to interrupt, I recognized you and I just wanted to say thank you for your contribution to the community. We are proud to have you.”
Also, I’ve been really fortunate to be invited by Apple to both the corporate headquarters of Apple Inc., (Apple Park) and the Infinite Loop campus. I had many interesting conversations with Apple Engineers and an inside tour of the gorgeous campuses.
On the sidelines of the conference, I had the chance to visit the Stanford Apple Store to attend the App Lab Session that I am featured in. It was great to see so many students from Stanford attending this session.
Overall it was an awesome week and I am so excited to use all the new technologies we learned.

Yes. This year’s WWDC was my first one.

Since the morning of the day when I opened an email from Apple saying that I won a ticket I felt slowly increasing excitation.

WWDC is a big event where developers have a chance to increase their knowledge, discuss problems, new features, new framework with Apple’s engineers and meet developers from around the world! This made me feel extremely motivated to get as much as it would be possible from this conference.

Besides strictly technician presentations, I also attended to less technician events like Apple Design Awards, Designing Award Winning Apps and Games or Great Developer Habits.

Each of these events showed me that good apps are not only done by good code by also by good UI design, good UX design, by utilizing accessibility features, by good project management and by applying good habits to our work and our team.
All new features that have been introduced, all new people that I have met and great WWDC atmosphere made me feel very motivated to learn, code and create new apps. This was a fantastic time and I hope I will be able to attend WWDC 2020.