I know this post is late, I just haven’t had a chance to post yet, but I had an incredible time at Macworld/iWorld 2014! For those of you who may have never had the chance to go to Macworld/iWorld it is different from any tech conference you may have gone to. The great part about Macworld/iWorld is the people and networking that happens at the event. Sure there are plenty of really great workshops. There are also a lot of great products on display from a bunch of Mac Vendors.There are also a lot of application developers at the event showing off the latest in Mac/iOS software. All of this is great in and of itself would make Macworld/iWorld a great event. But when you add to that the opportunity to meet some incredible people who are passionate about the Apple ecosystem, you have an awesome event that I look forward to attending again next year. This year I had the chance to have breakfast with the community people who work with Don McAllister on ScreenCastsOnline. Don is one of the nicest guys I have ever met and he is brilliant at content development and screencast tutorials. Everything I do with screencasts I learned from Don and I am humbled to be a part of ScreenCastsOnline and I continue to learn new things that make me a better screen caster. If you haven’t had a chance to check out ScreenCastsOnline, I highly recommend you do so as Don is the best in the business and the group of people who work with him on the ScreenCastsOnline Magazine are an incredible group of people and experts in the podcast/publishing/video community.
I also had the privilege of going to the Nosillacastaways Party hosted by Steve & Allison Sheridan from the Nosillacast and podfeet.com. It was an awesome party where I was able to meet a number of people including Chuck Joiner from MacVoices. Chuck is a great guy and I look forward to connecting with him more in the future. I also got to talk with the Nosillacastaways who couldn’t be there via a Google Plus Hang Out. You gotta love the fact that people were able to telecommute to a Mac event! Steve and Allison are incredible hosts and I really appreciated the fact that they put that event on every year. I look forward to next year!
The workshops were great and I picked up a lot of tips and ideas this year. I sat in on David Sparks & Katie Floyd from Mac Power Users workshop on Power User Workflows. I have already picked up two Mail App plugins, SendLater and CargoLifter from ChungwaSoft! I also enjoyed a productivity workshop from Brett Terpstra. Brett has done some incredible things for the Mac Community through developing scripts and applications and it was great to hear his perspective on productivity. There were also some panels we attended including one on meeting the podcasters with my friends Katie, David, Don, Allison, Steve, & Chuck (who I met for the first time this year)!
On the show floor I met a doctor who developed a magnetic ring that lets you easily secure your iPad to your hand without worrying about dropping it called Bakbone. Hearing his story of how he developed this for the medical field and it just took off as other people wanted to use it as well. It was cool to see he was as surprised at how well it was working as anyone else. He was a really great guy and the product is great in its simplicity. You can check it out here: http://www.thebakbone.com.
We also got to talk to some developers who have put some cools software together. I got to see the Backblaze guys who run my favorite online backup that I use for all my Macs. I ran into a developer named Debbie Quetsch who walked me through an incredible chore application for iOS called Chore-inator. It won a Macworld best of show and is an application I wish I had when the boys were younger! Another application I am looking forward to is BusyMac’s new contacts application called BusyContacts. I got to see a walk through by BusyMac co-founder John Chaffee and it looks like a great application that solves a lot of issues I have with managing contacts. There are plenty of other products and applications that I saw that were incredible! The show room floor really is a great place to check out new stuff for your Mac or iOS devices! Overall, Macworld/iWorld is a great event and I look forward to attending and connecting with everyone again next year!
