Unknowable

“The cap on WWDC tickets means it won’t go the way of SXSW - a wildly successful conference that has grown consistently since its inception. I used to go every year until one late night we looked around a huge sea of strangers and decided that we no longer knew this conference. The experience had become diluted. It had become unfamiliar, full of strangers, and unknowable.”

For the most part, I didn’t follow the discussion surrounding WWDC ticket sales after they sold out in under two minutes. I read John Siracusa’s article on the topic, but for the most part stayed out of the conversation. I haven’t ever gone to WWDC, after all, nor do I plan to in the foreseeable future. From the few articles I did see, however, and based on the numerous podcasts that touched on the subject, I noticed that by far the vast majority criticized Apple for capping WWDC attendance at 5,000. Michael Lopp’s piece linked at the top of this article was the only piece of note I came across defending Apple’s decision, and easily the best.

As a brief aside before you go on your way, before tonight I had only heard of Michael Lopp in name. Specifically, I remember this one time, very distinctly for some reason, John Gruber mentioned him and his blog on an episode of The Talk Show. After reading Unknowable, I took a few minutes to check out his site. Ten minutes later I finished adding Rands in Repose to my RSS reader; I was very impressed. Over the next half hour I jumped between this article and You’re Not Listening, an article from last year about verbal communication and all its curious little nuances. It was a very interesting read and a representative sample of the type and quality of article Michael Lopp writes. As I suggested at the end of Tumblr. + Yahoo! = !!, if you are unfamiliar with his work, go check it out.