I don't know, I went last year, and was heavily disappointed about how nontechnical all of the talks were that I went to. The whole place was filled with a ton of tech-reporters and a limited amount of actual developers.

I didn't bother signing up this year, and saved myself the money and time by doing so. Maybe it was better in the past, but I hope they change the conference to actually promote developers and developing.

Really? Maybe the keynotes, but the (>10) sessions I've watched on youtube (I haven't been) have all either been on how to develop on their products or how they developed their products.

That is with the caveats that I've selected what to watch based on what seemed interesting (and technical), and that the sessions they call "201" seem to be more 101, but from what I've seen and the in-person Q&A/networking opportunities, it seems well worth the trip for developers.

Having the same experience with non-technical content and a crowd of journalists as the grandparent poster, i also not trhilled with those.

but i saw a couple on youtube when they were featured, and i must say they were at best introductions to their platforms than anything else.

My experience in '09 mirrors this somewhat, but that was the first year they chucked a phone at us so perhaps I was distracted. I sought out the more technical talks and avoided most of everything to do with Wave. I was particularly interested in the Chrome talks and thought the presentations involving Javascript were pretty good.

It seems there are a lot of people out there enamored with Google, but don't have any other venue to rub elbows with the "Google people." I'd like to see a Google conference geared towards media, SEO, and the press so all those types will get the hell out of I/O. That way they can still announce products, ape and/or heap scorn on Steve Jobs, and get some noise made.

I went to Google developer day and all IO. The trend is for less in depth presentation and I miss the candor of the first year, but it is still a fabulous occasion to talk directly with people from Google and other devs.

Apple has "given away" stuff in the past. I seem to remember iSight cameras were one. It is a once-in-a-blue-moon thing though.

This is true, and they also gave away their first laser mouse if I recall. What's nice about WWDC is that its cost tends to act as a fairly decent bozo filter.

The cost of the conference is relative. There's a lot of international attendees and for them the price is more than the freebies.

What I have seen with higher price conference is that you get a lot of corporate attendees and more lower to middle management than developers. It may have been also because of the conference too (oracle, webmethods and Microsoft)