The view from the stage at Stump the Experts, at WWDC 2008
Every year, one of the sessions I’m involved with at Apple’s World-wide Developer’s Conference is called Stump the Experts. Ostensibly, it’s a “game” show, where the developers are suppose to ask trivia questions about (mostly) the Macintosh, and we answer them, because we’re all experts and know pretty much everything. I’ve been on the panel since 2000, when I was the lead engineer on Mac OS 9 and maybe did know a lot about the system, but since the scope of the Mac expands every year by this last year I’m certainly not an expert on most areas of the operating system. But, I’m still up there because things never change. Personally, I’ve wondered why developers like the session so much—each year it seems to be more of a madhouse, and we aren’t getting many questions answered—but the session feedback from the folks that come all say that folks really like the session. Maybe it’s the free stuff that gets given away.
This last year, I took a set of pictures from the front just before the session started, just so everyone would see what it’s like for us. Mostly, it’s people as far as the eye can see. For a couple seconds each year it’s kind of intimidating, then I remember that most of those folks actually like us.