The Longest Week

I started out this week like many of my friends, attention solidly placed on WWDC and the Stevenote on Monday. Pınar Özger and I checked into our hotel room on Sunday night so that we could be up at 5-something AM to shoot the most tenacious of attendees that were already in line. When we got there at 6AM, the line was already wrapped around the building on 4th street and was far down Minna. We went straight to work and worked our way up and down the line and got lots of good shots for our client.

The shots for the client are embargoed and won't be going up on my Flickr feed as usual, but here's a screenshot of one that was used on the web on Tuesday:

This shot is one of my favorites from the day. The attendees shown are the first ones in line that had been waiting over 12 hours to get in and were enthusiastic as anything to be riding up the final escalator to the 3rd floor of Moscone West. All it took was a bit of verbal encouragement, along the lines of, "OK everyone, show your iPhones!", and they were happy to share their enthusiasm.

After shooting the Stevenote and subsequent state of the union talks, I quickly wrapped up loose ends and threw a few things in my bags and went to SFO to fly to Washington DC.

Washington DC??? Um, hello? Doesn't WWDC go all week long?

Yes, it does. The last two years, I've worked for Apple to shoot WWDC and shot the entire week. But this year, life threw me a wrinkle. When Apple announced dates for WWDC, they conflicted with the O'Reilly Graphing Social Patterns East conference. I was really bummed when it looked like I wasn't going to be able to shoot WWDC this year. But then, after talking with all the parties involved, and thanks to having Pınar as part of my team, I was able to put together a nutty plan to shoot both WWDC and GSP East. To make it work, however, I had to take a red-eye flight from SFO to IAD, arriving at 5-something AM EDT in time to start shooting at 9AM at the Hyatt Crystal City.

It worked. I arrived on time and powered through a long day Tuesday after getting three hours of sleep on the airplane. The O'Reilly staffers were very kind and forgave my tired eyes and my insistence on skipping a nice meal in DC on Tuesday night. After a lovely 8 hours of sleep night in a real bed instead of an airliner seat, I shot the second day of GSP East and got everything accomplished with flying colors, including packing up and grabbing a car to the airport right as the conference ended.

As I write this, I'm at IAD again about to catch my flight back to SFO. Pınar has shot WWDC during the days I've been in Washington DC, including lots of sessions as well as the Apple Design Awards and Stump the Experts. I'll be joining her on Thursday and Friday for WWDC again, and I'm looking forward to catching a few sessions on all the cool technology in Snow Leopard as well as shooting the party in Yerba Buena Gardens. I can't believe it's only Wednesday.

Who would be stupid enough to try to shoot two simultaneous conferences on two coasts of the United States? Yeah, that would be me. At least now, enough of the hard part is behind me that I'm willing to even admit how crazy I am in public.