Today, I’m proud to have John Wilker and Tom Ortega with me about the 360|iDev conference taking place in San Jose on Mar 2-4. They boast it to be the largest iPhone conference in the world, so I thought I had to investigate a bit more and I ended up being accepted as a speaker. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
What gave you the idea to start 360|iDev?
John: We want to do conferences we’d attend, that’s what lead us to 360|Flex for Adobe Flex developers, and now both of us are dabbling (hoping to one day have a conference tool) in iPhone Dev, so we had a light bulb moment that there wasn’t really an event for iPhone devs. Apple’s conference is HUGE and across all their tools and platforms, why not offer iPhone devs their own community?
Tom: I really want to be one of the cool kids and program on this wonderful new device. 
Seriously though, we started 360|Flex, our other show, so there could be a better place to learn how to program in Flex. We saw the same need for iPhone development and thus here we are, planning a new conference.
Why attend iDev instead of WWDC?
Tom: 2 huge reasons:
Cost – If you buy a ticket to our show early, it’s only $200 USD. Even if you wait til the end, the price caps at $499 USD. That price includes most if not all your food for the 3 days of the conference. That and we have a group hotel rate of $129 a night near the conference center.
Content – If all you care about is the iPhone/iPod Touch, then this is the show for you. It is 100% about that and nothing else. It won’t be a matter of “Is there anything of interest for me today?” but rather more of “There’s too much goodness for me today. Which one do I go for?”
John: WWDC is Apple’s main stage, and a great event (I presume, having never attended), but all main stage events, focus on all products and platforms. An iPhone developer may have little interest in other technologies, yet they’re there, as are those people who use them. An attendee at our Flex Conference pointed out that Adobe MAX (similar to WWDC) is 4000+ people, but the guy next to you at lunch, might be an Illustrator designer, or a PDF person, or who knows what, but at 360|Flex, the whole table will be peers in Flex development. That’s the goal with 360|iDev, to give the iPhone developer community a place to come together, swap stories, tricks, lessons learned, etc.
What is your target audience? Is your conference geared more toward developers or businessmen?
John: Developers. We say that our events are by developers, for developers. That’s not to say there won’t be business folks, they’re a large part of any developer community really. They pay the bills usually, they’re clients, owners, idea folks, etc. We hope to bring both groups together in a way that has benefit to both, indie devs can find clients or full time work. Business people can find developers.
Tom: Traditionally, we do get more developers. Most of the sessions are technical in nature. However, we do have a business side of iPhone App development. That is aimed 100% at the businessmen, so there will be topics for both crowds.
On that note, if someone is interested in speaking, which track needs the most contributions? Is there any particular topic that you’re surprised no one has taken up yet?
John: Game dev. For as much noise as Apple has been making about the games on the iPhone, I thought there’d be a lot of people interested in sharing what they’ve learned about developing games for the iPhone.
Tom: Currently, the gambit is wide open. The topic I was most interested
in learning about was Open GL ES. I was suprised no one had offered to speak on that, but just today we got a submission on that topic. 
Great, I’ve been struggling lately with learning OpenGL ES, so I’ll definitely attend that talk! So, besides the conference, what else does San Jose have to offer that might attract people to attend?
John: The Winchester Mystery House is a fun time. It’s about an hour or less from San Francisco, so that’s always a huge plus! Plus all the startups in the area, you can’t get in but you can drive by. Heck Apple is there!
Tom: It’s Silicon Valley! If you love the iPhone and are trying to develop for it, you’re probably a nerd. The headquarters of Apple, Intel, nVidia, AMD, Google, Yahoo, and, of course, eBay are all here. For me, there’s something cool about being able to see all those companies. Take a gander at where the magic happens. I’ve been known to serve as a tour guide late at night, during a In-N-Out burger run. If you’ve never had an In-N-Out double-double cheeseburger, that’s reason enough to come.
Ah yes, I’ve heard about the famous In-N-Out burgers, but being an east coast boy, I never had the chance to try them out for myself. So enough about food… for those of us flying in, will 360|iDev be in the middle of nowhere or are there public transportation options available?
John: We hate the middle of nowhere! We aim for hub cities or at least one along a major travel path. From San Jose airport, there’s a shuttle bus that drops off across the street from the hotel, and from the hotel to the conference, there’s light rail. The Hotel is half a mile (Editor’s note for non-Americans: that would be a kilometer) or one stop from the conference.
Tom: That same light rail will take you to downtown. The conference is at eBay’s HQ, which is in an office park area. However, downtown is only a few miles away.
Besides iDev, what are some other conferences you run?
John: We’ve been doing 360|Flex for 2 years now, 7 events in all, including Europe. We really try to focus on making the event a big success with our attendees before even thinking about splitting our attention. Each event is very different as we work to refine what worked and what didn’t, etc. If anyone is curious about our reputation, etc do a google search for 360|Flex (or 360flex, flex 360, we seem to have an easily confused name, LOL) to see what our attendees are saying.
Thank you very much for the interview and I look forward to seeing you there!
John: For sure! Can’t wait to see everyone in San Jose!
Tom: Thanks for the interview. It’s been really fun!