WWDC 2010 – Use SonicPics to capture and share your experience!
It’s that time of year again! That time when throngs of developers converge in San Francisco for Apple’s annual World Wide Developer’s Conference. It’s geek week, a homecoming of sorts for Mac, iPhone and iPad programmers and this year promises to be quite exciting!
Back in February I posted how to use SonicPics to report on Macworld and I wanted to revisit that post (and recycle parts of it) in advance of next week’s code-monkey fest!
Attending professional conferences can be overwhelming. WWDC is especially so as there is so much information to absorb in such a short time! Next week will offer a mix of workshops, demonstrations, and potential solutions (not to mention the much anticipated Stevenote (Keynote). Add to this the opportunity to meet up with colleagues from around the world and one can easily become buried in a sea of information. Most of us who are sent to such conferences by our employers are expected to provide some sort of trip report to share the knowledge we have gained (and prove that we weren’t hitting the links instead of attending sessions). If you are anything like me however, by the time you get back to your hotel room, you have a hard time sitting down to write your report.
If you have an iPhone you already have a great tool in your pocket, and with SonicPics (http://www.sonicpics.com) you can easily turn your photos into narrated trip reports to share with your boss and colleagues. Using your iPhone and SonicPics you can make your co-workers feel as if they were at the WWDC themselves.
Taking your shot
During WWDC, take pictures using the iPhone’s built in camera. When you enter a conference session, snap a shot of the poster at the door. (Make sure you are not violating Apple’s NDA.) When you meet with a colleague, take their picture. When you see something of interest (to you or someone back in your office) in the labs, snap a shot. And don’t forget that San Francisco itself offers myriad opportunities to get great photos! Get in the habit of taking pics to throughout the day.
Speak your truth
You can’t just submit a pile of photos and call it a report. (I am guessing your boss will likely frown on that). This is where SonicPics makes your life a lot easier! Using SonicPics on your iPhone, you can select the pictures that best tell the story and arrange them in the order you want. You can give each picture its own title and description (which might be handy for you to use as a script), but you don’t have to. When you have all of your images arranged the way you want them, you record a narration, describing each picture as you go, swiping to advance to the next image. The result is a .m4v movie file where your pictures are synchronized with your narration.
Practice makes perfect
You may want to do more than one recording to break your report into distinct parts. For example, you might have one recording that discusses the conference sessions that you attended and a separate one to highlight interesting products from the show floor. However you break it down, using SonicPics to give your trip report will make it easier for you, and more enjoyable for those who might actually be interested in learning from your experience.
Sharing your recordings.
When you finish a recording, SonicPics makes it easy to share your movie. SonicPics 1.0 allowed you to share your recordings to your computer using WiFi and to publish directly to YouTube from your iPhone. Version 1.1 added the ability to email your videos (under 10MB) directly from your phone. SonicPics makes it easy to send your thoughts directly to your boss or your colleagues from anywhere, all from your iPhone.
Additional information about SonicPics and SonicPics Lite is available on the SonicPics website.