How to make the most of virtual dev conferences from Apple, Microsoft and more

If you already a developer who spent a lot of time working from home, say goodbye to the opportunity to travel to Apple's Wordwide Developer Conference or Microsoft Build as a way to escape the routine.

As you might expect by now, both Apple's WWDC and Build have been cancelled, at least in their in-person format, though both have said they will carry on with virtual versions.

This might seem even less appealing than all the more traditioanl business conferences that are now being scheudled to run online. After all, you can listen to a keynote about how to be a better CEO or how to improve your marketing strategy via livestream, but the nuances of using Flask, Rails, React or Angular might be another matter.

I'm not a developer but a journalist, which means that while I don't know all the ins and outs of the technologies Apple and Microsoft will be showcasing, I have a lot of experiencing having to capture and report on events through a screen.

Apologies if some of these tips may be obvious, but I'm offering them just in case because, the way things are going, maximizing the expeerience of attending a virtual event may become a key developer skill in the future:

Scout Out The On-Demand Options First: It's not that you don't want to be among the first to hear about major updates to a platform or the introduction of new tools. It's that, whenever possible, you'll want the ability to stop and start a recording in order to take better notes. Check the agendas once they're posted to see if everything is a blink-and-you-missed-it livestream or something you can return to after the fact.

'Come In' With Your Questions: When people go to events in person, they often do so passively, waiting to see what speakers will say and then asking questions (or, more often, not asking) once the 'Q&A' slide comes up. Save time by thinking through the key things you'd like to learn that will help you in your job. Put these in an open document, almost like headings in an outline for a report. Then, as you start to watch and listen, you can easily jot notes under the appropriate heading to keep what you learn well-organized and actionable.

Find A Study Buddy: Sometimes companies send entire teams of devs to an event, and you can avoid FOMO by splitting up to take in sessions that might be running concurrently and share notes with each other afterwards. People overlook this wheen an event becomes virtual but it may be even more important now, since we'll all be checking into online conferences while we're still doing other work at home.

Have An Analogue Backup To Record Your Notes: You may have two monitors set up -- one to watch a speaker and one where you can type notes. Then someting happens -- an application acts up, a video call comes through or some other distraction on your note-taking screen. Don't miss anything and keep a pad and pen around just in case. This has saved me countless times.

Let Your Surroundings Disappear: Among the disadvantages of virtual events is that it's harder to pay attention to them. At least it has been for me. I find I'm more willing to zone out than if I were sitting in a row of chairs that were chained together in a large convention center.

Explore Opportunities To Build Upon The Event: You might want to share what you recorded to your peers and colleagues, sort of like the way I publish stories for readers who didn't get the chance to take in an event. The difference with being a developer is that your next step could be more hands on, where you use the event as the catalyst for investing in your professional development. This could include taking advantage of all the coding bootcamps Toronto offers, if you live near me, or whatever's most relevant and convenient for you.

Hopefully by this time next year the in-person developer conferences will be back, but either way, you've got to keep learning if you want to improve. The education may be increasingly virtual, but the opportunity to get value from it is real.