Apple and its development community have a two-way relationship. We rely on Apple for frameworks and development tools, as well as the documentation, bug fixes, and guidance necessary to use them. Apple in turn relies on us to build a universe of compelling applications to draw users to their platform.

 

Negotiating this bidirectional flow of need and fulfillment is an elite squadron of liaisons, hand-selected not only for their technical knowledge, but for their social skills. Like any great team, they bear a moniker that is at once inexplicably appropriate and vaguely menacing. They are “the evangelists.”

 

One thing the evangelists are responsible for is organizing developer events, the best known of which is  the annual Worldwide Developers Conference. They also take their show on the road giving “tech talks” in various cities around the world. If you’re a Mac developer, you already know about and, one hopes, take advantage of these gatherings.

 

What you might not know is there’s yet a third type of gathering, rarer and more fun than either WWDC or the tech talks. These developer workshops, known informally as “kitchens,” are invitation-only events where developers travel to 1 Infinite Loop to spend a week or two working on their projects at Apple.

 

The advantage of being on campus is the evangelists can bring in engineers to give personal one-on-one help with whatever problems you might be up against. Can’t figure something out in Core Animation? Ask the guy who wrote it. Core Data butting heads with a controller? Let’s get both teams in here and let them work on it together. Too stupid to solve your own memory problems? Shark team to the rescue!

 

I like to think that in any seven-day span I’m a better engineer than I was when I started, but going to a kitchen is like leveling up in a role playing game. It’s like a year of experience crammed into a week. I’ve been to two and each time I came home feeling like I knew Kung Fu. If you ever find a kitchen invite gracing your inbox, reply immediately. You’ll be glad you did.

 

That begs the question of getting invited in the first place. As near as I can tell, scoring the invite boils down to this: what’s in it for Apple? Think about it. Apple is not in the business of giving things away for no reason. Like any business, they want return on their investment. That means shipping applications that are on the cutting edge. That means pushing the frameworks and the platform. That means being one of those applications that people see and say “that’s what makes the Mac awesome.”

 

As near as I can tell the invitation process works like this: Apple decides they want to push a particular technology like, say, Leopard. The evangelists sit around a big table and make a list of who they know is  using that technology, or who should be using that technology. It’s not enough to be who you are. You need the evangelists to know who you are.

 

So how do you get known? Simply by taking advantage of the services the evangelists offer. Filing bugs, getting on the mailing lists, attending WWDC and the tech talks, and perhaps most of all, by writing in with questions. If what you’ve got going on is interesting, Apple will take notice, and when all the stars and planets line up just right you’ll get the invite.

 

All that being said, I’ve got at least two entries bouncing around in my head, directly inspired by my recent kitchen experiences. They might be up today, they might be up next year, but they’ll definitely be up eventually. This stuff is just too good to keep to myself.