About WWDC15 Scholarship

About WWDC15 Scholarship

Or how a failure led me to it and what I've learned.

You may think I'm too late to write about it, and I agree with you :P but that was a memorable experience and I've promised to myself that I would write something about it before 2015 ends, so stay with me during this 3 minutes reading.

If you're a student I hope to inspire you a little to engage on the next WWDC Scholarship and submit an awesome app showing the Cupertino guys that they should give you a try to being part of this amazing experience.

So far so good, but do you guess how this story began? EXACTLY! With a failure. The good part about that is that I reached the goal of a failure: I learned from it.

The Failure

Let’s get back to early 2014: I was working with iOS since late 2013, it is not too much time, but I felt comfortable to create some apps. Well, Apple announced the WWDC14 Scholarship program and the possibility to participate felt like a dream.

Just to contextualize: I was participating in an educational program based on iOS Development ally with CBL methodology (which was an awesome program too). I live in Brazil and we relatively doesn't had too much iOS Developers before this program here, but there we were, me and other 99 students learning and creating apps (great apps, by the way) with the support of amazing instructors.

At the first time all of us felt too excited and capable to submit and earn one ticket to the dreamed WWDC14. But not everything was flowers on this story, as the days passed some kind of confidence problem started to hover over me.

I've planned everything! I'd the idea that gives me a WWDC15 ticket during WWDC14 submissions. In order to be part of WWDC Scholars we should create an app about us, telling our own history, and at the second that I finished reading this I thought: I will create an app that tells my history looking back and "connecting the dots" of my life, based on legendary Steve Jobs speech in Stanford.

So I started to think things like "I don't have too much experience to achieve it" or "There are awesome developers on the global community, why a guy who is working with iOS for a short time will be selected?". The truth is that all of this kind of thoughts are bullshit! It may seem obvious, but on that moment prejudiced me, and unfortunately it occurs often in tech industry.

“Talent is universal, while opportunity is not.” — Nicholas Kristof

Doesn't matter where are you from, or how much time you do something, you must believe in yourself and work really hard, in this connected world you have the same chances as the guy who lives in the U.S. or whatever other place. Because of the internet and companies like Apple who make this kind of opportunity universal, you must give a try to your talent or abilities, and that was my failure in 2014, I didn't give a try to my talent and didn't finished my project.

Lesson Learned

The time passed and I've not submitted my project to WWDC14 Scholarship program. Remember when I said that I was participating in an educational program with other 99 students? Well for my surprise, only 3 of them believed in themselves and submitted their projects, and the better part: The 3 went to WWDC14!

These guys inspired me a lot. They had the same opportunities that all of us had, they worked hard and they achieved, awesome! They prove to me that I could fly high as they do, and this was an important part of my learning with this experience. So here goes a special thanks to Rodrigo, Fabio and Thomas.

There is Always a Second Shot

I've promised to me that in the next year I would put my idea on action and submit my project to WWDC15 Scholarship program and that's what I did. When Apple published that we should work on an app telling about us for WWDC15 Scholarship I didn't thought twice: Lets connect the dots! I executed the same idea that I had during WWDC14 submissions. I've opened the source code of my project, you can find it on my GitHub. Below some screenshots of the app that I've submitted.

Screenshots of my WWDC15 submission.

Mission complete! I felt really good after I submitted that project, even if I wasn't selected to WWDC15 I've tried and that is what counts, if I wasn't selected I would improve, work harder and try while I could to achieve while this goal make sense for me.

Happily on May 08, 2015 I received an e-mail telling that I've won a WWDC15 Scholarship ticket! I don't have words to explain how happy I was with the good news!!

WWDC15 congratulations e-mail.

That pre-WWDC experience changed my mind, I really learned something that I will take with me forever.

By Filipe Alvarenga on Dec 20, 2015