My experience of visiting Apple Park and attending the Apple Entrepreneur Camp

In 2019, I was fortuitous enough to be invited to attend the Fall Cohort of Apple Entrepreneur Camp in Cupertino, California, along with 10 other woman-led teams of developers/designers & analysts from around the world. If you are someone who is wondering why Apple doesn’t have any camp or workshops, this blog will uncover one such gem for you.
When I was preparing for my trip, I couldn’t find any guidance material for Apple-related conferences. Thus, I decided to pen this down for anyone attending the same or related camps. I share my experience of the camp, the benefits of attending it & things to keep in mind while applying for the same.

This photo was taken at Apple Park Visitor Center.

What are the perks of attending this free camp?

• You get to attend week-long technology lab sessions, where you receive one-on-one code-level assistance from Apple experts & engineers, as well as mentorship & guidance from Apple leaders.
• You get to learn & discuss with the marketing leaders on how to expand the outreach of your product & how to use Apple’s tools at your disposal. Benefit from one-on-one analysis of your product by the UI/UX, subscription, and content creator experts.
• You get tickets to WWDC; one year of ongoing support from an Apple Developer representative, free credits for Apple campaigns; one year of membership in the Apple Developer Program.*
• I had the opportunity of working on Siri shortcuts with engineers from Siri team; clarify my Core ML doubts; get help on iOS 13 bugs; discuss the future of ARKit; understand Apple’s intention and values (refer the WWDC 2013 keynote-Intention); met Chris Espinoza (company’s all-time longest-serving member).

Apple Park in AR

• Attend these sessions at the amazing zen campus of One Apple Park & maybe get to see the alluring Steve Jobs Theatre (The seats are made by Poltrona Frau — the same company that makes Ferrari seats!🔥). Sorry, just having a lil fan moment here. 🙈

Is the camp for you? If yes, how to apply?

• You are someone who is working on a product(s) that require Apple’s technology or uses any of their platforms.
• You want to improve the aesthetics & user experience of your product.
• You care about the feeling your product emanates in your users.
• You want to improve your knowledge of Swift & other frameworks.

Then you should attend this camp.

“Why?”, you ask.
One of Apple’s core values, written under Steve Jobs, is

Each person is important; each has the opportunity and the obligation to make a difference

Thus, Apple believes in people.

“But I am a sole proprietor, can I still apply?”, you ask again.

An entrepreneur is an individual who creates new business & is willing to risk loss in order to make money. One such example is a phenomenal woman I met over there. She is a working mom & the sole owner of her apps. What? Basically, she is the developer, designer, and owner of her apps, just like you & me when we create a personal project. She created apps she thought could be useful for her kids & her husband, e.g. a gratitude-list tracker. Many CEOs urged her to use her potential to earn more. But on being asked “What do you want to achieve in your life?”, she said, “ I want to surf more frequently, near my beach house in L.A. But I won’t be able to if I focus on converting my apps into a capitalist venture. Thus I want to stick to bettering my apps without looking to make more profit.”
That speaks volumes on how this camp is about empowering women & not just their products.

Tim Cook’s tweet regarding the end of the First year of the Camp

There’s an application process that requires you to answer a few questions about yourself, the aspirations for your organization, and knowledge about apple’s tools. On clearing that, there will be a video call round.

*The perks are subject to change. You can apply for the next Cohort on the official website here.

If this camp is not for you, here’s what you can do; Attend the local events Apple holds in your country. Attend workshops & labs hosted at their app accelerators(In India, it’s in Bengaluru. Currently all these events are being hosted online). Attend Swift & Apple-related meetups & conferences. Join the slack group for swift language. Download the developer app. You can participate in the WWDC Student challenge or attend other events like Women@WWDC Breakfast, Black@WWDC, Latinx@WWDC, Education Lunchtime Get-Together; or similar events held at #WWDC20.

Things to keep in mind while applying for the camp and if you get selected

• Currently, you have to manage your stay. Hotels in the San Jose area are very costly, so I suggest going with Airbnb or similar options.
• The sessions are quite intensive and weekends go by in preparing for the final day presentation, so if you are planning to travel and look around, you should extend the trip by a few days extra.
• Apply for US Visa quite in advance because the interview slots are usually booked for months (this can differ based on your country).
• In order to stay on the safer side, book flights after your Visa is confirmed because if you are coming from a country quite far from the US, the flights can be expensive. (The third member of my team had his Visa application denied twice, unfortunately; hence he couldn’t make it to the camp.)
• Don’t worry about your meals because Apple is very nice & calculative about your dietary preferences. Though, you might have to cook your dinner. (Or I can suggest some amazing Indian, Korean & Japanese restaurants in the area 🍣 )
• If you want to read more about the camp, you can check Apple’s official blog-

First year of Apple Entrepreneur Camp offers invaluable experiences to 100 innovators

Why have I penned this down?

• This camp was a very warm & educational experience for me. Apple should host more camps & labs, which can help to augment their developer relations. So with the help of this blog, I want to bring this to other women developers’ notice.
• It is my way to thank Apple & all the wonderful people I met at the camp who not only provided technical guidance but talked about the psychological difficulties faced by women developers & entrepreneurs. They gave me one more strong community to be a part of.
• If some of you are going to come back & start talking about discrimination, I want to quote a quora user-

Apple is creating an entrepreneur camp for women exclusively because they know that a) women are massively underrepresented in such areas because of discrimination and b) if they allowed people of all genders to go there, men would dominate it & force women out, just like every other non-women specific hackathon.

• This blog is to introduce you to me & my prior work experience. I attended the camp with the founder of the Health AI-chatbot startup(Wysa) that I worked with, during the final year of my Undergrad, which I pursued in Information Technology. Currently, I work as a software developer at an Indian restaurant aggregator & food-delivery company.
• I have an upcoming blog series based on my research area Consciousness & Artificial Intelligence, titled as
  Want to create an Artificial Superintelligence? Come, let’s go to therapy together. 🐾

If you would like to read my upcoming work, please follow me to stay updated; if you want to strike a conversation about the hard problem, find me on Twitter. 👩🏻‍💻