Xplain Corp., managers of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) Exhibit Fair, announced today that the 2003 Exhibit Fair has become one of the largest in WWDC history. Xplain also said today that the hours of operation for the Exhibit Fair have been extended, giving showgoers more opportunity to visit company booths.
Xplain management said that over 60 companies have signed up to exhibit at this year’s event, which is already more than signed up to exhibit in 2002 and there is still a month to go before WWDC starts for more companies to sign up.
The exhibit hall for WWDC normally opens later in the day, but this year Xplain will open the exhibits as soon as Apple CEO Steve Jobs is finished his opening keynote address. “Apple Developer Relations senior management team will be on hand at the opening of the Exhibit Fair Monday to welcome attendees and meet with exhibitors,” said Xplain management.
On June 23, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will kick-off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with the first public showing of Panther, the next major release of Mac OS X. This year’s developer conference will also bring more extensive QuickTime developer tracks, content that has been reserved in previous years for QuickTime Live, a separate conference which was held in Beverly Hills, California.
Originally scheduled for May 19-23, 2003 in San Jose, the conference was moved to the larger Moscone Center in San Francisco from June 23-27, in order to provide developers with a more complete preview release of Panther.
“People are going to be blown away by Panther,” Richard Kerris, Apple’s senior director of Worldwide Developer Relations, told MacCentral in a recent interview.