The iCommunity–those who follow the doings of the Apple company and use their products to the best of their abilities–has long suffered from having a lack of face-to-face community meetings on a large scale. Craig Fox is among one of several people who have seen this issue and decided to meet it: the creation of the world’s first iCommunity and jailbreaking convention, MyGreatFest.
MyGreatFest will take place on September 17, 2011 in the Old Truman Brewery in London. The event will be a meeting for iCommunity members to learn how to maximize their iOS devices and their abilities; this will include how to jailbreak your devices (iPods, iPhones, iPads), coding and theme development, and more. Anyone who is an Apple enthusiast is welcome to attend.
I had the pleasure of doing an interview with Craig about MyGreatFest, and he gave a bit more insight on what to expect from MyGreatFest.
TF: So, this event will help users get more mileage out of their handheld Apple devices; besides Jailbreaking, one of the main components, can you give us a bit of a sneak peak at what else will be discussed?
CF: Between the various speakers we will have, they will all talk on a wide range of specific iOS hacking to basic coding itself. What we want is for everyone to leave the event with their device being at its full capablitiy.
TF: Are you going to be sticking just with Apple devices, or will you branch into other smartphone and tablet computer markets–perhaps not this year but in years to come?
CF: Our aim is to stick with iOS for MyGreatFest, although we have a couple of ideas to branch into other areas of the mobile market.
TF: What inspired you to make the world’s first convention surrounding the iCommunity? What kind of turnout and response are you expecting, or already see in preregistration, from this convention?
CF: I have been in the iCommunity for about 2-3 years and have always thought there is no meet-up for the iCommunity (users) there is of course the WWDC [Apple Worldwide Developers Conference] for developers, but nothing for users at all. And after a few Google searches I realised we were the first, and since its inception we have been featured on some of the biggest blogs worldwide.
TF: Your mission statement specifically points out that one of your aims is not piracy. Has there been any response concerning the aims of this convention about some of the more negative implications of hacking and jailbreaking? Will there be a seminar about these ideas to perhaps correct some of these misconceptions?
CF: Jailbreaking as a whole has always been frowned upon, and thats exactly what we are aiming to stop. We want to break Jailbreaking into the mainstream I think this recent interview with me explains it all.
So if you’re a tech enthusiast and you’re going to be in London on September 17th, this is definitely an event you should put in your diary!
